“The purpose of education is to show a person how to define himself authentically and spontaneously in relation to his world – not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world , still less an arbitrary definition of the individual himself” ~Thomas Merton.

So, you have selected or are still thinking about selecting your courses for the new school year or perhaps they have been selected for you for the purposes of graduating with a Dogwood Diploma. Now you have had a chance to look over the course description and are waiting for the books and other materials to come. All that needs to be done now is to make sure the internet is connected, Windows is working, and the software is in place and you are set. Right? Well, maybe not. How does your student prepare for an online course or any course for that matter? Perhaps the question has more meaning than to have a well laid out course, a good computer, a teacher and a ‘pen or a pencil’. Perhaps, at first read, there is more here to think about than getting next year’s school course work underway and completed with a certain degree of success or satisfaction. Allow me to purpose that there is more to taking an online course from HCOS than just running the paces of another year’s worth of schoolwork.

Just this past week, in both the newspaper and on television, we were reminded that this is the sixtieth year remembrance of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan to end the Second World War. What was unleashed then still scares us today because we still live under its threat, by either a rogue state or some terrorist group willing to destroy life simply because of some twisted religious conviction. During the testing stage for these early weapons, a discussion arose amongst the scientists of the possibility that the test bomb called “trinity”, oddly enough, could actually explode the atmosphere and destroy the earth. This was understood as a possibility, yet the test was conducted nonetheless. Why, when the risk was so great? These were highly intelligent people who in spite the possibility of a worldwide complete disaster went ahead with the experiment. What was it that beyond all ethical and moral understanding would drive these very intelligent people to attempt something that could ultimately destroy the whole existence of mankind?

Parker Palmer, in his book “To know As We Are Known” suggests the following; “we are well educated people who have been schooled in a way of knowing that treats the world as an object to dissected and manipulated, a way of knowing that gives us power over the world.”(p.2) The answer, I would suggest, lays in the way we think and are being schooled.

In our modern, secular culture and education system, we have falsely separated our spiritual pursuits from our education purposes. In higher educational institutions, we add ethics classes and in our schools, we often offer religious classes to offset our secular course work. Now, what I am not concluding is having these classes is wrong but what I am suggesting is that in the world of education this dichotomy suggests that the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of spiritual things are two very separate things. They are not. However, in modern education it is taken for granted that the world of facts, information and data are nothing more than things to be used to make our world make sense. They are neutral, nothing more then pieces of a puzzle to be use at will in order to accomplish a perceived task or make sense of the chaos. Education is “a kind of board game in which we move the pieces around until we have solved the problem” (p.3). The world is a chaotic place and I am to use my abilities to make sense of it and bring order to it. As both a student and a teacher I understood that thinking was or the going through this educational process was better equip me to handle the world and others and myself in order to make it a better place.

This ordering of things, unfortunately, doesn’t come from a heart of love and compassion but one of fear of disorder, lack of control and curiosity. Let me explain. In one of the very first stories of the Bible, we witness Satan, the great Deceiver, promising that if we followed him we would have knowledge like God and need not be concerned with asking or submitting to him. The outcome is clear. Thus, in buying that lie, we have come to believe that we can stand over the world “like God”, “knowing good and evil”, and use knowledge acquisition to move and shape the world in our own image. Personally, I sometimes succeed, but often I fail because the desire comes from my distorted and driven self not a drive from love and compassion. In my quest to be God-like, that is to see the world as my playground to use as I choose, I ended up growing weary, cynical, frustrated and I withdrew from it. Why, because my desire came from a belief that I can, through my ever-increasing education stand objectively over creation and manipulated it to my own ends rather then out of a heart of love for earth and all that lives and breathes in it.

We need to stop and think about where does all knowledge come from and where is it taking us? Is it advancing our capacity to love or is our curiosity, our drive to control and our mastery destroying those around us? We need to ask the question of what are the origins and ends of knowledge? Are facts, knowledge, information and ideas neutral? Are the things we learn from our textbooks and teachers passionless and purposeless until we as human beings apply them in some practical sense? Again Palmer answers the question this way, “I have come to see that knowledge contains its own morality, that it begins not in neutrality but in a place of passion with in the human soul. Depending on the nature of that passion, our knowledge will follow certain courses and head toward certain ends.” (p.7)

Is curiosity a bad thing, no but if left without an understanding of where that desire could take us, curiosity can and may destroy us. Think of the scientists mentioned earlier, the curiosity to see what would happen with the explosion of the first atomic bomb was outweighed by the potential danger and the ethical responsibility for others. What of control? The twentieth century is replete with examples of those who, in the wrong hands, have used control and power to justify anything acts of injustice all the way to genocide. “We are also creatures attracted by power; we want knowledge to control our environment, each other, ourselves. Since many of the boxes we have opened contained secrets that have give us more mastery over life, curiosity and control are as joined as the passion behind our knowing.” (p.7)

Then there is God’s expression “that the earth is the LORD’s and everything in it” or as Colossians 1 teaches that Jesus Christ created all things, sustains all things and upholds all things. Then there is John 14 where Jesus tells us that he is also life and truth. Is it possible to assume that knowledge and its pursuit is a neutral activity? No, the very heart of knowing and learning is the God who made it passionately and with purpose and then said it is all very good! Knowledge in its very origins comes from the depth of God’s soul and as creatures made in his image the pursuit of knowledge come from an impassioned heart.

I began by telling the story of those scientists who helped end the war in 1945 and their commission by the US government to use their knowledge to bring about a speedy end. Up until today, those who are left from those early days of atomic experimenting, regret the use and deployment of such weapons of destruction. I don’t stand in judgement of them, none of should because we have all succumbed in one fashion or another to the same temptations as they, all be it at a less powerful scale. So what is the answer for our students as they embark on their quests for knowledge?

First, our desire for knowing comes from the one whose image we bear. Second, that knowledge comes from deep within our soul. Third, the answer comes not from our intellectual tradition but our spiritual heritage (p.8) Therefore, Palmer argues, that knowledge doesn’t begin in love but it is love! “The deepest wellspring of our desire to know is the passion to recreate the organic community in which the world was first created.” (p.8) This is a tough love, a love, which summons me to care and compassion, mutuality and accountability. Curiosity, control, and the pursuit of knowledge for one’s own sake is easy, however wrong headed and empty of heart.

The opportunity that Christian Education affords us is to be able to re-examine again, why it is and what it is we do in our pursuit of knowledge. Let us pray that our students understand that knowledge heartlessly learned and deprived from its Maker and depth of our soul is a dangerous path; but learning at the very heart of love brings peace, healing, reunification and joy. May you find all this as you learn at the feet of the one who told us “he has given us all things to richly enjoy”.

Chris McGrath, HCOS Online Course and Grad Administrator, cmcgrath@onlineschool.ca

Parker J. Palmer, To Know As We Are Known – Education as a Spiritual Journey. HarperSanFrancisco. 1993.