It is a phenomena we’re all too familiar with. Jack, or Jill, having been pillars of their high school communities, serving as leaders at the church youth group, head off to college. There they head off a cliff, spiritually speaking. It is, each time, a genuine tragedy, breaking hearts that sometimes never heal. We love our young and want nothing more than their spiritual well-being. After all, the Apostle John affirmed that he had no greater joy than that his “children” would walk in the truth (III John 1:4).
What though ought we to do? We know that universities are experts at deconstructing Christian worldviews, and so we often seek to shore them up. Worldview curricula, boot camps, grad gift books are virtually ubiquitous, but perhaps not entirely effective. These strategies, ironically, reveal just how worldly we are.
Christians have embraced the folly of modernism that sees education as a cure-all. Education is the sacrament of modernism. Students in college do not jettison their faith because it doesn’t have answers to the objections of unbelievers. More information, better intellectual preparation, while good things in themselves, won’t be the difference maker. What students facing the onslaught of secularism at college need is courage.
It takes courage to stand out. It takes courage to not accept what everyone else is accepting, whether that is sexual immorality, evolutionist ideology, woke folly, LGBTQ confusion. It takes courage to have the vast majority of your peers consider you to be ignorant. To be called backward, judgmental, unloving, even unchristian because you don’t toe their line.
In short, it takes courage to be free from the hold the devil has on us through our hunger to be liked and if not respected, at least respectable. The bold, outspoken Peter failed this test when Jesus was arrested. We should not be surprised when our young fail it as well.
Especially since we who are not so young fail so often. It is not adolescents but seasoned adults who populate Big Eva that are in constant need of the approval of the world, who are ever seeking a middle way between the wisdom of the world and the plain teaching of the Bible. By God’s grace the world is heading so swiftly to hell in a hand basket, that middle way is growing more clearly non-existent.
Courage is grounded in fear. That is, we no longer fear the world when we begin to fear God. Isn’t it interesting that wisdom begins not with some foundational intellectual principle, but with the fear of God? Fear Him, and we no longer fear to note that the Emperor has no clothes.
Fear Him and we are safe walking through this world which is little more than the valley of the shadow of death. Fear Him and we not only survive the world, but can actually be a help to it, simply by speaking and walking in His truth. The world is not merely mistaken. It is at war with God. Seeking its approval is not merely cowardice but treason. Be of good courage, for He has already overcome the world.