A 2006 survey in the United States found that about 58% of Christians question their faith after college. This conclusion helps reinforce something we often say empirically: that the University is a stimulating environment for young Christians, in terms of maintaining their faith and spirituality. Life.
Although this impression is widespread, young people and their parents are generally un prepared to face the spiritual challenges of entering university life, they are often so engrossed in the emotions and activities imposed by this ticket that they do not even consider the existence of these. At other times, they even consider them, but they are not sure how to handle them; in others, they choose to postpone or flee.
- Although the college environment is really difficult for a young Christian.
- I don’t think avoiding it is the answer.
- First.
- Because avoiding college does not mean being immune to spiritual challenges.
- It is not the only difficult environment that we face throughout our lives.
- Evil has polluted the world as a whole and poses challenges in its most varied parts.
- In addition.
- The University can be an instrument of preparation for the service of God.
- One of the purposes for which God created us was to know the world and develop it for his glory.
- In the highly specialized contemporary world.
- The University regularly functions as an important training environment in the tools necessary for the fulfillment of this divine purpose.
- Another reason I think avoiding college is not the answer is that it can be a mission field.
- Although we live in a world contaminated by sin.
- We know that God has a plan to restore the cosmic dimensions.
- We are the advertisers for this project and there is nowhere this ad should not be heard.
- Finally.
- There are examples of people who have faced environments of opposition to the Christian faith.
- Without giving in to the risk of negotiating their faith.
- By committing an unconditional anachronism.
- We can remember Daniel and his friends.
- They received a “full scholarship to the University of Babylon”.
- They were subjected to a teaching whose content was contrary to the faith they professed.
- But kept their identity intact.
For these reasons avoiding college does not seem to be the solution, obviously there is an adequate time to enter college and it is not a question of creating a unique opportunity for all young people [related to the age group, for example], but about the maturity and preparation of each.
When we ask this question, we generally expect the answer to be directed to the main anti-Christian ideologies present in academic thinking, because we have the idea that the challenges of the young Christian at university are exclusively intellectual, and all that he has to face. with them there is a shrewd mind.
Of course, the Christian student faces intellectual challenges, but not all of them are of this nature, there are challenges of various kinds, the most fundamental of which are spiritual in nature, usually when a young academic leaves the faith, it does. so not because he is convinced of the rationality of a certain ideology, but because he has found a correspondence with the way of life that he already wanted to have, so the greatest challenge for the young Christian at the University is to take care of the heart And that includes, for example:
Don’t give up on pride. The University is the knowledge environment and it is not easy to properly manage knowledge. The Bible states, in all its letters, that knowledge is inflated (1 Corinthians 8. 1). When we begin to know certain aspects of the world and life in greater depth. , we tend to feel capable enough to function as a measure of our decisions. Then parents, the Bible, the church, and everything presented as a source of guidance and counsel are left out and replaced with “I Know. “
The fear of exposure overcomes. The University is the environment of “scientific knowledge”. Although modern science has been a place of Christian birth and there is no necessary contradiction between faith and science, it is undeniable that in recent years science has developed mainly from a materialistic worldview. Therefore, worldviews that attach great importance to the spiritual dimension, as is the case of Christianity, are often relegated to a condition of inferiority and treated in a pejorative way. Young Christians are often tempted to give in to their religious commitment for fear of being denounced.
Learn how to manage freedom. Finally, the University is the field of “freedom”. This would not be a problem, without the idea of freedom defending university discourse being of autonomy or total independence, which involves the questioning and overcoming of any norm or authority. What makes this third point even more difficult is the fact that the defense of this type of freedom is not limited to discourse, but materializes in the daily life of most university students, leaving room for a kind of irresponsible and banal enjoyment. including the practice of free sex and the use of legal and illegal drugs are just a few examples, many young Christians are lost in this circumstance, by the difficulty of assimilating the freedom enjoyed in the elderly and often to leave home, with this atmosphere of autonomy stimulated by the academy.
When he prayed for his people in the famous priestly prayer, Jesus asked the Father: I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from evil (Jn 17:15). desire for our cultural commitment, what does university life understand?is that we remain in the world, without being guided by it. The fact that this is a request to God also reveals that the maintenance of our faith and spiritual life depends primarily on Him. However, that doesn’t mean we have nothing to do. The following suggestions, which impose different requirements on parents and children, can be helpful in addressing the challenges of college life.
Don’t leave at the last minute. Faced with the spiritual challenges of university life, many families do so only as higher education approaches; In fact, many decisions will only have to wait for the time to come, but spiritual formation is certainly not part of it. principles such as humility, courage and appreciation for authority are consolidated early.
When do you go to college?Many young Christians care about everything but participating in a community of faith. Many of them assume that they can keep their faith without worship or brotherhood. That’s a big mistake. It is in the context of the liturgy that our spiritual habits are formed and strengthened, and in the context of community life that we are encouraged and corrected.
Reconsider the lens. Usually, the young Christian enters the University thinking defensively, as if his goal was simply to survive the hostile environment that awaits him, I suspect that the result of this reflection is passivity, which is usually harmful in everything, rather than thinking only of survival. University, the young Christian must think of serving God. I suspect that, imbued with this objective, you will tend to a more active posture, which will bring you greater spiritual advantages.
Train the mind. As stated above, the challenges facing Christian youth in academia are not just intellectual, but also. Many of them succumb to the challenges linked to this dimension, because they nurtured an anti-intellectualist religious experience, highly focused on the affective dimension. But as the title of John Stott’s book suggests: believing is also thinking. So train your mind. In short, it involves first knowing the Bible and cultivating a biblical way of understanding the world and life. It is important to remember that the biblical knowledge necessary to successfully cope with a hostile environment is not just rational knowledge, but experiential knowledge. The gospel is the power of God. Therefore, knowing the gospel is not just something we get; but something that invades us. And we help to achieve it by trusting and submitting to it. How can the young man keep his way clean? Observe it according to your word (Psalm 119. 9) Next, training the mind means knowing the most common anti-Christian ideologies in the university environment, relating them to the Christian worldview.
Here are just a few suggestions. Certainly, there is much more to be done while we rest in God, trusting that the preservation of our faith, the health of our spiritual life, and the living conditions in this wicked world depend on him so that our neighbor and the world itself will be blessed. and has glorified.
The present century is a worldview fair, the cultural hegemony enjoyed by the Christian faith a few centuries ago has sunk, driven by the anchoring of implausibility in a sea of plurality. Today, in the same class of the university, we will find atheist activists, Muslims, cultural Marxists, libertarian deists, Westernized Buddhists and non-practitioner evangelicals.
In this context, young Christians are bombarded at all times by competitive worldviews, every click on the Internet, every TV series, every class in college, are in spiritual and intellectual warfare. How can we experience God’s good, pleasant and perfect will in The midst of the pressure of this century?
Seeking to equip young Christians to defend and bear witness to their faith, the theme of the 2018 Young Faithful Conference will be “Nonconformists”. From May 31st to June 3rd 2018, 1018 will challenge them not to conform to this century, but to transform you by renewing your mind.
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