One of the major objectives of these pages is to make clear that the first goal of education, formal and informal, ought to be for life – both personal and relational. Scripture offers the first commandment to mankind when God informed Adam and Eve to: . . . . dress the garden and know it. It is with this straightforward, clearly understood directive, that mankind began life as the demigods of earth’s living things. They were given the responsibility of making life (plant and animal) what it ought to be. In this assignment, we of the human race determine even life and death for planet experience. To know how to achieve the best context for life we need education. From education, appealing to the intellect, and then to conduct, we determine what life to preserve, and what life is left on its own. The controlling factor for this top of the pyramid animal was, and is, our brains, capable of reflective conceptualization for action through knowledge. When properly fulfilled in the person, that person seems god-like – as Hamlet soliloquized.
The photograph of mankind and human life lost some focus in human rebellion. Given such marvelous life privilege, why must there be limitations? If we are dependent upon a creator, and must function within the limitations of the nature we reign over, we presume too much to do it our own way. But we do presume in general practice and send the creator, if indeed there is one, to go off and do his thing elsewhere. So we try to do it on our own. We discover that the problems are insurmountable. Nature, of which we are a part, is troublesome in that numerous factors stand in the way of success, factors over which mankind has only a little control or none at all. These include factors of ignorance, mystery, conflict, and various other negatives in nature’s context, like weather. Most stern of all factors is death, virtual for all things, even nature, and that to an end. So a major matter for us is to deal with death in whatever ways we can. The only way we know is to delay it and prepare for it, so to weaken its threat, and to make its certainty less traumatic. Those most successful in planning natural life, include the creator for preserving the fruit of life itself. The stalk dies, but life continues in the kernel, the seed of the previous life. If the field is not dressed with proper feeding, cultivation, moisture, and resistance to enemy attacks, there is no life to life. Procreation is evidence of creation to creation. Scripture offers that hope, and that we can possess it.
Time is a major factor, from beginning to end. Those who know most about time believe it had a beginning and it has an end. What does one do with the time of nature? It is limited, but vital, so ought to be treated with respect. Experience, which is vital informal education, ought to alert the person to make peace with the creator, so to find a sensible solution to death. There is, if nothing else, a feeling within the individual that even if there is not a God, there ought to be one. If some person could prove to me that there was no God, I would not regret that for nearly eighty years I have believed in and prayed to God. That faith has given me a reason beyond time to live. It has provided health, given me the best people with whom to have relationships, and given meaning to my experience that included a formal education leading to the highest university degree. It has given me a family, the members of which believe as I do that we shall live on – beyond death and time. In this context we have to assist others through problems, including despair and death, to hope and promise of life. There is simply nothing in the nature of all earth things that can be better than that. If wrong in faith, I will have lost nothing at death, and gained much that gave meaning, satisfaction, even pleasure to my life. How wonderfully did the great mathematician, Blaise Pascal, put the great concept of God in this perception of the: Oughtness of God. Persons, critical of the idea of a personal God, ultimately lose their lives no matter how well they acted in them for the few decades of natural sojourn. Animal witness is that everything ends in death. So the physical presence concludes. Christian faith holds that new life opens there. There will appear the same person in a different context, a context that is prepared for as the fetus in the womb is preparing for life outside the womb. It was for this transition and hope that Christ came, and by his Holy Spirit nurtures the new life in the formation of that life beyond nature. Mortal transition yields to the larger immortal – faith born. Many millions of persons have witnessed to the integrity of that faith, and many have died rather than recant it. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020