In Adam's insurrection, man jettisons God from the educational process

There is more to man's education in the garden than merely watching God work and following his pattern as an image-bearer. There is yet another component to his education, an education upon which Adam is dependent for his very existence in that garden, and an education upon which his destiny rides. Genesis 2:9 tells us that God placed two trees in the garden prior to man’s placement in it. The first was the tree of life, and the second, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God, the Teacher, educates man in the form of a command that not only sets a condition on his existence -- physical life --- in the garden, but also his communion with His Creator -- spiritual life.

We find this "education" in Genesis 2:16 which says, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Thus, Adam not only has a positive mandate (fill the earth and have dominion over it), but also a negative command (don't eat). Man’s education consists not only what he is supposed to do, but what he is not supposed to do. This is the first hint in the entire canon that there is a negative and alternative form of existence to be avoided, and Moses identifies it as “death”.

The Teacher has set up a test for the student. The Creator’s education of the creature comes with an expectation that what is taught will not go in one ear and out the other. This is not mere education for education sake. This is not wisdom for wisdom sake. This education is for Adam & Eve’s very life. Even as the image-bearer incarnates education in paradise, there is an expectation of complete loyalty and obedience, a loyalty and obedience aimed at perpetuating the blessed communion between creature and Creator. The moment that Adam and Eve ignore the education that has been given them, they will die.

Thus, the educational pattern is established at the very beginning: The Creator educates, the creature learns. The smell of fresh grass and the crisp clean air of unadulterated creation is the pastoral scene for the world’s first classroom. The Father educates the son. Do we hear echoes of Solomon’s opening words in Proverbs 1: “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction”? There is much, much wisdom to be found in the Wisdom who has spoken all things into existence and by His spirit has breathed life into the creature. Ahead of Adam lies a life existence of pushing the boundaries of the garden to the farthest reaches of the earth and as he does so he is to be pursuing and incarnating Wisdom from God. Education is thus an inherent part of the communion between Creator and creature from the very beginning.

What kind of educational experience must it have been for Adam and Eve to walk in the cool of the garden, working and keeping the garden as image-bearing worshippers, learning from The Teacher himself? What it must have been for teacher and learner to participate in and experience education in an ever expanding harmonious paradise with the whole world as a classroom. But this educational enterprise did not turn out so well, did it? We arrive at Genesis 3 verse 1 and we can begin to hear the faint sounds of Roger Waters’ subversive bass lines begin to fade in, setting the stage for educational upheaval and indeed cosmic rebellion against the Creator-Teacher. It is here where the thought "we don't need no education" finds its origins.

An alternative form of education has been proposed by the serpent and eventually it is accepted by first Eve and then Adam. This alternative education usurps the Teacher’s role and rule, and puts the learner front and center. The knowledge of God has been traded for knowledge of good and evil. Man defiantly casts off the education that he has been given. Adam decides that he will be his own master of his own education: "I will teach myself." The classic conflict of student vs. teacher is born here. Even the seemingly innocent (and yes, entertaining) Ferris Bueller candy coats this rebellion as some kind of teenage angst. It’s not angst. It’s rebellion. Indoctrination from the outside becomes something to be avoided, while the individual and even the community is asserted as the beginning and end of education and its wisdom.

In Adam’s insurrection, the halls of learning have been transformed into man’s monument to himself as teacher in need of no other. Man jettisons God from the educational process in the delusion that he has no need of an objective teacher with life-giving information. “We don’t need no education” means, yes, we need an education, but “no” we will not tolerate a Teacher outside of ourselves giving us that education. In fact, God’s education is slanderously and blasphemously framed as “an exercise of domination”, to quote the educational subversive Paulo Freire (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970). The student defiantly declares independence and autonomy from the Creator-Teacher and his classroom. God, the authoritarian tyrant teacher, has engaged in an education of “suppression” and “oppression” and is in need of overthrow. God is a barrier isolating man from “true knowledge”. There in the garden God, the all-Wise, all-Knowing, all-Loving Teacher becomes “just another brick in the wall”. Education has gone dark.

