What does it mean when we say we are giving our students a “liberal education?” The word “liberal” in this context certainly does not invoke Woke ideologies or progressive anti-Christian agendas, though that’s usually the meaning the word takes on in everyday conversation. The word “liberal” comes from the Latin word līber, which means “free.” Our students’ education can rightly be called “liberal” for two reasons. First, historically, an education in the liberal arts is called liberal because those arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) are skills which a free man would learn—citizens would have the leisure to take on such an education. This meaning definitely applies to our students; they are American citizens with the freedom to learn what they need to be great Americans, and more importantly, good human beings. Second, those liberal arts, while they are for the free man, also work to make him freer by teaching him to think, speak, and act well, removing the constraints of a dull mind.
While our freedom as citizens and as thinking human beings is a wonderful blessing, that freedom can’t hold a candle to the true freedom we have in Christ. Without him, a person is a slave to sin, whether he is a free citizen or not. In a Lutheran school, it becomes evident that when we teach the liberal arts, they are only freeing insofar as they are taught in line with Christ and his true Word. Without Jesus, a person is enslaved to the lies of the world. And those lies are abundant. Whether they be false teaching from within the Church, or false propaganda from without, lies are always enslaving, never freeing.
It is difficult to uphold a lie, especially over a long period of time. It’s heavy, and it becomes heavier the more one builds upon it. This is ultimately what an education without Christ is like. Yes, there may be true things taught, but when Truth Himself is shut out, the enslaving effects of lies start to take hold. “Love is love,” “It’s my body,” “That’s only your truth”—these are the lies fed to students across our country. They are all versions of Satan’s “Did God really say…” which he used to enslave Adam and Eve. The only antidote to sin, lies, and death is the forgiveness, truth, and life found solely in God’s Word.
That’s why Mount Hope and schools like it are such an absolute blessing, and why teaching here is such an extraordinary privilege. Here, God’s Word is preached and taught at full force, without reservation. The Truth of Christ is preached and recited every morning, then permeates everything that follows. Students learn God’s order in science and His workings in history. They learn how to sing as Christians in choir and how to speak uprightly in rhetoric. In Latin, English, and literature, they learn the nature of language, the means by which God chooses to give us His Word… and the list goes on. God has truly blessed us by giving us a school that does give our students freedom, in the fullest sense of the word. That freedom comes by no other means except through the Word of God—and we have that Word!
In Christ,
Mr. Hahn
