photo by klynslis
Depending on where you read the statistic, 70-85% of children raised in Christian homes will leave the church and their faith by the time they graduate college. On the surface that sounds like the death knell for religion, but as you and I both know, it goes much deeper than that. Our children are at risk of losing their soul forever to damnation. That’s kind of between the eyes, isn’t it?
Mike Hall at Two Institutions recently did an interview with Tim Albury, a veteran high school Sunday school teacher, who shared his observations of the effects a hostile college environment has on the life of a student. His observations are poignant and troubling. We’d like to think that college educators are a noble lot, but we’d be purposefully naïve (or willingly blind) if we really believed that. Our oldest son, a senior at Purdue University, has shared some startlingly absurd ideas from the philosophy and sociology classes he’s taken. And just this past Sunday, our pastor shared that one of our young men had to endure the affront of being called an ‘idiot’ by a professor when he revealed he was a Christian.
Mike Hall at Two Institutions recently did an interview with Tim Albury, a veteran high school Sunday school teacher, who shared his observations of the effects a hostile college environment has on the life of a student. His observations are poignant and troubling. We’d like to think that college educators are a noble lot, but we’d be purposefully naïve (or willingly blind) if we really believed that. Our oldest son, a senior at Purdue University, has shared some startlingly absurd ideas from the philosophy and sociology classes he’s taken. And just this past Sunday, our pastor shared that one of our young men had to endure the affront of being called an ‘idiot’ by a professor when he revealed he was a Christian.
Jesus said we would be persecuted for our faith, but unless your teen’s faith is rock-solid and his intent for attending college is to be a missionary on campus, I can’t see deliberately sending your student off to the lion’s den at a school openly hostile to the Christian faith.
This is what I gleaned from the interview:
- If your teen doesn’t own his own faith, he will be unprepared to take on the secular agenda of his professors.
- Parents often unwittingly send their child off to a school because of the degree prestige involved when it should probably be avoided.
- Parents need to help their teen discover themselves before going to college so their self-discovery is not hijacked by atheist professors and partying fraternity/sorority friends.
Ideally we need to prepare our children from infancy in what it means to be a Christian and how to walk in this world with their faith. However, for those parents who are just jumping into the game, not everything is lost. Tim Albury points out that it takes deliberate strategy to help our young adult child stand up for his faith.
The interview is divided into three short parts. Even if your child is a toddler, it would behoove you to read these posts. Use them to convict you of starting a family worship now. Don’t allow your child to become part of the statistic because you’ve chosen to do nothing.
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