Education. Intelligence or Vanity?

It was a typical weekday cleaning windows under dull, drizzly weather, giving the air a melancholic feel, when the turn came to call at one particular house on a street of privately owned homes. This particular elderly gentleman had recently lost his wife to illness, cancer, I believe. He answered my knock on his door.

I can't understand why you're out here in this atrocious weather! I'm not sure about allowing you to work on a day like this, he said.

Cleaning windows on a damp, dreary Autumn day was not exactly like spending a day at a carnival on a warm Summer's day, or the excitement felt while boarding a long-haul flight for a Round-the-World backpacking trip. Rather, it was either this or watching my wife and myself go hungry and into debt. Therefore there was no surprise on his part for my feeling of irritableness.

Atrocious weather? This? I replied. Remember what happened in New Orleans. If wind and rain can literally wipe a city off the map, then that is atrocious weather! Not this - as I waved my hand around the moist-ridden air. The client relented and allowed me to proceed with the task at hand.

I was referring to Hurricane Katrina, which formed over the Atlantic Ocean on August 23rd 2005, and passed over New Orleans nearly a week later on the 29th, taking with it up to 1,836 lives as it swirled over the city at 175 mph. The talk I had with this English gentleman was just a few weeks later, and therefore still fresh on our minds.

The effects of Hurricane Katrina, August 2005.

I believe that after 37 years of manual work, that is from the day I left school in 1968 to that dismal day in 2005, I have toughened up to the point of looking at adversity or even at danger with a smile. Maybe that was why such a negative attitude from this elderly gentleman took me by surprise, especially if he was around during the War or even having fought in it. Then, having lost his beloved so recently after decades of happy marriage would make him feel emotionally vulnerable, wouldn't it? Indeed, on that day I should have been more sensitive to his point of view rather than constantly worrying about home finances, even if I was always the sole breadwinner.

This mental toughening up against the knocks life throws at us, maybe that was why, while onboard the United Airlines flight to New York from London in 1995, one of the air stewardesses gasped, and said how brave I was, after I have spoken to her about the excitement lying ahead as I make my way to California with a backpack over my shoulders. Her reaction had indeed taken me by surprise. However, it was during a normal day at work, standing on a sloping roof while cleaning a window above it, which tested my mettle, yet was part and parcel of my job from which I received no praise at all.

As such, media stories of students committing suicide have always been a puzzlement to me! The majority of students who commit suicide is male. However, the latest case is of this British female from Milton Keynes, who so recently fallen out of a light aircraft while flying over the forests of Madagascar. At first, I thought that she was a victim of a terrible accident involving the plane door flying open mid-air and sucking her out. But it turned out that she opened the door herself and jumped out, despite the attempted restraint by both the pilot and another passenger.

The student, who attended Cambridge University, was out on a project examining a rare species of crab when she suffered a panic attack. She contacted her parents back in the UK, and they either advised her to return home just three or four days into her month-long trip. Or they might have tried to encourage her to stay and finish her project. Apparently, a heated argument developed, which on one hand may be an indication that either she wanted to cut short her trip and return home, or on the other hand, she was unwilling to return home so soon. But either way, she then leapt to her death whilst flying from her venue to the international airport.

The whole scenario beggars belief! Here she was, a student at Cambridge University, meant to enjoy one of the greatest privileges life can offer - to study and train to be a scientist, and to work in a laboratory, which would have been the envy of one such as myself who had to scrape a living outside in the cold, wind and rain. 

Yet she was not alone. Far from it. Rather, it follows other stories of undergraduates committing suicide as well as many more suffering from mental illness of some sort. And as I have already mentioned, the majority of such cases is male, which fits in with the overall majority of suicides across the nation. Our culture strongly encourages, if not actually demand, that the British man must keep his emotions bottled up, to keep up the image of stoicism, making self-harm an easier option than talking to someone who could help. But in the case of undergraduates, whom I perceive as very fortunate to enter further education in the first place, I have to admit and ask: What's going on?

This sort of thing was totally unknown in my day when I had to push a broom across the factory shop floor and endure smut, quite a bit of teasing, even verbal bullying. Yet I never considered suicide, but, as I realised later, as part of a process to toughen me up in readiness to face a challenging world.

The light aircraft in flight during the jump.

But here I had to be honest. When I found myself at work as a machinist in a precision engineering company in the 1970s, I did have an eye of envy towards the adjoining office staff. Their smart dress commanded far greater respect from society. They were the ones who did well at school and passed both GCE 'O' Level and 'A' Level exams while still at school, and landed good jobs as a result, even without having to graduate. A university graduate holding a degree was, back in those days, someone to be revered. Maybe this trend of "degree inflation" which affected more recent years might have coincided with the rise of mental health issues and eventually suicide. In other words, a degree nowadays is hardly worth the paper it's printed on, so the media tell us. Could that, along with the eye-watering tuition fees, be the reason why this lovely young woman ended her life so dramatically?

