"Knowledge....................."

Something like thirty years ago our church initiated a school program, in its genesis not a whole lot more than individual work booths where students completed assignment books, help available in the form of an adult supervisor not always holding a college degree. Kentucky laws have since changed. We have complied, built a bigger, separate edifice to contain the ministry, and the kids, kindergarten through twelfth, number around two hundred nowadays. One of our graduates, now in his early twenties, helped us yesterday by taking down a couple of large, dead trees in the back yard. Conversation turned to his journey through that educational facility, his own mother one of the present certified teachers in its employment, but it being questionable whether we ever really achieved that which we intended so long ago. Isolating our children from what we perceived as a moral malfunction in the public system, social values corrupted in the classroom from behind the desk as well as in front of it, has not proven to be all that successful as a method of correction. I say that with four of my own prodigy yet in its enrollment. As he and Beth discussed the subject from such perspective, however, my question to him at one point was simply: “Looking back, do you regret your parents not having taken you via the other route?” His response, after a moment of serious consideration, spoke of gratitude for the experience and it left me with an opinion held for some time now, my own life invested into its birthing. We do not change people’s lives with a message. Doctrinal instruction concerning our theology might create a few more clones in our particular neck of the neighborhood; but humanity always remains humanity, any alteration in its identity a matter of influence applied along the way and a resurrected Christ “in” me always the best source of such commodity. Christianity, it seems to me, has neglected to emphasize that in any manner that suggests truth in its fullness. That might have a lot to do, though, with the fact that all of us, no matter our longevity in this, need His anchor-line, rod and staff correction in a stumble down the path……