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Christlife Posture: Trusting God's Wisdom

Topic: Education vs. Life Experience

 

Suggested Approach: Choose 1 thing from each of the three boxes

OR Choose 1 from Media or Reflection + 1 from Scripture 

Media Excursions (Watch/read/listen and be ready to discuss Q's)

Still Image/Photograph

  • Cultural Rest (Gor Chahal)  When you think of the education ahead of you (and that stack of books to study!), which person sitting on the bench more nearly describes your own attitude.  How do you feel about your answer? Is one approach more right than another? If there is such a thing as a healthy balance in this area, how would you express what it is?

Video Clip

  • Down is Up Kingdom (Freedom Church) This video seems to say that developing our minds is not as important as other things.  What do you think the balance is between developing your mind and living in response to your heart?

Articles ​

  • Making the Most of College (InterVarsity) How do life experiences and education go together? Now read Study with a Christian Mind (Kevin Offner) How could these ideas help you integrate academics with life?

  • Art Students Serve the Poor (InterVarsity) How are these students bringing together education and life experience?  Brainstorm some ways students in your college major might do something to integrate what they are learning with off-campus experiences.

  • How to Stay Christian on Campus (David Mathis) If you are at a Christian College: why do you think "living in a bubble" is such a common way to describe this time of life? How does that imagery tend to create an artificial divide between education and experience? What would it mean for you to "pop the bubble"? 

Reflection Options  

Journal  (reflect on one or more of these questions)

  • Do you think you value education over experience or experience over education?  Journal what you think and then journal how you think your actions would answer that question.  Are they different or the same? What does that say to you?

  • If you had to guess from watching how Jesus interacted and lived among us, would you think Jesus valued education or experience more for growth and faith? Or did he value them equally? What does that indicate to you?

  • Journal about a time that an experience enhanced your education.  Journal about a time that your education enhanced an experience you had.  What did you learn from reflecting on those two instances?

 

Quote Interaction (Interact by agreeing, disagreeing or otherwise engaging with the quote/quotes)

  • Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. (Wm. Butler Yeats)

  • Experience is not firm enough to be the ultimate ground for the uniqueness of my faith. (Ajith Fernando)

  • If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (C.S. Lewis)

  • Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. (John Dewey)

  • If your faith is opposed to experience, to human learning and investigation, it is not worth the breath used in giving it expression.  (Edgar Watson Howe)

  • Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. (Nelson Mandela)

  • There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home. (John Stuart Mill)

 

Reading & Reflection from the book, Shaping The Journey of Emerging Adults: 

  • Read “The Development of Emerging Adults” (pp. 26-29, 31--but especially p. 26 & p. 31).  Do you think the high numbers of emerging adults who pursue college and post-college education are in some way avoiding adult experiences?  Do you think the balance between education and experience is “off” or that more education before experience is a reasonable way to prepare?

  • MENTOR: Read “Refocus adults overwhelmed by transitional challenges…” (p. 203).  Think about all the ways that the challenges of both experience and education have occurred in your own journey toward maturity.  Define education broadly (training, conferences, mentoring etc.).  Be ready to share what you have learned about the interplay of education and experience.

Explore Scripture

Meditate on one or more of the following passages. Always look them up in context.  Take some time to really explore the verse in relation to this topic.  In this section, you may want to look up a most of the verses in order to discover what is said about the place of both education and experience.  Make a note of what you discover to share later.  See "Learn More About Ways to Study Scripture" below for help in getting the most out of the verse.

  • Job 12:12

  • Psalm 16:1-11

  • Proverbs 1:7, 4:13, 9:9, 23:12

  • Proverbs 24:32

  • Ecclesiastes 7:12

  • Hosea 4:6

  • Romans 5:3-5

  • 2 Peter 1:3-9

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