For twenty years, Sue and I lived in a community where a Master’s degree was almost as common as a high school diploma. I worked on a staff with three people with their Doctorates. Sue worked at Trinity International University among some of the most prominent theologians in Evangelicalism. How does that impact you? It can lead to a predisposition to stake your value as a human on titles and degrees. The drive to improve yourself is healthy and productive. Achieving excellence in your field is a noble ambition. But when your achievements elevate you in your mind to another class … you’re headed for dangerous territory in your relationship with God and fellow Christians.
Panama has made me more aware of my own tendency toward this type of judgment. I drive passed an old day-laborer trudging along, sun burnt and labor-bent and my mind classifies him and his contribution to the world as less significant than my own. God may not agree … and I’m certain He’s not pleased by the impulse.
It’s possible that the day-laborer has done a better job at pursuing God’s priorities. The Prophet Micah penned these words to Israel’s elite,
He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
None of these requirements are impingent upon higher education or “significant” employment. The man who has made his life with a machete or a shovel may have been more just, mercy loving and perhaps had an easier run at humility before his maker. Or … he could have been a drunken, abusive, womanizer. The point? We too easily absorb value systems that don’t square with God’s Word. I have been in the presence of unschooled men whose knowledge of and relationship with God made me feel a spiritual dullard. For an example of a man who got his priorities straight read Philippians 3.
