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Aug 15, 2022 08:00am

Stories You Shouldn’t Hear at a Christian College

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I can’t tell you how many times my wife has said to me, “That happened? At my good Christian college?”

It’s kind of an inside joke . . . Whenever we hear about something scandalous happening at a Christian school, whether our alma mater or another college identifying with the faith, we react with mock surprise, as if it’s unthinkable that sin still happens in a place with a Christian denominational title in its name.

Don’t get me wrong, Christian colleges are still a far sight better in that regard than secular colleges simply because they have rules in place that attempt to prevent students from acting in an ungodly manner. But at the end of the day, people are people and they all have a sin nature. Not everyone who attends a Christian college is a Christian, and thus they won’t live by Christian standards.

For bright-eyed students fresh from the youth group and setting out from high school to their freshman year of college, however, that might come as something of a surprise. Certainly when I started college, I had unrealistic expectations that those around me would be just as excited about being at a Christian school as I was. And I assumed they would all have the same general opinions as I did about what qualified as sin and what we shouldn’t be doing even though we were adults now.

Of course, that is unfortunately not the case. While it will be fairly easy for a determined young disciple to find friends with the same mindset they have, that doesn’t mean everyone else attending the college will be the same. There are bound to be the secret partiers. The weekend binge drinkers. The undauntable flirts determined to seek out meaningless physical relationships. The scattershot gossipers. In any environment that where human beings are present, sin will be present. Christian college is no exception.

That is not to say that anyone should avoid Christian colleges, nor that Christian colleges are grimy dens of iniquity. I went four years to a Christian college without ever being offered drugs or invited to an alcohol-soaked rave or propositioned for premarital sex. Even though those activities no doubt went on in the lives of some of the people around me, it was hardly true of everyone on campus, nor do I believe it was the norm.

What matters most is who you spend your time with. Proverbs 12:26 says, “The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray,” and 1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character.” To avoid situations that could lead to sin, be careful to choose friends that will not lead you into those situations in the first place.

It is important, however, not to avoid certain groups of people just because there’s a broad-spectrum bad reputation about the group as a whole. Just because an athletic team gets a reputation doesn’t mean that everyone on the team is involved, nor that every athlete is inherently an unfaithful sinner. Just because a member of a certain academic department got caught in a sin doesn’t mean that everyone in that department deserves a black mark by association. Sometimes, one of the biggest problems in the most “righteous” students on campus is a holier-than-thou attitude that they should never associate with anyone from that group because of their sin.

So for those jumping into Christian college for the first time, don’t be surprised when word spreads of certain sins happening on campus. Don’t be surprised when you hear that so-and-so from the next town over is an atheist and only there for scholarships. Don’t be surprised that by being around people, you experience everything that comes with people, the good and the bad.

I wouldn’t trade my four years at a Christian college for anything. I made the sweetest friendships, had the deepest fellowship, and built some of the strongest parts of my relationship with God during that time. By all means, go to a Christian college. But don’t expect anyone around you to be perfect, and don’t feel the need to act like you are, either. Be authentic. Find the best friends you can. Be a witness to those who need it.

Christian college isn’t just a holy huddle. Just like anywhere else in the world, it’s a mission field if you let it be.