By the time most of us get to university, we've been completely brainwashed. First our parents, then our teachers and to some extent our friends play such a huge role in determining what we believe that by the time we're undergraduates we don't know how to differentiate our own thoughts from those of others around us. So university, they say, is going to undo all this "teaching" and train us how to "think". Once we leave with a rolled up piece of paper that gives us yet another label (that of "educated degree-holder"), we're supposed to be the sole owners of our own minds. Sounds good so far.
But what really happens? As a student of the humanities, all I can say is that what you see is not what you get. Typically, or ideally, a university will teach you the accepted norms, and then teach you to question it. So we learn about racism and political anarchy, language and hedgemony, sexism and contradictory ideologies; we also learn about the body and the mind, truth and falsehood, God and man. Then we are told: there is no right and wrong, you make your own 'Soup a la Life' and try to impress us. So we undergraduates who were so comfortable being brainwashed are suddenly forced to make choices we don't know whether we even want to make. The freedom is ours, but the whole thing is really a trap.
Now I see you raising your eyebrows. University is a period of freedom where the mind-shackles are removed, where you become adults, and you let your soul become what you want it to be. But think about this:
- How many of us feel comfortable holding on to the traditional belief that there are fundamental differences between men and women?
- How many of us feel comfortable saying that "I believe my mother knows best for me"?
- How many of us feel comfortable saying that the universe was created in seven days by an all-powerful God, and then admitting that we don't really know how exactly?
- How many of us are comfortable saying that at the end of the day there are fundamental truths, and there is one ultimate Truth?
I don't think there are many of us in these groups. Even if there are, there are even less of us that are comfortable holding and asserting these opinions in the classroom where the mantra is feminism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, agnosticism, sexual liberalism, relativism and every other "ism" anybody ever came up with. True we have the freedom to choose what we want; but we are also subtly told what we should want.
Colossians 1:19-20 tells us that "it pleaseth the Father...by him to reconcile all things to himself"; does this not mean that these issues we face in the classroom can be reconciled to God? Then if through Christ all things are reconciled to God, do we see the truth of this statement in our classrooms at university? If we don't, then what are we doing about it? What are we doing to gain the necessary knowledge and Biblical understanding that allows us to reconcile these apparently irreconcilable issues of "modern education"? Do we even care?
As Christian Students struggling to hold our ground on a firm faith in God and Christian precepts, in a world that is constantly changing, life is full of contradictions. But we need to start facing these contradictions and figuring them out for ourselves, just like we do with everything else that we come across in our studies. We need to stop separating the classroom text from the Bible and the Bible from the rest of our lives. We need to start incorporating Christian values into what we discuss in classrooms, what we write in our essays and what we say in our exam answers. We need to start being Christians every where we are.