Real Education

Real Education

They say you passed the test
Congratulations on your success,
But I think you failed your chest,
And now there is something I must confess;

You view education solely as a path to a career
While your ignorance should produce a state of fear;
Your soul’s best, you’re not sure you know,
And the questioning philosopher, poet is your foe;

So, this is your final test,
Your only assignment
Is to find where soul and mind rest;
You must break from confinement;

You will begin with the Pentateuch
You must learn to love your Creator,
And realize He is not your equal debater;
Fear is the beginning of knowledge,
Welcome to the real college;

You must study the three Greek greats
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle,
And contemplate their fates;
Do this outside in the warm season
And begin to understand what it is to reason;

Then you’ll return to the Hebrew prophets,
Struggle with how obedience profits,
And the difference between legalism and love,
With the necessary blood of lambs and doves;
Fight to grasp the intrinsically Holy;

Then back to the civilized Greeks
With their universal feats;
Homer, Alexander, city-states, fornicating Hellenists
Remembering the three, struggle with Tertullian separatists,
And where reason has led us;

Your studies should then travel to the East
Where the physical is unreal and cows feast,
Study the contemplative prince under the tree,
And ask yourself if mind and rules can make the soul free?
Try to define karma, and watch the polytheist burned and tossed into the sea;
Then to Virgil and Roman chivalry,
And the question of Pilate just before Calvary;
Consider the Stoics and Roman law
In sight of the great empires fall,
And then consider the man from Tarsus named Paul;

But before Paul look hard at Jesus the Rabbi
The God–Man who took sin upon himself to die,
Remember the prophets’ speech of a king,
And ask why African Christians still stomp and sing;
Let the soul rest here, then go further, for no other rest will there be;

After Paul and Jesus follow “the way”
For if your soul found rest before
Count yourself of such even this day,
And if not, go back hoping to find the door
Remember, God in flesh is history, and will be once more;

Finding grace in your Creator and Groom
You are free to travel to the next room;
Read of the church underground
And there the community that is found
Now includes you, eternally bound;

Read Augustine and all he prayed and confessed
Examine your heart, and find no less
Then a wicked, and rebellious sinner
Graciously chosen for the groom’s dinner;
See why Augustine is true, and why Arians and Manichees face doom;

From there follow the European monks
Bringing good news throughout the land
Making each member like the a particular of sand;
See the making of modern of man,
And him exalting himself with universe at command;

Watch the odd ways of the medieval knight
How honorable was the chivalrous right,
But how misguided was his quest to fight;
And there the Arabs did withstand
Though they confuse who existed before time began;

Yes, recall the first acts of those called “the way”,
And compare them with what Muhammad had to say,
Take the Koran and match it with history and science,
And find that Muhammad is of a deceptive alliance
Where truth does not reign and soul finds no rest;

Then take yourself to a mighty little island
Where Wycliffe and Tyndale brewed a storm
Over the Creator’s holy revealed word,
And watch how Rome depend on the sword
For wickedness had crept in her, and she had forgotten the Lord;

Meet a haunted German monk shaking with fear
Trying to understand what Paul really meant
When he said our will is bent;
And meet the great Frenchman Calvin
Who preached that Jesus was the only one salvation is found in;

Compare the Renaissance to the Reformation
See who is authoritative in each;
Consider the genocides on the American beach
Watch the fool in love with gold
Trying to say God is for his fold;

Read the thoughts of the great Puritan mind
Edwards is truly one of kind;
See throughout the story
God has been all about his glory,
And learn of the enslavement of the will;

See the colonists take to the street
Only to find a new elite;
See the French try to overthrow it all,
And watch the Englishman Wilberforce stand tall;
Consider the difference between England and France with common sense;

Read of how the West turned from Christ
To believe the universe is as random as dice,
Hume was the prelude to this doom,
And Nietzsche enclosed the tomb;
Man had stolen fire, and now had killed God;

See the world grow more totalitarian
Marx leaving no room for the libertarian,
Man’s dominion used for war
Millions of bodies, who can keep score?
The death of God had turned to the death of man;

Journey to the ivory towers of Oxford;
Tolkein and Lewis crafting their pens
Showing man his wretched sins;
Logic and imagination defending the resurrection,
Make Christ, history and reason your reflection;

Do this pupil of mine
Do this and your sound mind will shine;
Now your being my find rest
For this lesson was not merely a test,
But was history’s way of saying, “I Confess.”