For some time, now, it seems that I've been hearing the message that the stupider you are, the more you can be used by God. Don't study, don't apply yourself, don't make any effort, don't even get educated--'cause God loves idiots and simpletons, and those are the kinds of people He wants and uses in His kingdom.
Maybe I'm overstating the case, but I honestly can't tell you how many teachers I've heard over the past few years talk proudly about how uneducated they are and yet God is using them, anyway. The verse that usually accompanies these accounts of God using the uneducated is Acts 4:13.
I want to state up front that I completely understand where they're coming from and I grasp what they're communicating. However, I wonder if maybe--just maybe--there is a more balanced way to say things. Perhaps the point Luke was trying to convey in Acts 4:13 was not so much that they were uneducated as that they had spent time with the resurrected King Jesus. Take a look at Acts 4:33. The emphasis isn't on education or non-education, it's on the power of the resurrection of Jesus.
Does the Bible say anywhere "thou shalt not be educated"? Does it say anywhere that if you are educated, you should become like the uneducated so God can use you? I'm thinking not. No, we shouldn't boast or take pride in our education or our intelligence because our brains are a gift from God. But if we have been given the privilege and opportunity to learn and to be educated, should we pooh-pooh that because we think God will use us in better ways if our human intelligence doesn't get in the way? I would like to have seen someone tell C.S. Lewis that he should have dumbed down his writing so it would be more accessible to the common man. I would like for someone to have told Paul that he should have acted more like Peter since Peter was uneducated and God's power flowed through him so freely.
I have no problem with people sharing their life story and talking about how God has used them no matter what their circumstances or their level of education and intelligence. I do have a problem, however, when the sharing becomes more of a polemic against education and using that God-given intelligence. God truly does use us all. He uses the uneducated, the educated, the simple, and the intelligent. And that's the whole point--He uses us all. No one is greater than or lesser than in His eyes. You are not greater because of your intelligence, but you are also not greater and more Spirit-led if you have not received formal education (which, by the way, is all that is meant by the Peter and John being "uneducated"; they had no formal rabbinical training according to the Sanhedrin).
Let us all be the kind of people through whom the power of the Holy Spirit flows so that we can do those things God has prepared for us to do.
"This is the explanation: God has made us what we are, God has created us in King Jesus for the good works that [H]e prepared, ahead of time, as the road we must travel." Ephesians 2:10 (Wright translation)
