It was an early morning class, one of those 8 a.m. miseries that I could barely drag myself across slant-walk to get to, after a late night filled with Red Bull and biochemistry cramming.
Class hadn't started yet, and it seemed that everyone was in the same state I was-physically present but not mentally. We were a sad example of the educated future of America.
I looked at my classmate who was typing on his laptop in the neighboring desk, and that is when I saw it.
The quote was placed across a beautiful scene of outer space.
"We were born too soon to explore the cosmos, and too late too explore the earth. Our frontier is the human mind; religion is the ocean we must cross."
Intrigued by his philosophical background, I asked him what it meant.
He said the church's steeple had forever been the tallest point in cities, representing the sway it has held on our culture.
He then described his dream of making the library the tallest point in our society, propelling us on toward reasoning and flourishing.
We live in an age where we have put our hope in reasoning, science and education, an age of Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche, where we think critically of supernatural beliefs.
If only we could civilize and educate the world, perhaps we could create our utopia, our perfect civilization, we tell ourselves.
After secularizing most of the public sphere, we have been left with a world that is evermore advancing toward my classmate's dream.
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But what is the progress that has been made?
What do we have to show for our great education?
Despite all our learning, we have not advanced as far as we would like to convince ourselves. If we believe the education of man has delivered us from the evilness of his heart, then we have not paid attention to history.
The 20th century, in which mankind achieved its highest level of scientific knowledge to date, contained more human killing and bloodshed than all of the previous 19 centuries combined. Rather than leading to peace and prosperity, our high education gave us new ways to wage war with each other.
However, the new technologies were not the only cause for the bloodshed.
Our educationally advanced philosophies have often played a role in leading us to bankrupting our morals by justifying our wrong.
(Look at how Hitler used the famous philosopher Nietzsche's writing.)
A recent report from 2009 showed that one of India's largest IT companies had been cooking its books for years, misrepresenting its true value.
The supposed massive profits were all lies. Ironically, the company's name, Satyam, means "Truth."
In his resignation, the CEO and founder said, "I was riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten."
Hitting a little closer to home was the Enron scandal. The Houston, Texas based energy company had been hiding enormous amounts of debt by using accounting loopholes and skewed financial reporting, and shareholders lost billions when Enron's stocks plummeted.
These examples show that crime and corruption are not only reserved for the uneducated and poor classes.
In fact, the increasing frequency of instances like these has led to the coining of the phrase "white-collar crime" to describe the cheatings of smart, rich executives.
Philosopher D. L. Moody once wrote, "If a man is stealing nuts and bolts from a railway track, and, in order to change him, you send him to college, at the end of his education, he will steal the whole railway track."
Education may take the pick-pocket off of the street, but it does not take the pickpocket out of the individual's heart.
Eventually, our true colors will show through, and oftentimes education merely allows the magnitude of our deception and schemes to increase.
In the end, a few examples cannot prove my point, but I hope that we can at least agree that at best, education has led to mixed results on our morality, and at worst has opened up new avenues for evil never before conceived by humankind.
We need something to change our hearts-or maybe I should say someone to change our hearts.
New laws and regulations make people either follow them as a duty or break them in rebellion.
A relationship, though, can give us new desires.
A relationship can make us turn from our old way of living.
Perhaps that is one reason why God has offered us a relationship with Himself, rather than only giving us laws to perform or a path to follow.
Only when we come into that relationship, can duty be changed to choice.
Only then will the deceptive tiger of our heart be able to be tamed.
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