"Do not conform yourselves to the standards of
this world, but let God transform you inwardly ...then you will be able to know the will
of God." In high school I was exposed to a quotation from Harry Truman. It goes
something like this: "The purpose of education is to make you as different from your
parents as possible." That little pearl still lurks in the back of my mind. How
should I be different from my parents? How is "education" going to change me,
and is the change good? What parts of my parents were different from their parents? What
should we keep, and what should we throw away? Ach, du lieber! All the questions!
The old way for humanity to "improve" is to pull itself up by its bootstraps.
That's cowboy talk for reaching down to the tops of your boots, grabbing the pull-on
straps and pulling both as hard as you can to get yourself up onto the next step. There's
surely nothing wrong with education, but it's something that we're all in the middle of.
We're standing in our boots, pulling like mad. It doesn't really change us. By ourselves
we don't even know which way is up. And if we could find out, we couldn't get there using
the bootstrap method.
What we all need (and what Christ gives us daily) is the transformation of which Paul
wrote to the church in Rome. Humanity has been trying the bootstrap approach for a long
time. But that whole idea is out of synch with God's plan. The forgiveness God gives
changes us from outside. This transformation doesn't mean that we no longer have fun, or
that we no longer worry about the world's needs. It means that our whole approach to
existence is changed. We don't measure ourselves by comparison with parents, grandparents,
brothers, sisters, friends, or anyone else. The new purpose is to "prove what is the
will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
That's a tall order. Who knows the mind of God? The "perfect" will of God
might also be translated as the "complete" will of God. This means that it's a
process. Every day God makes more of his will known for each of us. Our goal is to
demonstrate that his will uniquely applies to each of our lives. That just might mean
making the most of "education."
We need to take our hands off our bootstraps and recognize the transformation. God's
already taken care of "lifting" us up, and making us different from our parents.
It's a whole new world.