Fortunately, and I do mean this is the wonder of wonders in our good fortune, God does not leave man there. Into the darkness, into the anarchy, into the rebellion, The Teacher continues to teach. Genesis 3:8 tells us that Adam and Eve "heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked?

In the midst of the educational overthrow, the Creator, the Supreme Educator who has been accused of being the oppressive tyrant, asks a question that pierces the darkness and cuts to the heart of the alternative education that has been erected against him: Who told you? Who informed you? Who educated you that you were naked? Where, pray tell, has that bit of information come from? Even in his rebellion, man cannot escape the reality that the Creator has embedded his information into the conscience of the creature. The lie is exposed for what it is. Adam only thinks he is autonomous.

It is in this context of Teacher and now fallen student, that God again educates and begins the process of redemptive education. Adam and Eve whose minds have been darkened by sin are now in need of a whole new kind of education. Mankind is now in need of regeneration, so that true learning can take place. Education is forever tied to new life because it is only in the new creation that education occurs where learners are truly learning. It is only in the new creation that the education come from God serves its divinely intended purposes… providing life and purpose and knowledge to worshippers.

Because the image of God in the student has been defaced in Adam's rebellion, education will not be without difficulty. There will now be a “white noise” through which man will be taught, a “white noise” that clouds the conversation and clouds the intellect, and prevents men from hearing what is taught. And because that alternative form of education is ever present as the default position of the rebellious creature, it will have to be and must be countered as a worldview that arises against the Creator-Teacher. In the end it must be taken captive and destroyed. “We don’t need no education” must be exposed for the subversive humanism it is. Does this mean that the education provided by the establishment is off the hook in its own forms of oppression and repression. Of course not. It is the true Education from outside of man that also exposes those educational systems that are oppressive for what they are.

In God's grace and mercy, rebellious man is not left to his own folly. Into the darkness God speaks grace and God speaks a Person. Genesis 3:15, the protoevangelion, says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Here is the first hint that this redemptive education of man is not just downloadable information or the transmission of certain facts that somehow redeems him. This new education is a Person. Wisdom incarnate will fix the educational process.

All education, then, must begin with Christ, The Creator-Teacher who is Wisdom Incarnate. In Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). The Wisdom who spoke all things into existence is the beginning point for all learning. Much is made today in our postmodern church of living the life of wisdom. While wisdom is worthy and certainly biblical pursuit, we must insist that Christ and His Word are definitive for that pursuit. If we start anywhere else, we have wittingly or unwittingly, capitulated to the worldly wisdom that is grounded in mutiny.

And we must always be cognizant of our fallen tendency to begin our education with the creature. There remains, as we are reminded by the educational philosopher Roger Waters, an alternative education from an alternative teacher that sets itself against Christ and we must be aware of its presence at all times. No matter how “wise” it may seem, the subversive view of education shakes its fist at the Creator-Teacher. There are ways to rationalize such educational models with the best of intentions and seemingly work in the process. But make no mistake, this kind of education does not begin with Christ, and eventually it leads to damnation. We must be cognizant and aware of the temptation for the student to usurp the authority and the place of Christ our Teacher.

Part of the redemptive educational process is that the teacher teaches and the students learn, yet we exist in a society that begins the educational process with the student as a learner, who also controls that process. We must not be seduced by the notion that education begins in the community and works its way outward and upward, but that it begins in Christ and works its way downward and inward into our lives from outside of ourselves. We must not fall prey to the seductive notion that the learning community "creates" or collectively "gives rise" to its education. The community contextualizes and facilitates learning. But in the end, the new creational community is entirely dependent on the Education given to it by the Creator and life source of the community, Jesus Christ. -- crb; "Christ Our Teacher", mp3