Students entering secular universities after spending years either in church supported schools or through home schooling usually experience a degree of culture shock. Many of these students have led sheltered lives and find diversity overwhelming. In some cases, these students experiment with experiences denied to them for years, often to excess. In other cases, the secular and frequently promiscuous environment is an acute challenge to personal faith. But there are ways to overcome the environment and maintain a lifestyle of faith while attending classes and fitting into the social landscape of a diverse learning community.
Maintaining Basic Lifestyle Commitments on a Secular College Campus
Students that strongly identify with Christian lifestyle principles can succeed both academically and socially in a secular environment. Often, their lifestyle choices are admired by other students and can serve as a living testimonial of personal commitment. Suggestions for committed Christian college students include:
- being an active member of a local church near the university
- identifying and joining a college fellowship group that acts as a support for Christian students
- maintaining a personal prayer life and reading the Bible daily
- establishing friendships with like-minded students
- avoiding judging opposing views of students and professors
- politely declining invitations to potentially compromising situations such as parties featuring alcohol
Christian Students Should be Open to the Discourse of Debate and Lecture
A university is a marketplace of ideas. Secular institutions enroll all kinds of students from a variety of backgrounds. Students may be gay or straight. A diverse student population will reflect dozens of personal belief systems. Similarly, professors and TAs will teach from a variety of perspectives. Conservative-minded students may hate a “liberal” professor while liberal students will cringe during a lecture delivered by a conservative.
Students seeing themselves as committed Christians should not feel threatened or attacked by such diversity. In many cases, gay students or dorm-mates might also identify themselves as a fundamentalist Christian. Opposing views also open the door to honest dialogue. Post modern education stresses openness and the need to view the human condition through new prisms of truth.
College Prepares Students for the Workforce
The university experience, steeped in diversity, is the first step toward career. In a global economy, diversity in corporate hiring is very desirable and is actively pursued. Christian students emerging from years of pre-college sheltering will find the employment path even more daunting than college. America is a land “out of many,” and that includes religious and ethnic differences. Successful maneuvering through four or five years of a secular college experience will enable an easy transition into the workforce.
Accepting Differing Views is not Compromise
Tolerance is never an act of compromise. It is the ability to accept differing beliefs without judgment on an equal basis. This is not a question of hell or heaven. Students adhering to strict Christian beliefs and principles should always be ready to defend their choices, as apologists, but never presume to judge or claim an exclusive right to lifestyle.
Attending a secular institution after years of a religious education can be difficult. Keeping the faith, however, can be the best personal testament a student can offer, without resorting to judgmental behavior.
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