Conflicting Truths

Nearing the end of these daily readings, concepts have been reviewed – vital to the announced objectives from the beginning of this journey of paragraphs, principally addressed to students of life Christian orientation.  It is to suggest how to extract from available education/experience what ought to be gained for living in the physical/spiritual context.  Formal education is expensive in terms of funding and time invested.  It needs to be treated seriously, but says too little about whole life.  The concepts of these Pages are directed toward any thinking persons who will read them, but the sooner the search begins, in a friendly context for learning, the better for the person.  We begin by extolling truth.  It is an ideal for all societies that perceive the benefits of cerebral activity leading to life, problem solving and understanding of the meaning of it all.  This last is high priority for in determining the meaning, as we believe we have discovered it, we settle on variances in fulfilling other objectives.  The first objective of education is the search for truth leading to understanding and that to wisdom.  That wisdom may be gotten from life without formal education, and a few persons gain it in their experience and private study, but it is rare for the individual to gain the degree of wisdom that ought to characterize persons, without the speed-up of formal education.  I could have gained what I learned through an earned doctoral degree, but I could not have gained it in sufficient volume and speed in what I needed for my preferred lifetime course (progress). 

Further, there is a mysterious accumulation in a life that makes serious students different after the period of concentrated study than they were before it.  A daughter of mine once told me that when she worked for a major airline, there was difference in athletes, congregating on flights, from one sport to another.  The conclusion to the inquiry was that most of the athletes in the more easily managed group were college graduates.  In the less sophisticated group there were fewer graduates.  In the decades since we discussed it, the second group now includes more collegians.  The educated are not superior in worth to those who miss the opportunity, but it does have effect on the sense of fulfillment and developing vision for life that is found, especially in what has been known for many centuries as a Liberal Arts Education.  That means the education of the individual in the self-development for life.  Professional education is usually training to perform tasks related to skills.  Understanding education from training is helpful for us.

All of this requires the growth of wisdom.  We may learn in studies that some poor orientations have come from well-educated persons.   Truly educated persons develop personas that incorporate some of the mysteries of wisdom.  One of those factors is healthy skepticism, guided by humility.  If the skeptical spirit is too great, the person reduces adequate faith, some trust, and some relationships with others.  Arrogance and other deficiencies arise.  We should not permit the negative to take over as we learn that there are evidences of this or that.  There is a logic that applies with inclusion of necessary factors to conclusion and action.  In his book, Try to Remember, Paul R. McHugh points out follies of some educated persons and groups.  He notes a number of advancing concepts that now seem like nonsense, as when psychiatrists used unsupported theories to address human psychological disorders.  The common acceptance that some girls were sexually abused by family members because the girls said so was taken automatically as true: Who would lie about that?Who would remember something that didn’t happen?  We now know that many persons have suffered accusations because authoritative persons have argued that the accusation must be true – not because of the evidence, but because of some theory.  This can be multiplied in many contexts, as with the Salem Witch trials, or the multi-personalities theories of the middle to late twentieth century.  Every field (including religion) has its oddball concepts.   True wisdom protects us and others through life passage, whether with sophisticated persons or those who cannot write their own names.  Knowing the problem, God gives to the Christian a marvelous protection – faith.  Faith is accepted as a means for learning life’s beliefs and actions, then to be tested in experience.  The judgment is in the soul, the results of the inner fulfillment that we give ourselves to the preparation of our lives.