Monday, January 18, 2010

Learning in War-Time

In “Learning in War-Time”, C.S. Lewis offers many ideas that are very useful to a student like myself. As in “Our English Syllabus”, this essay was meant for undergraduate students and gives good reasons to work hard as a student. First, Lewis addresses the fact that, when he is writing this, Europe is on the brink of World War II. He says that this is no excuse to be distracted from studies. “The war creates no absolutely new situation” because there is always something going on. If it hadn’t been the war, it would just be something else. I find this true in my schoolwork repeatedly. I can always find an excuse to put off my work until later; there’s always something “better” to do. I assume that I will have time to do homework later in the day, but then something else will inevitably pop up. I need to learn that the best time to do something is the present, so I will have time later to do the things that may pop up.

Another objection to learning in war-time is simply an objection to learning in general. Shouldn’t we be focusing on saving non-believers instead of learning mathematics, history, English literature, psychology, or chemistry? Shouldn’t our entire life be focused on the religious aspect? Lewis gives several reasons why learning about “secular” subjects is important, all with which I agree. First, he says that abolishing a good cultural life will only result in a worse cultural life. “If you don't read good books you will read bad ones. If you don't go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally. If you reject aesthetic satisfactions you will fall into sensual satisfactions.” Furthermore, as 1 Corinthians 10:31 states, “whatever you do, do it for the glory of God.” This implies that whatever we do, including going to school, can be done for God’s glory. If we have been given scholarly talents, we ought to use them for God’s glory. Additionally, as we learn from Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, every square inch of the world belongs to God. Whatever subject we are studying, we are learning about God’s world and thereby learning about God. A final reason why learning about secular topics is important is for the sake of evangelism. If all Christians are utterly uneducated, the educated people that do not know the Lord would scoff at us, and disregard everything we say. We need to be able to connect with non-Christians, and being educated is an important part of that.

1 comment:

  1. You raise a good point about distractions. Certainly there is always something else that comes up, and generally something that isn't that important. In Engr. 101, we read a book about labeling time as urgent or important. This helps to manage time better. Certainly we must be concious about the way we are distracted and the way we spend our time.

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