Gospel

---

It is one of the great tragedies of modern times that about 75% of all young Christians who enter secular universities end up renouncing their faith after a short period of time. I can’t think of a more hostile environment for a Christian then in the classrooms of universities who are dominated by liberalism. One would think that a university, a term whose very meaning is “unity and diversity”, would be the bastion of open inquiry and free speech where ideas and beliefs of various people would have the benefit of honest discourse. In truth, a secular university is probably the most close-minded, intolerant, bigoted atmosphere you'll find anyplace where counter perspectives to liberalism are not permitted. I've really never been able to a find a "liberal" liberal anywhere for that matter.

If I could say just one thing to all Christian families with children, it would be this: do not ever assume your child believes in the real truth of Christianity, or even in the existence of God, without asking them bluntly if they really do and why. The glory days of simply presuming that because your child was raised in a Christian home means he must be truly Christian, are long gone. The one or two hours of Sunday school they attend and the one or two watered-down sermons they hear at their church every week are absolutely no match influentially for the onslaught of diseased philosophies they receive from this godless culture the remainder of the week. This culture is winning the war for our children and the Christian community by and large are surprisingly unaware of it. Infected with easy-believism, we just assume because our young people say they believe in Jesus Christ, that all is said and done. But have we honestly pressed our children hard to find out if they buy any of what we've been telling them since they were able to walk? Seemingly, it never occurs to us that our supposedly Christian teens and young Christian adults, many of whom are having pre-marital sex; drinking too much; listening to and watching the most horrendous anti-Christian material; and making an art out of selfishness, if they believe in or care about any of this Jesus stuff?

Young Christians have doubts and questions about their faith that never get answered. When pressed for answers from mature Christians, they usually receive an answer like "pray more for understanding" or "just have more faith", which often doesn't assist them at all because they've tried that already. Our Lord was interrogated throughout the gospels about this new faith He proclaimed He was bringing to the world and He never answered people like that. He took the time to give to them clear and concise answers to their deepest questions. In Acts chapter 17, Paul the apostle was grilled by the Stoics and Epicurean philosophers about this "new teaching" (Acts 19:19). The Bereans searched the scriptures to verify that what Paul was telling them about Christ was genuine. Paul told us in 2 Corinthians 3:15 to "examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith". Peter tells us in his first epistle to " always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15). John spent the greater portion of his first epistle outlining various tests for genuine faith. Many examples of God's people putting their minds to work in validating their faith to the believers and unbelievers, and answering their questions.

We have somehow forgotten that faith includes an exertion of our intellect and we have adopted a belief that faith requires no thought but only emotion. We've taught our children that faith requires one to leave their brain at home because this is what most of our pastors tell us. So when our children are subject to attitudes, behaviors, and thought from our non-Christian society that conflict with the teaching they receive in church or at home, they naturally are curious to know what exactly is right. Secularism then gives them answers, terrible untrue answers, but answers nonetheless, while we tell them to "just have faith". What then occurs is that because we have no answers, our children logically draw the conclusion that this belief must be utter nonsense. While secularism may give them few answers, at least it will give them pleasure, and then they get swept along in the flood of immorality and empty philosophies. It is my belief that thousands, maybe millions of Christian parents have children they think know the Lord but in tragic reality, do not. Unbeknownst to a lot of parents, their children pitched real belief in God or Jesus Christ aside a long time ago and are only paying lip service to God out of fear of what their parents would say if they knew what they really believed or didn't believe. The road their child is on they believe says heaven, but that's not where it's going.

What is amazing to me is the towering mountain of evidence that there is for the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the validity of the bible. There are also deep philosophical and theological questions that can be easily and best be answered by Christianity. The evidence from just biology along confirms that all life had a maker. No skeptic has ever been able to explain how the body of Jesus Christ got out of that tomb that was guarded and watched round the clock. There are legal scholars who claim the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ would stand up in a court of law. More darts have been thrown at the veracity and genuinity of the bible than any other book--religious or otherwise--in history, and yet it still remains unscathed and its influenced unhindered. Questions of why there is evil, why there is suffering, and what is the meaning of human existence are answered more adequately from Christianity than any other religion or ideology. Yet the vast majority of churches say nothing about it which means we remain ignorant about it, and subsequently, so do our children.

Christianity allows a person two liberties that a lot of other religions do not: freedom to believe and freedom to disbelieve. Our children deserve that option after they've been presented by us the evidence for Christianity. However, we force them into bible classes and church on the assumption that it is true without telling them why. Then when they grow up and come out from under our authority, they head off to college and the suffocating pressure of a godless society and become brainwashed by humanism and end up discarding the belief that gave them no answers. Any belief that cannot answer profound questions is worthless and our children recognize that in abandoning their faith when it can answer nothing for them. Unbelieving professors in top universities know they will have students coming into their classes with Christian backgrounds and a lot of them like nothing better than to take their inherited belief system apart because they too know that their Christian students have no idea why they believe what they believe.

In order for Christian parents to avoid this harrowing possibility they are going to have to first learn the answers to our faith themselves, and then have a heart to heart about the subject with their children--otherwise, prepare to lose them to this reprobate culture. We owe it to them as parents, teachers, pastors, and as Christians. We also owe it to our savior, and we also owe it to the Father.

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE