How Does One Live Well?
Education is a very important topic. The rise of any major power is inextricably linked to education. For example, Britain. When the British Empire emphasized education, it dominated the world for a long time. The United States is also a country that highly values education. Now, China also focuses on education. Education has now become an important concept for a country's development. In fact, the origin of education began with Moses. The Bible also values the education of people! Why are people different from each other? Because those who are educated and those who are not have very different concepts. How do we make people astute? We return to the concept of education. The characteristic of our Living Abundantly is to teach people how to live. How does the Bible teach people to live? If a person does not know how to live, then the problem is that they need to be educated.
Hitting the Bullseye
When I used to be a senior manager at Singapore Polytechnic, when I met diploma students, they said, My goal is to go to university. Their concept was just: go to university. But what to do with the university degree? They did not know. Education is actually like many things, just like we practice shooting, we need constant training, training on how to hit the bullseye. And when we do something, have we hit the bullseye? What is the most important bullseye? A person who is educated hopes to live well, so can education enable them to live well? We must admit one thing, our past education has received many benefits. Mao Zedong's educational philosophy of shortening the school system and revolutionizing education is a good concept. Why shorten the school system? Because we are now learning a lot of useless things. Why receive church education? It is to live a little better. If there is no problem of living a little better, then we need to solve it. The question I raise is sharp: current education does not seem to hit the bullseye. Today's Living Abundantly is for us to live a little better, not like Yang Bailao. A few years ago, there was a talented student from Tsinghua University who married a beautiful woman from Peking University. This couple went to the United States for further studies. The man became an engineer, and the woman became a chemist. It was reported that this woman used heavy metals to kill her husband. The husband's symptoms were like a cold, and he was slowly poisoned. Later, the doctor discovered that the husband was poisoned by heavy metals, and the woman had records of this heavy metal in the laboratory. The woman was eventually sentenced, and the child was only one year old. The Bible is the most translated and written book. Back then, I was actually a senior intellectual. Why did I choose to go to church? My logic was also simple: the God recorded in the Bible is more reliable, so I went in. Later, I found that the things written in the Bible were too good for everyone. Some people say that I have read widely, I know everything. I said, have you read the Bible? No? Then it's all for nothing. Because the Bible is a book that teaches people how to live well. It solves a person's concept of living. No one teaches you what the concept of living is all about in elementary school, middle school, or university. If the concept of living is not clear, then learning a lot of scientific and technological knowledge will not make you live well.
Some time ago, a Ph.D. who returned from the United States killed his parents and then committed suicide. These were all tragedies, just because they did not know what living was all about. I encourage you to understand what living is all about, and many things will be solved. That is to say, what is living all about? Why do people live? This requires reading the Bible.
People Must Be Equipped With Skills
Later, I discovered that we must promote the equipping of people with skills in the church, that is, they must be able to make a living. The first concept of education is to enable people to understand what living is all about. The second concept of education is to enable people to have the skills and abilities to make a living. Making a living is a very crucial part of education. The current education system is not very good at pushing people into the ability to make a living. A university student, even a master's or doctoral student, has a lot of unreliable things in what they learn. I don't really agree with learning things by listening to lectures. I basically equip myself by observing and thinking.
What Exactly Is Education?
First, education should give people an understanding of what living is all about. Second, it should equip people with a skill that they can use to make a living. I read a sentence in the Bible: turn the stones in our hands into iron, and iron into silver; turn the wood in our hands into copper, and copper into gold. This is education.
The core of education is to shape a person's character. A person with character will definitely be able to live well. Never compromise, never give up, open roads through mountains, build bridges over water, there are no unsolvable problems. The church should actually be a place to shape people's character. A person with character is very powerful in this life.
The core of character is faith, and then comes skill. Faith is a powerful thing. I believe that I will go to this place in the future, so I believe it until I get there, and I will never stop until I get there. This is character. Faith is a judgment of the future, and then you believe that the future is like this. As a Christian, with faith, God will accomplish it for you.
Skills
The second point of the ability to make a living is skills. Among all the skills, the most important is the skill of learning. A person who knows how to learn can learn anything. In fact, I don't really like training the ability to attend classes. The ability to attend classes is not called learning. What don't you need to learn yourself when you go to work? There are not so many classes for you to attend. Moreover, if the problems you solve are new problems, there are even fewer classes for you to attend. Today, brothers and sisters, we must develop a habit of not liking to attend classes, and develop the ability to study hard, solve problems, and digest information. Some time ago, a sister told me that she had to go to class. She said, It's not okay not to go to class, I can only learn by going to class. She said that their teacher taught them that the resume can only be two pages long at most. I don't think this hits the point. The school she went to is a relatively bad school, a diploma mill. What kind of teachers do diploma mills hire? They are teachers who can't survive in the workplace. If teachers who can't survive in the workplace are teaching, then what can you learn? Today, our brothers and sisters must start to be clever. In fact, people must know that knowledge is not learned in the classroom. When you get to work, the things you learn in the classroom become useful things that you don't learn and useless things that you learn a lot. It's not that there is a problem with the things in the books, but that the things in the books are not implemented in practice.
