Planning for College? Don’t Forget This
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
I find that Al Mohler’s blog is always worth reading. A recent post entitled “Just How Secular Can Education Be?”(read it here) should be required reading for Baptist parents about to hand their children off to a university. Mohler cites an opinion about the place of religion in American university life, expressed by a Harvard University professor, Steven Pinker: “. . . universities are about reason, pure and simple. Faith—believing something without good reasons to do so—has no place in anything but a religious institution. . . .” That definition of faith is about as sophomoric as you could find, even if it does come from a Harvard man. But, for better or worse, Harvard is to education in America what California is to pop culture: it always sets the tone. Professor Pinker clearly reveals how Harvard views Christianity. Making religion a topic for serious study is, he says, “An American anachronism . . . in an era in which the rest of the West is moving beyond it.” Parents, do not be naïve! Any public university to which we send our children is a hostile place to biblical Christianity. As far as that goes, most religious universities are as well. Many have apostatized from the Christian faith altogether. They tend to keep a veneer of religiosity in place in order to milk the faithful in the denominations supporting them out of their donations.
What should a faithful Christian parent do? Realize the terrain ahead of your child and prepare them for it. You can get them ready for dorm life a weekend or two ahead of their departure. To prepare them for the intellectual challenges to their faith will require a lifetime’s work. We better all get started.
