Why higher education got lower
There was a day when higher education was, as the label suggests, higher. Students went to college to be immersed in an intellectual environment structured around the best that man has said and done since the beginning of reflective thought. The academy existed to discuss ideas, not to provide instructions on how to do something. Those were the golden years of western civilization. Scholars were the ones who encouraged thought and guided it toward goals still in the process of being defined. School was a place for discussion; in fact, the word “school” comes from the Greek schole, “spare time, idleness, a place where leisure is employed for discussion.” People didn’t go to school to be taught something but to discuss something.
The noted Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, would agree. By the time of his death in 1939, American higher education was beginning to look like a vast training program for the industrial world. As a corrective against that direction, Yeats reminded his generation that “education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” For the Nobel winning poet (in literature, 1923) that may seem like an unimpressive aside, but not so. He believed the important issues of life would not be solved by science but by poets able to speak simply. Were he with us today he would be shocked to see the extent to which “pail filling” has replaced serious discussion of concerns that determine the direction of civilization.
And why is it that this mentality has become dominant in our institutions of “higher” education? Could it be that in the short run knowing how to do something is more profitable than trying to understand those issues which in the long run will prove to be significant? We all know that at the moment a young graduate in philosophy may well find himself asking, “Where is the food stamp line?” I feel sorry for those who for a time may have to work at minimum wage or lower, but I feel worse for those who give up the excitement of learning (the “fire” that needs to be lit) for the benefit of having all that doesn’t satisfy anyway.
As members of the biological class called mammals there is nothing we do (with one exception) that is not done far more proficiently by some animal. A shark’s olfactory ability is so great that it can “smell” blood in the water miles away. Setting aside for this particular discussion the theological proposition that man is made in the image of God (I believe it), man is distinguished from other mammals only by an advanced capacity for thought. His frontal lobe is significantly larger and infinitely more complex. Higher education should “set it on fire” by focusing it on issues central to life.
Can you doubt faith but not doubt doubt?
Alfred Lord Tennyson noted, and I accept it — although not without certain reservations — that, “there lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” It all sounds so intellectually correct. “Check your sources” is the mantra of the academy. And you should. Especially in the age of the Internet, nothing should automatically be accepted as true (even Snopes!). Truth seems to be increasingly elusive. In the first edition of my commentary on Revelation I wrote, to my chagrin, that Antipas was roasted to death in a “brazen bull” (p. 97). That’s what all the scholars writing on the Apocalypse said. Then it was discovered that the place of martyrdom was a “brazen bowl” (see 2nd edition, p. 80.) Even though I had written “bull” (in the 1st edition) I never could actually picture a person being roasted in an animal, but that’s what the authorities said.
So doubt plays a genuine role in scholarship and life itself. But when you check the use of “doubt/doubted/doubting” in the NT you will repeatedly find statements like, “If you have faith and do not doubt” you can move mountains (Mark 11:23) and, “When you ask, you must believe and not doubt“ (James 1:6). I was unable to find a single statement in scripture that encouraged doubt.
Hmmmmm. What now? Since truth by definition does not contradict itself, there must be a tertium quid (a third way) that embraces both. Tennyson is right (I believe) and so also is God (if I am allowed to put it that way). In the realm of possible verification, doubt will clarify and serve to direct us to truth. But in the significantly larger realm, where the rules of intellectual verification are inadequate, faith calls on us to believe. Doubt becomes inconsistent with faith. My mind always goes back to that Old Testament invitation, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). In spiritual matters the “seeing” (the understanding) always follows the “tasting” (the act of faith). Doubt may hinder the decision but not the result. I tasted the Lord and can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that he is “good.”
Why big is not better
Someone noted that people are like manure: Spread out over the land they do a lot of good, but piled together they smell. I think that the ultimate pile is probably any oversized government — piled high in some tax-funded building it does what it does best, the wrong thing. George Washington put it bluntly: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. “
Several points deserve discussion; first, that government is certainly not reason. I can’t think of any reasonable person racking up a debt that his progeny will have to pay, or forcing on his children an untried and questionable wellness program they don’t want, or doing away with locks on the doors in hopes that the local thugs will become nice people. Such unilateral decisions are not reasonable, except, of course, in terms of personal benefit. The abuse of power is the central malfeasance of mankind, the most common expression of universal narcissism. Secondly, government is certainly not eloquence, that is, good government. The lofty expression of mutual goals is harmless in itself but what a nation needs is steady, sensible, realistic progress toward broadly accepted goals.
What Washington said is exactly right: government is power — the larger the bureaucracy, the greater the power. Obviously, leadership is necessary in a civilized society, but the power it provides keeps expanding at an increasing rate until it gains absolute ascendancy. Since government is power, it needs desperately to be held in check, the sooner the better.
Of special interest to me are Washington’s two descriptive phrases describing power. First, like fire it is a “troublesome servant.” Instead of carrying out the will of the master, it acts on its own. Theoretically, it should serve those who need its help, provide strength for those who falter, and safeguard the gains of yesterday’s struggle. But it is far more apt to do the opposite — instead of helping it corrupts. Everyone knows Lord Acton’s famous remark, “Power tends to corrupt and complete power corrupts completely.” It is truly a ”troublesome servant.” And it is also a “fearful master.” Anyone familiar with history knows that from the time of the Roman emperors such as Tiberius and Caligula to today’s Hitlers and Pol Pots, power has expressed itself in unbelievable cruelty. Power holds the opportunity for the greatest good but on a regular basis results in the greatest evil. Scripture teaches that government was established by God (Rom 13:1-7) and to rebel against a governing authority is to rebel against God (vs. 2). Yet, that ideal is regularly perverted by sinful man, and power “corrupts completely.”
Our founding fathers understood this, and devised a system of social regulation to counter the abuse of power. It is never to be lodged in one branch of government. This limitation on power has resulted in the birth and growth of what is certainly the most remarkable and productive nation in the world. Long live the use and control of this otherwise “fearful master.”
Don’t waste the irreplaceable
Dwight Eisenhower once noted, “Wise men do not lie down on the tracks of history waiting for the train of the future to run over them.”