Our Educational Philosophy Is to Train People's Skills
Today, our educational philosophy is to train a person's skills, not to equip a person with knowledge. If you have the most important learning skills, you can learn anything. Recently, I have been leading some brothers and sisters in the church to do some woodwork, sanding the glass partitions decorated with round wood, which is a lot of work. As a result, I found that some people observe carefully, and some people do not observe carefully. Also, when we paint, some people drip the brush, there is not much paint in the place where it should be painted, and there is a lot of paint in the place where it should not be painted. Later, I wondered what to do? I scraped the brush on the edge of the paint bucket and then brushed it, and found that the effect was very good. In fact, I also learn while watching when I paint. If you know how to learn, you can look at anything and then slowly ponder it. Oh, so that's how it is, then you can overcome one problem after another and brush it very well.
Training learning ability is crucial. There is not necessarily a class to attend, it depends on whether you can figure these things out, including sanding and painting. So today, our educational philosophy must be correct. I think my philosophy is more correct, and the effect of its implementation is better. I'm not saying that I can hit ten rings, but I can hit six or seven rings, seven or eight rings. If it's completely not on the target, then the problem is very serious.
Skill Training - See What You Want to Do in the Future
Where does skill training start? There are so many skills, painters have the skills of painters, plasterers have the skills of plasterers, carpenters have the skills of carpenters, and electricians have the skills of electricians. We can't learn all of them. There are too many skills in all walks of life. We must set a direction, that is, what I want to do in the future. This is called career planning. What you learn depends on what you want to do in the future. Once you have determined what you want to do in the future, you don't need to learn things that are not very relevant, and you should learn things that are relevant well. For example, many people have learned calculus when they take the college entrance examination, but I have asked, many people have never used calculus in their lives since they took the college entrance examination. Instead of wasting this time, it is better to equip yourself with some skills.
We need to start rethinking these things, thinking about what I want to do in the future. Some people say that I don't know what I want to do in the future, so let's study it. Even if you set a direction that is not very good, it doesn't matter, it is better than having no direction at all and learning everything. For example, after graduating from the sixth grade of elementary school, you can determine a direction, and then explore and learn well in relation to this. For example, after graduating from the sixth grade, KR decided to do online live broadcasting. She is doing well now, and she has income, and the income is quite good, it should be no problem to support herself. What are her classmates doing? Her classmates are all attending classes. In fact, attending classes is the worst learning method, because if you sit there and listen, you will not know where you are listening in a while, which is not very efficient.
Methods of Cultivating Skills
There are many ways to cultivate people's skills. For example, when we make abundant music, many people think that making music requires a lot of skills. When we first produced the album, we couldn't play the instruments well. Later, I found that a software installed on the mobile phone can solve the problem of not being able to play the piano well. It used to take ten years to play well, but now it can be solved in ten minutes, because there is a computer. In the future, many skills will disappear in this generation. Whether you like it or not, you must pay attention to which industry you choose that will not be replaced. For example, taxi drivers, according to analysis, there is a 97% chance of being replaced in the future? If you choose to be a taxi driver and you drive the car very well, you can't drive better than the machine. Recently, in the man-machine war, the most powerful Go champion of mankind could not beat the AlphaGo machine. But it is also a kind of character for this world Go champion to have the courage to challenge AlphaGo, which is also very good. Now in this era, when we choose a career, we should pay attention not to choose a career that can be replaced by machines.
What will happen in the future era? People will become two kinds of people: useful people and useless people. Useless people are those who can't beat the machine. The machine can do it faster and better, and it doesn't eat or drink. At most, it just adds some oil and charges some electricity, and it won't complain, and it doesn't need to go to the hospital when it breaks down, and there is no work injury, so it's simple. Whether a person is a useful person or a useless person depends on the education he receives. The education you receive determines whether you will become a useful person or a useless person. This is what I call Industry 4.0. The development of Industry 4.0 will be quite successful. Don't think that it's just talk. In a few years, automatic driving will be used. You make a phone call, and a driverless taxi will come to you. You press it, and it will take you to where you want to go. In the future, we will also develop artificial intelligence. We will even use artificial intelligence to complete education. In that case, it won't work if you are a very bad teacher. In any case, this world must be a useful person.
In a person's life, especially in the generation we are in today, we must have a correct educational philosophy. Some people can't find a job after studying, then I don't know what they have learned. They still get good grades in the college entrance examination. I encourage everyone to re-explore and understand what your educational philosophy is, why you want to learn this and why you want to learn that. Then constantly improve yourself and shape yourself into a talent step by step. In this generation, you will become a useful person and not become a pile of useless people. In the future, many people will lose their jobs and have to be supported by others. If you think that's good, then become a supported, useless person.
In any case, you have to constantly adjust and shape yourself. That's all I want to share with you today.