Our discussion of Learning in War-Time today, began with Professor Ribeiro asking several questions. He essentially asked, what are you doing at Calvin? Why are you here? How can you justify sitting here and learning when people all around the world are living in absolute poverty, experiencing horrific disasters, and desperately need our help? Why are you learning instead of helping them?
In my ninth grade Bible class we were posed much the same question. My teacher asked us why we were just staying at our school for the most part and why we didn't get up and go out into public a fulfill the great commission by preaching. After all we were commanded to make disciples of all nations, so why are we just sitting in relative comfort? He asked us to come up with reasons why we didn't just get up and go down to the capital Islamabad and preach in the Red Mosque. The Red Mosque was the site of an almost month long stand-off between the Pakistani government and radical terrorists, and over a hundred people were killed. I have to say that our class was somewhat stunned and I felt that none of answers truly answered the question of why we learning. We talked about how getting ourselves killed for nothing was probably not in God's plan and how preaching was not going to be very effective in this case, and how we had to reach people from within the culture rather than as white foreigners barging in. All of these I feel were logical reasons but none of them answered the deeper question about why weren't directly doing something to help them, instead of spending over half our days learning things like math and English.
I struggled over the issue for a very long time, and still do from time to time. I was asking myself the question that Lewis phrases as such. "How [is it] right, or even psychologically possible, for creatures who are every moment advancing either to heaven or to hell, to spend any fraction of the little time allowed them in the world on such comparative trivialities as literature or art, mathematics or biology." Lewis began this train of thought because people were wondering how one could study while the country was engaged in war, and Lewis replies that as a Christian the question is rather irrelevant because the earth is always engaged in a cosmic struggle. Thus Lewis points to Nero and says that, "to a Christian the true tragedy of Nero must not be that he fiddles while the city was on fire but that he fiddles on the brink of hell." When we decide to take four of our years devoting the majority of our time to simply studying, when we already are well enough equipped to go out and make a difference in the world, are we fiddling on the brink of hell?
Some people argue that by learning we can become better equipped to deal with the problems we will have to face. If we didn't take the time to learn we would not be able to adequately address the a number of the problems that we encounter. I'm not convinced by this argument though, because while it does equip us better, and I do believe that that is an important and valuable thing, there are so many problems that can be solved by the uneducated as long as they are willing to be unselfish and to work. Problems such as basic sanitation, caring for orphaned children, and numerous other issues that present themselves in the third world do not require an advanced learning in order to help address them. No, I feel that the number of problems an uneducated person could solve in the four years that it takes to get a college degree would outnumber the number of extra problems, ones that required a further education, that could be solved by a person with a college degree. Perhaps you disagree with me but for now that is my stance.
However, I am still spending at least four years at Calvin College and possibly more in getting further education, so obviously either I do not feel that education is a waste of time and that it is worth while, or I am entirely selfish and don't care about others people's problems. While I do admit to being selfish far to often, I do care deeply about the problems of the world and thus I must believe the first option.
There are several reasons that I believe learning is still worth the time and Lewis talks about them in his essay. Lewis gives a deep insight into man when he says, "The war will fail to absorb our whole attention because it is a finite object, and therefore intrinsically unfitted to support the whole attention of a human soul." There is finite thing that can hold mankind's entire attention and I am therefore pointed to the idea that mankind is to be preoccupied with infinite things. Infinite things are the only things then that are worth living for. Later Lewis talks about drowning and says, "The rescue of drowning men is, then a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for." Even a the saving of physical lives of people is not worth living for.
One might then say well what about their spiritual lives, those are eternal and therefore ought to be worth living for. My answer to that would be yes that is worth living for, but I think that that's only a part of what is worth living for. I think that what is worth living for is glorifying God as much as possible by having as many souls as possible praise him as deeply and fully as possible. The saving of souls only works towards the first part of that purpose while the training of your own and other peoples souls works towards the second. Souls also are the thing which we will encounter everywhere we go, for at the very least our own soul will always be present where we are.
That is why I believe learning is an admirable pursuit. It is the training of our soul, which must not be neglected in favor of always helping others. We are called to help others but we are also called to look after our own souls and "live lives worthy of our calling" (I Thes 2:12). This is why I believe as Lewis does that one action is no more spiritual than the next, it is all entirely dependent on "the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly 'as to the Lord'" That is where vocation comes in. The acts that are specifically designed for us by God that become our "spiritual acts of worship" (Rom 12:1). Therefore some are called to spend there time learning, and I believe I am called to spend my time, at least for the present, at Calvin College in the vocation of a student, and more importantly of a learner.
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