EDUCATED BUT IGNORANT

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children” (Hosea 4:6).

The children of Israel did not lack in some types of knowledge. It was a particular knowledge that they lacked, a knowledge of God. They had knowledge of material things, secular knowledge, but they were ignorant of God. Thus they might be considered educated but ignorant. Their education that left them ignorant led to their ruin. Morality bears the same relationship to a nation’s life which the heart bears to the body. When the heart stops, we die. It does not matter how well we may look nor how prosperous our surroundings. Morality is the heartbeat of a nation’s life.

The symptoms of “educated ignorance” are found in the realm of morals. Israel was filled with lying, stealing, and killing. What better description could we find of this country? The annual crime bill of the United States is about seven billion dollars. The people of this country are better educated than any generation that has ever lived. There are more students in college today than ever before. It is difficult to get a job today without a college education and just about impossible to get one without a high school diploma. There has never been a generation of “educated ignorance” equal to this one. Education without God is indeed “educated ignorance.” What would we think of our schools if they planned their courses and ignored English, math, and other fundamental courses? What if they denied the principles of math and taught the student they had no need of math? What kind of education would that be? When a student graduated, would he not indeed be one with a diploma in ignorance? But the knowledge of God is far more fundamental in true education than math or any other subject. Yet the majority of our schools not only leave the knowledge of God out, they deny God. It is no wonder that in spite of all of our education, we are ignorant.

Knowledge to us is intellectual, the knowledge of things. Paul says that knowledge “puffs up,” (1 Corinthians 8: 1). We could well say that it “blows us up.” Knowledge produced the atomic bomb and all that we lack in being blown up by it, is for someone to pull the trigger to set it off. Unless we can put God back in our education, this may well happen. Education without God deals with facts, but ignores their meaning. Facts are one thing and facts properly understood are quite another thing. Without a knowledge of God, facts cannot have the right meaning. Education without God fails to provide facts about the one thing man needs most, information about himself. The education that increases man’s knowledge without instruction as to how to best use that knowledge, is an education in ignorance.

Destruction overtakes a nation, not because it lacks intelligence, but because it lacks integrity. Integrity, honesty, and uprightness in character can only come with the knowledge of God.
--Adapted from article by
Franklin Camp