DELIVERANCE CHURCH UGANDA

CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION SCHOOLS

BY JOHN YAWE
There has been criticism of the propagators of Christian education. Among other things, they say it is not practical. The world out there is larger than the concept of Christianity. Children who are sheltered in these Christian schools end up perplexed when they have to face the real world when they get out to secondary schools and higher institutions of learning. People who make such criticism are ignorant about the scriptures. Some people cite the young Hebrews boys who were trained in Nebuchadnezzar’s education system, thus making them effective in the society of their day and age. One thing these critics should realize is that these young men knew their God.  What made them not worship the idols of Nebuchadnezzar and yet be able to make a difference in the society they lived in is because their world view was shaped by their knowledge of the God of the nations. Their foundation was based on the knowledge of their God.

This is very challenging indeed. It is some kind of war we are involved in and the battle is on for some schools to adopt this ideology. The challenge one is to establish teacher training institutions. Ours is a different approach. We have Christian teachers who are not necessarily kingdom teachers. The difference between these two is very big. The battle we are in here is the battle that Jesus won at the rugged cross at Calvary. What Christians needs to recover is the fact that the battle in the Garden of Eden was nothing else save for the battle for knowledge and wisdom. God’s expectations of Adam and Eve in terms of the administration of the garden was that they were never to touch that particular of the knowledge of good and evil. He said the day they would eat of it, they would die. What man knew at that time was enough for him to live sufficiently on earth. He did not to know anything more. But the battle was on, set up by the devil, telling Eve that God was not serious and if they took the fruit, they would not die. They would instead be like God. That was a lie because the knowledge Adam and Eve had was enough to sustain them on earth. They did to need to know anything more. They did not need to tell evil from good.  What the devil did not tell them was that they would not know what to do with the knowledge they would get in disobedience to God. The truth was that the separation through disobedience would be a form of “death”. The separation from God would actually be death.

When Eve went to the husband, she told him that the fruit was good for food, desirable to the eye and good for wisdom. The two things being fought for here, which the devil worked hard to take away from man thus taking away his mandate of leadership over all creation is knowledge and godly wisdom. Their desire for more knowledge led to disobedience which led to the troubles we have in the world today. Though the fruit was desirable for wisdom, they went ahead and gained it but it was not godly wisdom because it was born out of disobedience. The truth as it is stipulated in the word of God is that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge have been hidden in Christ Jesus, who is the last Adam. In the first Adam, man lost his mandate to rule because he gave into knowledge which was not rooted in God. In this knowledge, one may know, but they may have no clue about what to do with what they know outside of God.  In the last Adam (Christ Jesus), in whom everything is restored, knowledge and wisdom was also restored. If the church could understand that the battle in the garden culminated in the loss of godly knowledge and wisdom and that the only way to regain it is in Christ Jesus, then obviously, Jesus Christ should be the custodian of displaying knowledge and wisdom in the world today.