Does College Turn Our Daughters (or Sons) Away From God?

I have been kind of following a particular fundamentalist blogger on social media for a little over 6 months now, who shall remain unnamed because I think her beliefs are toxic and legalistic and I don’t want to drive more people to her posts. But she is not alone in her belief that college is a bad place for children raised in Christian homes to go, and this has been on my mind a lot lately.

Every couple of weeks, this blogger posts on social media something along these lines: Women, do not send your daughters to college unless you want them to become feminists and lesbians with a lot of debt. Everyone in college is drinking and fornicating, and this is a bad environment for our daughters. Women are better off skipping college and finding some way to make money from home rather than being indoctrinated into Marxism.  Men don’t want a woman more educated than them, and all college does is drive them into the workplace and away from God’s will for them, which is to marry, have children, and submit to their husbands.

Now, don’t get me wrong, being a wife and a mother is a wonderful thing, and I don’t disagree that children are better off with mom than in daycare.  But I don’t get to make that decision for every woman, and it’s between them, their husbands, and God how they raise their children.

Back to the idea of college…there is no doubt that there are ideas Christians disagree with being taught in colleges, even in Christian colleges. But there are also ideas out on the internet, in the news, in the workplace, in the grocery store and on and on that are contrary to the way many Christians raise their children.  While in our homes, it can be tempting to try to insulate our children from every evil thing out there, but this will not stop them from walking away from YOUR faith when they are grown if the faith does not become THEIR faith.

And this, I believe, is the mistake this supposedly loving blogger makes every time she issues an edict to try and convince young parents (mainly moms) that if they follow her rules, they will not have children grow up to be prodigals.  Every time one of these posts goes up, I see many women commenting about how this was not their college experience, and I do not think they are unique.  Many of us graduated with little or no debt and a faith that blossomed in college when we were challenged and had to decide what we believed and why we believed it. Some met godly spouses in college. My own children and many of their friends that have gone to college joined college ministries and sought Christian friends even while on a secular campus, and some have even had the opportunity to share their faith as part of a class discussion.

I was thinking the other day about some of my friends with prodigals, and it was interesting to note that most of the ones I thought of who had walked away from the faith they were raised in did NOT go to college.  In fact, several of them have faithful siblings that DID go to college.  If I were this blogger, I would definitively state that college DOES NOT drive our children away from the faith based on my experience and the experience of my friends.  But I cannot do that, because that is not what I believe. (I say this because this blogger/influencer says what she does about college based on people she knows who experienced this, although her own children who went to college are reportedly faithful adults.)  

So, what makes the difference in our children and whether they walk in faith as adults or not?  It’s simple, and not really something in our control: Are they regenerated?  Do they have a personal belief in Jesus Christ and his power to save them from their sins, or do they just parrot what you taught them because they live in your house?  A regenerated person is not going to be pulled into unbelief just by hearing something that is different than what they believe, but someone who is not regenerated may or may not come to a different conclusion when they get out of your home and encounter different beliefs.

Is there anything we can do to prevent our children from growing up to be prodigals?  There are no guarantees, but here are some things that we can do:  Love our children.  Pursue their hearts.  Teach them the truth, but make sure they know we love and accept them no matter what their lives look like.  Don’t set a bunch of rules they can learn to break; live by the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. And above all, pray.  Pray for them every single day, from before they are born until the day you die. You can’t believe for them, but you can love them the way Christ loves them, and He loved us by dying for us even when we were yet sinners. And that applies whether they walk in your faith as an adult or not.  You will NEVER have an impact on your prodigal if you have no relationship with them because they are making choices you disagree with.

And, for heaven’s sake, stop trying to come up with formulas or checklists for others to live by. God does not call all people to be married or parents.  If you think that, you are missing whole parts of the Bible that say otherwise.  What I have tried to teach my girls is to follow God all the days of their lives, and as such, they have always had my blessing to do whatever He leads them to, even if I wish that path was different. I’m proud of all of them for the adults they are becoming. And I recognize that seasons of life can be different for all of us; not everyone gets married young (or at all) and has a lot of children.  And that’s okay. I can’t keep them locked up in my home doing “advanced homemaking” until a husband appears.  Because we don’t know if that is going to happen, and there is a lot of Kingdom work that needs to be done.  Just do the next right thing until God changes the plan.  And use whatever gifts you have been given to build your part of the wall.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”

Romans 12:1-8