Daily Devotional

I went to school at Hillsdale College, a school of about 1500 students in southern Michigan. (I don’t miss the Michigan winters.) All students at Hillsdale sign a statement called the “Honor Code” when they matriculate their freshman year. It reads:

“A Hillsdale College student is honorable in conduct, honest in word and deed, dutiful in study and service, and respectful of the rights of others. Through education the student rises to self-government.”
 
To an outside observer, the Honor Code was extremely effective. My fellow students at Hillsdale were some of the most principled, diligent, and virtuous people that I’ve ever known. We regularly left backpacks, phones, and laptops in public places because theft was never an issue.

The idea of becoming a better, more moral person through education ran through all our studies at Hillsdale. It goes back centuries to thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. It was certainly appealing to me, who wanted to go to college not for skill training or knowledge acquisition, but for human formation. But was it biblical?

One day, a pastor friend of mine made an offhanded comment that contrasted “through education the student rises to self-government” and “the fruit of the spirit is... self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). This contrast fascinated me. Is education able to replicate self-control, which Paul thinks of as evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit? Or does it merely counterfeit it? Was the classical education philosophy of Hillsdale compatible with God’s Word? After much thought, I came to the conclusion that “classical” and “Christian” thought share similar goals, but build on different foundations.

What is a human being? Classical education, drawing on a philosophical tradition dating back to Aristotle, defines man as a “rational animal.” He is also a “political animal,” designed to contribute to the larger community or polis. The Bible, however, teaches that human beings are created in the image of God. Our true purpose is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever...” which does result in moral living and civic duty. But to discuss “virtue” in a context outside of relationship with God is totally foreign to the Bible’s thought. The book most concerned with ethical living in Scripture, Proverbs, begins with the statement “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). The Bible and classical education may overlap in their descriptions of what human flourishing looks like, but their foundational understanding of what it looks like to be truly human are different.

What is wrong with the world? From Hillsdale’s Honor Code, we could deduce that the problem is a lack of “self-government.” In Aristotle’s thought, vice (the opposite of virtue) arises when humans are ruled by their appetites and not their intellect. The root of our “bad behavior,” ultimately, is ignorance. Scripture, however, says our “bad behavior” is sin, the result of our broken relationship with God. According to Paul in Romans, sin produces ignorance, not the other way around: “although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:22-23).

How do we fix it? The classical worldview says that education can train people to become more virtuous: “through education the student rises to self-government.” Filling our minds with truth, dwelling on goodness, and showing the beauty of virtue will make us better people. The Bible, however, says that fixing our sin problem is not about what we can do, but what God has done for us through Jesus: “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Even as born-again believers, Scripture does not give us a program of self-improvement or behavior modification, but a call for dependence on the Holy Spirit: “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Trying hard to be good is foreign to the gospel: Jesus says “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5)

Consider an analogy: a man has a terminal disease that is weakening his muscles. The man begins a vigorous workout regime, carefully crafts his diet, and to outward appearances grows stronger. But that disease will sap his strength from the inside out. In the same way, education can produce kind, moral, law-abiding people, but it cannot solve the problem at the root of the human heart. At its worst, education divorced from Scripture produces the hypocrisy that Jesus saw so plainly in the Pharisees: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Matthew 23:25-26).

So what? A full biblical philosophy of education is a topic for another devotional, and I’ve taken enough of your time, dear reader, with my philosophical ramblings. Consider all this an exhortation to think biblically. Even well-intentioned statements can hide unbiblical assumptions (“through education the student rises to self-government”) when not filtered through the lens of Scripture. This week, let’s ask God to reveal if we’ve developed any assumptions or patterns of thinking that run contrary to His Word.

"English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers."