The wisest man on earth, Solomon, wrote these lines: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Looking back at the years of my intellectual quest, I attest that education had a complete turn in my life when I finally understood Solomon’s awakening line “there is nothing new under the sun.”
Freedom obtained from above is not just knowing that God loves you; the implication of understanding that God loves you is knowing that there is nothing better than God loving you. Similarly, there is nothing better than loving God.
The gaps within my Christian conversion tie to education, and the inability to feel free. I was captive to human theory and self-exaltation or what could be referred to as Luciferian traits. As a child I understood that awards were only given to the “brightest children” or to the ones with good grades, so life was already complicated. I aspired to one day be amongst the brightest minds. School was my top priority but I didn’t get good grades by being the class-clown nor falling asleep while studying. I remember dreaming of having a photographic memory while walking on the streets of Lima. My mom was holding my hand while crossing the street and as I looked up to a road bridge I thought, “if I could only picture everything I read… I could ace a test; dear God ‘Diosito,’ could you please give me just that?” My dream expanded to the idea that one day I could read an entire book and quote each line by memory. Sadly, my dream was turning into a nightmare as I still couldn’t read properly at age thirteen! In order to avoid mistakes while reading in public, I counted the number of people in the circle before it got to my turn to practice the lines that I had to read. Apparently this technique helped, and people began to comment that I read very fast. In my mind reading out-loud was cruel and summarizing paragraphs was a waste of time of an already wasted time.
Moving forward to my early twenties, as I began attending college and taking classes I understood that “there is nothing new under the sun.” That history repeated itself, and that humanity was very self-destructive. I came across bored and empty intellectuals. Being somewhat heart broken from this illusion, I started to get closer to God and understand His love. Soon enough, my slavery to the intellectual quest turned into a passive search for truth and joy. Even though solving an equation brought joy to my life, the truth of “what is life?” gave deep meaning to my life as a servant, or as a Christian.
I can vividly remember the enlighten day. I was reading, and then everything stopped. My internal voice said, “you don’t have to be smart to enter the kingdom of God, that’s not a requirement, as a matter of fact, you don’t have to be anything to enter.” I felt quit ludicrous afterwards. This realization brought so much relief and joy that I started laughing and going up and down the stairs celebrating that “there is nothing new under the sun.”
From that day forward I understood that God wanted us to prepare intellectually to serve others fully. I also understood that all talents or skills that we have are His not ours, and that if He entrusted us with any talents, they were to be used for the missionary field that we live in.
The text below gives great instruction/aid for our struggling human minds:
As through Christ every human being has life, so also through Him every soul receives some ray of divine light. Not only intellectual but spiritual power, a perception of right, a desire for goodness, exists in every heart. But against these principles there is struggling an antagonistic power. The result of the eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is manifest in every man’s experience. There is in his nature a bent to evil, a force which, unaided, he cannot resist. To withstand this force, to attain that ideal which in his inmost soul he accepts as alone worthy, he can find help in but one power. That power is Christ. Co-operation with that power is man’s greatest need. – E. White, Education, p.29.
The insecurities in each of our lives can be overcome by giving our lives to Christ. The quest for love is its understanding and the only reason of why we exist. We were created to love and be loved by the only God and creator of life. May God bring joy to you today as you ask Him to enlighten your days with the freedom found through His son! For God so loved you that He gave His only begotten son that by believing in Him, you would not perish but have everlasting life! (modified from John 3:16).
Tapia 