Article January 22, 1979 Issue

The educated disciple

TODD ROBIN NELSON

While schools are the common denominator for parents, students, and teachers, this, unfortunately, doesn't always mean they have education in common. The failure of much of what we call education convulses many societies. I've often wondered whether schools and teachers are nurturing better morals or perpetuating material-mindedness. A teacher might argue, on the other hand, that the blame for most negative tendencies in society rests with the family. The time spent assigning blame could be better used in seeking a more spiritual sense of education—seeing it as derived from Mind and therefore governed by God.

An experience in college involving a conflict between a teacher and me may help to illustrate a spiritual approach to education. As a freshman I enrolled in a course on biblical thought, and as a student of the Bible felt firmly grounded in the subject. The D on my first exam was a terrible setback. It seemed to me the professor had been unfair in reading and arbitrary in grading my exam. I started to dislike the professor's personality, and grew especially hostile to his views on the Bible, and even resented the fact that so many other students liked him. These feelings were aggravating the problem and spoiling my chance to learn from the course. I realized it was time to begin Christian Science treatment.

I turned to God see Mind, not a material brain, as the source of my intelligence, and to understand that unimpaired expression of divine intelligence is man's spiritual prerogative as a reflection of God. Praying this way was, I felt, obeying Paul's injunction, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." ^{Phil. 2:5;} My work in the course improved. Yet the struggle with my professor's personality and his approach to the study of the Bible persisted.