OPINION: Many People Abandon Their Faith in College

Of the many impressionable moments in a young person’s intellectual life, the most notable might be when they go to college. A recently updated compilation of studies from J. Warner Wallace suggests that the likelihood of students leaving the faith during these pivotal years is increasing as time goes on. 

These growing statistics, Wallace warns, “should alarm us enough as Church leaders to do something about this dilemma.” So how can the church hold students back from falling off the cliffs of faith into the jagged rocks of skepticism? Paul’s advice to a young church leader named Timothy might aid in the reversal of these disheartening statistics.

1 and 2 Timothy are letters of advice, admonition and encouragement from an experienced preacher to his protégé. In 2 Timothy, Paul charges him to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2). He could have stopped there. However, he did not; he continued: “Reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths,” (2 Tim. 4:2-4). 

Perhaps those who forget the rest of the passage are the reason these statistics are worsening. Now is the time that this verse is talking about. People have rejected truth to have their ears scratched.

This devastating process begins when young people are not taught the depths of their faith. On weak foundations students are sent to schools whose faculty largely reject Christianity. The church should not be surprised when students with flimsy theology forsake it for grounded falsehood. 

They are able to answer the question of salvation or even harder ones like the pro-life debate, but the problem of evil and the nature of Jesus Christ (how is He fully God and fully man?) cause doubtful or even heretical responses. It is the responsibility of church leaders and parents to teach their young to wade deep in the waters of theology, encountering the most pressing questions and patiently reproving any incorrect notions they might have along the way.

In rebuking and reproving, the church should not forego the simple virtue of exhortation. By this, Paul means to charge or make an appeal for something. It is not enough to warn against the false teaching of the world that students will most likely face. They must move toward something. 

As the tangible example of faith in the student’s life, they should lovingly display what it means to pursue God in the face of opposition, showing that conflicts and doubts about faith are not completely unraveling but vital in nurturing a strong apologetic of God.

Responsibility must not rest on the shoulders of church leaders and parents alone, however. Ultimately, the power in changing these outcomes lies in God, who bids us to ask anything of Him in the name of Jesus Christ, and we shall receive it (John 16:24). He is the one who, against the forces of academia or modern philosophies or anything else, will not let anything snatch us out of His hand (John 10:28).

In the task of raising the next generation of firm believers, past generations should patiently reprove and rebuke false teachings, not neglecting the hardest questions a young mind can face, but approaching the complexities of Christianity with the intent of preparing the student for future challenges. With complete reliance on God and assumption of responsibility to raise up children in the manner they should go (Prov. 22:6), generations now and to come will know that God is true, His word remains and nothing can take them away from that.

Bower is an opinion writer. Follow him on Twitter.