Get Schooled

How? How is the best way to get schooled? Public schools, private schools, charter schools, vocational schools, home schooled, on-line schools, religious schools, or maybe be raised in the jungle by wild animals like Tarzan! There are unlimited schools one may attend: medical school, law school, nursing school, military school, there are thousands.  Education is one of the most needed skills in the world today. If you don’t think it’s important, you only have to walk in the shoes of a child born and raised in poverty in sub-Sahara Africa. It’s almost guaranteed they will learn violence before they learn how to farm or gain enough life skills to pass along to their offspring.

Are there other ways to get schooled?  Well, let me see.  There is the ‘school of hard knocks’, which is learning from bad experiences.  Then there’s ‘being taken to school’, which signals you’re going to be defeated or given a hard lesson to learn.  Oh yes, there’s ‘old school’, which indicates doing the same old things one’s always been doing.  You can name others.  Today we spend more, than in history, on alcohol, tobacco, drugs, entertainment, gambling, and plastic surgery than on a child’s education.  There’s a ‘craze’ in the world for self-satisfaction. 

Proverbs has some Scriptures about learning and being schooled.  “Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life". Proverbs 4:13 This means be guided by wisdom, don’t let friends and acquaintances lure you into wrong-doing.  “How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver!”  Proverbs 16:16 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding”.  Proverbs 9:10 Wisdom begins with knowing God.  He gives insight into living because he created life.       

There is another way to “Get Schooled” not mentioned in the elite academic journals and higher education curriculum. Some will snicker and some will scoff, but some will make the point that the proof is in the pudding. And the pudding is found freshly baked in the Gospel of John. Everyone recognizes a highly educated person by the way they conduct themselves and the words they choose. What most people don’t understand is how can a learned person be so erudite and not be educated in the finest schools of learning?

The person in question is Jesus, and many that followed him and those who watched his every move wondered how this carpenter’s son could know so much and not be schooled in the finer rabbinical schools? In fact they wondered aloud until Jesus told them what their itching ears needed to hear.

“The Jews were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning

without having studied?” Jesus answered, “My teaching is not of my own.

It comes from him who sent me.” John 7:15-16

There was a popular notion going around that the Messiah would be a man of mystery, coming out of nowhere. Since Jesus was known to come from Nazareth, many felt he did not meet that requirement. But when Jesus taught and preached, no one could deny that his wisdom and learning was out of this world. “It came from Him who sent Him.” Schooled on the matter, yet?