74｜The Pride of Adults, Not the Insufficiency of Children

Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3). He also said: “For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.” (Luke 9:48). Jesus explicitly pointed out: Those truly close to the Kingdom are not adults, but children. In other words, in a spiritual perspective, adults are inferior to children; adults should learn from children, rather than the other way around.

Yet, the educational systems of human civilization are completely inverted: those furthest from the Kingdom teach those closest to it; adults full of division, scarcity, anxiety, and a desire for control "mold" children whose souls are not yet contaminated. Therefore, the fundamental problem of education is not the insufficiency of children, but the pride of adults.

(1) Jesus’ View of Education: The Child is the Standard, Not the Object

Jesus did not say: "You must educate children well so that they may enter the Kingdom." Instead, He said: "You must become like children." The child is the standard, not "raw material to be molded." Children naturally possess five attributes of the Kingdom:

1. They do not easily divide or rush to judge;
2. Their Ego is not yet rigid, and they are not intensely self-centered;
3. They trust and entrust themselves easily;
4. They love easily and are willing to receive love;
5. They live in the moment, present without anxiety for the future. These are precisely the traits of Kingdom life. If adult education continuously strips away these traits while believing it is "molding the child," it is acting in total opposition to Jesus' intent—the child should be teaching us, not we teaching the child.

(2) Why 90% of Educational Problems Stem from Parents, Not Children?

Because most of the time, the child is not the problem; the adult is. Injuries in education often stem from four adult mindsets:

1. Arrogance: Treating one's own experience as absolute truth, forgetting that their soul is more lost than the child’s.
2. Anxiety: Pressuring the child with their own fears, forcing the child to bear the sense of scarcity that the adult has not resolved.
3. Control: Practicing possession in the name of love, treating the child as a tool to satisfy their own self-esteem and vanity.
4. The Dividing Mind: Constant comparison, grading, and ranking, downgrading the child from a "Child of God" to an "evaluatable product." Thus, the problems of education are essentially the problems of adults; children are not "taught poorly" so much as they are slowly contaminated by the adult's Ego.

(3) We Think We Are Teaching Children, but We Are Actually Contaminating Them

Modern education focuses on: transmitting knowledge + training skills + creating "tools." But:

• Knowledge is not wisdom;
• Ability is not freedom;
• Training is not life. What Jesus cares about is the purity of the heart, the softness of the spirit, and the capacity for faith. Children originally possess these, yet adults strip them away in the name of "education": replacing spirituality with logic, joy with anxiety, self-acceptance with comparison, creativity with obedience, and free life with instrumentalization. The result: the child is trained into a "usable resource" but loses their "light as a Child of God."

(4) The True Path of Education: Learning from Children and Growing Together

True education is not "us teaching the child," but the child becoming our teacher and leading the adult to repentance. If education is to return to God’s heart, it requires three steps:

1. Focusing on the child, not the parent: The child is not an appendage of the parents but an independent life entrusted by God.
2. Learning from the child instead of rushing to mold them: The child's trust, creation, love, and presence are exactly what adults need to relearn.
3. Viewing parenting as the adult's spiritual practice, not the child's task: The growth process of the child is the process of the parent being reflected and pruned; the child's innocence is the parent's entrance back into the Kingdom.

Summary｜Original Doctrine 74

1. The problem of education is the problem of adults, not children.
2. Children are naturally closer to the Kingdom, while adults are further away.
3. The essence of education is for adults to learn from children, not for children to learn from adults.
4. Raising a child is the path for an adult to repent, humble themselves, and return to the Kingdom.

In one sentence: Education is not the process of a child growing up, but the path for an adult to turn back into a little child and draw closer to the Kingdom of Heaven.