It is from this greater respect and a keener interest given by society to graduates and those who hold careers in the profession which at this point I would like to ask: What do you think of this blog? Is it well written? If by chance, you think this and all my other blogs are well written, then this is a result of constant practice, backed by my enjoyment of reading. Yes, I did attend evening class to study the English Language GCE 'O' Level at a local college some years after leaving school, and I managed to scrape through with a pass. Yet this was enough for a foundation to build my writing skills on afterwards. Mainly by reading other people's work and using them as examples to build my own experience.

This was not done with any reluctance. I recall as a young boy sitting at a table and writing letters to my relatives living overseas. How I thoroughly enjoyed it. And unlike many in my class, I did not find writing a necessary burden one must bear while wearing school uniform. I find the ability to string words together, a wonderful privilege given to me by God, and left with a responsibility to nourish this God-given ability.

And here is a sorry truth. If I was a graduate myself, I would have had a much larger number of page views than I presently have. Instead, I know of several graduates belonging to local churches who don't read these blogs. They give various reasons for this - they don't have the time, they are too busy, they are irrelevant to them, it's not their style. But none would give the honest truth, and the honest truth is this: Reading my blogs will rock their egos. That is to say, I pose some kind of threat. After all, someone with my background is not supposed to create anything to this standard. Instead, I should know my place on the social and academic ladder and stay there, perhaps with a daily swig in the pub and mixing among fellow working-class mates, yet remaining in lifelong ignorance and never to be taken seriously by the middle classes.

It was once a temptation to add Dr in front of my name on this page, but then I decided against the idea. Not only would I be deceitful, but chances that even among readers whom I have never met, they would see that my writing is considerably amateurish for a doctor. But working on what God has already given me is still the right thing to do.

And trusting in God, I think, is the real foundation for success. I could take Frank Sinatra's song My Way and look back at my life before retirement and say that I did it my way. But I much prefer to say that I did it God's way. Sure enough, I have never seen the inside of a university, the only time I saw the inside of an office was as a client, I worked manually with my hands, much of that in the realm of cleaning, for nearly half a century. Yet I have travelled the world, I have partaken in long-distance cycling and triathlons, I was even a pool lifeguard for several months when I was twenty, perhaps perceived by some as a "glamorous" job and maybe being as close to a paramedic as the job allowed.

I want to be seen at the Judgement Seat of Christ as one who did it God's way. And one of the greatest tools for going God's way is a thorough knowledge of the Bible, laced with the filling of the Holy Spirit. That is why I have always insisted that Bible reading increases intelligence. I can testify that this has happened to me, and I can assure anyone who wishes to read the Bible with faith in his heart that this will happen to him also.

And a heart-belief in the Gospel. The Good News. That is, God had created our first parents in God's own image. Unfortunately, their mistake brought sin into their lives, and we have lived with sin in our lives ever since, which means eternal separation from God. God gave the Law to Israel, showing all of us exactly what a pure holy life is all about. The trouble is, nobody was ever able to keep the Law perfectly. Even if someone did keep the Law perfectly until he stumbled at just one minor point - that was it. He had broken the Law, and must now face Judgement.

But God, in both his love for us and for his glory, sent his Son Jesus Christ, a man entirely without sin, to atone for us by dying on a cross, he was buried, and three days later he was resurrected from the dead. It was this third issue - his Resurrection - which makes Christianity stand out from all other religions. No other religious founder or leader was ever resurrected. Instead, their bones are with us to this day. The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was proof that he is the Christ, the Jewish Messiah. Because of his Resurrection, he can give eternal life with God to all who believe, having atoned for sin on the cross.

Christ's own righteousness, his perfect life, is imputed to everyone who believes. That is, God sees each believer as he sees his only Son. That is why the concept of Eternal Security, or Once Saved Always Saved, is Biblical. No other religion teaches this. Only Biblical Christianity. 

Eternal Security of the Believer is a life-changing doctrine. While at Sainsbury's superstore, I was met by one female who attends our church at Ascot. When I related to her about my wife's breast cancer and the course of chemotherapy she is at present going through, she was rather surprised about our lion's share of bad things happening to us. I could have said something like, "yes I know, life is always bad, unfair. Woe is me, in my sorrow, I go to the grave."

But I didn't say that. Instead, I expressed my determination to keep going, to keep on looking after my beloved wife, and thanking God for the NHS. And I know as I take Alex into my arms and look lovingly into her eyes, everything will be okay, even in her illness, for God is with us and he will never leave or forsake us. Once saved Always Saved. This truth is a foundation stone for us to keep going, no matter how bad circumstances can get.

That poor, poor Cambridge student. She had an enviable life, with the ability to travel halfway around the world to Madagascar, she was studying in one of the world's top universities, in preparation to work in a laboratory or as a field scientist. It was a pair of shoes I would have jumped into with enthusiastic glee. Yet she is no longer with us. What a crying shame! Because she had never known the TRUE meaning of life, and a university degree gotten at Cambridge wasn't it.