Sunday, March 10, 2013

Freeing Ourselves From Our Educational Captivity

It was good just now to chat with my close brother from Myanmar/Burma about education in general and Christian education in particular and how we need to move forward towards a more sustainable way of educating our future daughters and sons. The current system of education is well suited for a post WWII period but completely inadequate and even positively harmful for this generation and the generations to come.

We MUST find a new educational paradigm for our youth and adults in the church or else we're consigning ourselves to the dustbin of history. Telling our youth that they must be educated (a good thing), but then forcing them to become enslaved by debt for the rest of their working lives, in order to get that education, so that they can never truly serve their calling, isn't just nonsensical, it's unjust and wicked. And besides, it ends up perpetuating a system of injustice instead of confronting it at its source.

The Western church has become captive to a paradigm of education which is hyper hierarchical, completely pragmatic, consumeristic beyond belief, and totally dependent upon an economic model which is unsustainable and ultimately enslaving, not just financially, but also intellectually, and spiritually.

Think outside the industrial schoolroom box with its ringing bells telling you when to think and when to eat and when to get back to the factory. We've allowed ourselves to be imprisoned by the culture which surrounds us. But remember friends, we are culture too, and we can think and do differently if only we dare.

Let the kingdom of God liberate us from our Egyptian bondage.

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