I Can Has Degree?

In 2004, Colby Nolan was awarded an MBA degree by Trinity Southern University. This caused quite a stir when he received this degree, not just because he had claimed to have only taken courses at a community college and had listed his only job experience as babysitter and fast food worker yet was still awarded the title, but mainly because Colby Nolan is a cat. A deputy attorney general looking into fraud degree programs had used his cat’s I.D. while investigating several “degree mills” for fraud. Why should a state official care if a cat can get an M.B.A.? Well officials know if degrees can be obtained by no merit or study, it causes all such degrees to lose their value and degrades all the legitimate work done to receive it. The title has no power anymore.  It is similar to what people have done to the forgiveness of God. Rather than see it for the great gift for us and sacrifice of God, many use it as a license to sin. That attitude of willful sinning devalues the sacrifice of sin. As a fake degree is an attack on the very nature of the education system, so this attitude of “forced” forgiveness is one on the nature of God.  As we read in Hebrews 10:29, “How much severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?”