[Day 2] Education Redefined
What is education? Education is not only the transmission of knowledge and skills, but also the full development and manifestation of the innate potential of God’s creation. This is education, which is the development and realization of your natural potential. In other words, what you do not have in you cannot be imposed on you, but only what you already have in you can be brought into play and developed. For example, I am standing here today, and I can walk on my legs, but I was not born to walk. When a child is born, it knows nothing, it can’t even crawl, let alone walk; but through growth and teaching, the legs themselves develop and practice the function of walking little by little. This is education. Education can educate a person with human nature into a normal human being; however, education cannot educate a person without human nature into a normal human being. In other words, if a person with human nature is raised in a wolf pack without being educated, he becomes a wolf child and cannot become a normal person; and a wolf cannot be educated to become a normal person who speaks human words and walks like a human. This shows that education cannot impose on a person a gift that does not exist in him, this is impossible; it can only develop and bring out the gifts that already exists in him through education.
Therefore, education is the development of those gifts in us that God has created and that we are born with. Today, if you are a human being, you have humanity, rationality, understanding, and sensibility in you, and all of these must be developed through the cultivation of education. Not only that, but we are also saved believers, and we have a spirit in us that has been enlivened by the Holy Spirit, so our spirituality must also be developed. In other words, we need to know, first, what education is, and second, what a holistic, comprehensive education is. The world today talks most about educating the body and the soul, but the education we are talking about involves the entire being, for according to the Scriptures, man has three parts: spirit, soul, and body (1 Thess. 5:23). A holistic and comprehensive education means that each of the three parts of our being – spirit, soul, and body – should be fully educated, fully developed, and fully realized; in this way, we can become a well-developed human being. God wants man to be a normal man, God wants man to be a fully educated and developed man, and ultimately God wants man to be a divine man. If man is not spiritually educated today, if his spirit is not developed and perfected, and if his spiritual functions are not developed, how can he have a relationship with God and be a godly man?
Man is a vessel created by God to contain God and to manifest Him. Man is a vessel with three parts: spirit, soul, and body, and all three parts of man need to be perfected and equipped to be ready for God to come in and to be mingled with Him, to fulfill the purpose for which God created man (Gen. 1:26, Rom. 9:23-24, 1 Thess. 5:23, 2 Cor. 4:7, 2 Tim. 2:20). What the Bible reveals about man: First, man is a vessel created by God to contain not only food in our belly and knowledge in our mind, but more importantly, to contain the God who created man in our spirit. Therefore, there are three layers inside and outside this vessel: the outermost layer is the material body of man, the middle layer is the soul inside man, and the innermost layer is the spirit of man. First, God will enter the spirit of man and mingle Himself with man’s spirit; then, from the spirit, He will expand into the soul of man and fill it; and finally, He will fill the body of man. And the God who is contained in man is living, and we, the vessel, are also living. The living God will be mingled with the living man, and will abide in each other, and grow into an organic union. This is God’s economy and God’s will, which is the purpose of God’s creation, that man may manifest God and live out God, and that what God is and what God’s attributes may be manifested through man. We need to see the revelation revealed to us in the Bible regarding the constitution of man and the purpose for which he was created; and also how man should be educated.
