SOME COLLEGES CAN KILL YOU

I make the case in an earlier blog that parents are the key to children’s life long spiritual formation and well-being.  I am convinced that they are.  Parents frame the environment of family life for every family member’s spiritual formation and maturity.  Parents are the primary force in a child’s spiritual education and experience, until age eighteen.  Then, there is another reality that is key.  Children leave the home and venture out into life settings that are either spiritually healthy or toxic.  The one I am most familiar with is the university/college context. 

College can kill you spiritually.  I’m not saying that students cannot spiritually survive toxic college and university environments.  The odds favor students who are strong in their faith and daily walk.  But, for some students, especially those who are not strong, some settings are high risk for Christian spiritual mortality.  Here’s why:  1) university education is built mostly on high status, high influence persons called faculty of whom very few (17% at best) are Christians.  The overwhelming number of faculty on most universities and colleges are either agnostic or committed atheists.  A critical mass of faculty is boldly hostile to Christianity and to students who are Christians.  2) The same may be said for the percentage of student peers at the university.  The normative life style on most campuses is minimally distracting and more often outright toxic.  3) University and college campus settings are largely void of opportunities to continue the Christian journey including worship, corporate prayer, Bible study, fellowship, and the integration of faith with the subjects that students are learning.  4) A Christian worldview to contextualize the university experience is not available.

Too often the result over a four-year bachelor degree experience is the total dissipation of faith.  A student may come from a very healthy family milieu.  His/her parents may have done every thing right in providing a spiritually healthy family setting for growing strong children.  But, university and college settings can be powerful alternative contexts that can undo all the good that was accomplished in the home.  Students may remain nice people, good citizens, and persons of ethics and charity, but faith in Christ dissipates and their faith journey goes in other directions.

The option to this rather familiar and sad picture is Christian higher education.  Such settings* offer an enormous value added alternative.  Students in Christian universities and colleges are immersed in contexts where the means of grace are available.  Faith is integrated with learning.  Professors are spiritually supportive.  The Christian worldview is normative and spiritual maturity is an intentional student outcome of the institution.  In such settings, the exposures and encounters give students a chance to spiritually flourish into Christ-likeness.  Thanks be to God!

*Asbury, Bethel, BIOLA, Booth (Canada), Eastern Nazarene, Gordon, Greenville, Houghton, Indiana Wesleyan, Messiah, Malone, Point Loma Nazarene, Roberts Wesleyan, Seattle Pacific, Spring Arbor, Taylor, Trinity Western (Canada), Westmont, Wheaton, to name a few.