The Education of the Lord

"Our aim in Education is to give a Full Life. We begin to see what we want. Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. ‘Thou hast set my feet in a large room,’ should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?” (Charlotte Mason, Vol. 3, pp. 170-1).

"I will rejoice and be glad in Thy mercy:
for Thou hast considered my trouble;
Thou hast known my soul in adversities;
and hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy:
Thou hast set my feet in a large room."
Psalm 31

Mason, by alluding to this Psalm, is drawing upon David's exultation of God's abundant nature, to assist her in giving Him glory for what that large room represents in the context of her own life: education. This is fitting, because education is also a deliverance. And this deliverance, like David's, is not limited to merely being rescued from the grip of darkness, because with all that God has provided for us to learn and know, education can and should be a transcendent deliverance into a large room -- a magnanimously appointed life of the mind.

We all view education as a necessity, but do we apprehend that it was necessitated by the Fall? Before sin entered into the world, man strolled in the garden with the Fount of all wisdom and knowledge. The curse that demotes us from our created state of ease to a life of toiling for our food and livelihood, fighting diseases, and suffering pain and heartache, is the same curse that distanced us from wisdom, that causes us to suffer from ignorance, nonsense, and foolishness. Education is to ignorance what aspirin is to pain -- both are equally weapons of our warfare against the effects of the Fall.

The greatest gift God gives to His people other than salvation is knowledge. When the Psalmist sang, "The Lord is my light and my salvation," he was proclaiming that both were vital to his welfare. In fact, we need knowledge from God to even know about our salvation!

Our word for school comes from the Greek word schola. The shocker is this: schola, it turns out, is the Greek word for leisure.
School = leisure.

Leisure means, to my mind, ceasing from anxiety and from merely utilitarian preoccupations so that one can contemplate higher things. Leisure encompasses those pursuits without which we cannot be fully human. Our minds are actually wired to learn, to receive knowledge, in a state of leisure.

Author Joseph Pieper expands on the connection between leisure (a state of non-work) and the commandment for sabbath rest. He muses that it is in this state of sabbath leisure that the body of Christ convenes in worship and becomes the bodily visible bride. This state of worship-leisure, then, is incarnational in nature: the bride of Christ becomes visible not in a state of exertion and work, but rather in a state of leisure. This is a beautiful thing to think about.

Sabbath rest means coming before the Lord in stillness, in a turning away from exertion and anxiety, so we can consecrate a space in time "to rejoice and be glad in Thy mercy." It makes sense to me, in this context, that worship is the only true source of leisure -- for if we do not cast our cares upon Him, if we do not trust in His finished work, we can never be truly at rest. Worship is indeed what allows us to have leisure in our souls, for the purpose of glorifying and enjoying fellowship with God.

Worship is the basis of all leisure. Leisure = school. Thus, worship is the basis for school.

Can we then concur that school, to be based in worship, should happen in the absence of anxiety and fear, and in an atmosphere of rest and delight?

I think so.

(Thanks to Lynn B. for such insight).