What you can expect in a very few years.. Will you swim against the tide, or drift in the current..

Welcome Week or Brainwash Bash?

After reading the first chapter of Fish Out of Water by Abby Nye, a fellow student of mine from high school, I’m realizing what I “missed out on” by attending a Christian college. Well, maybe I should be glad.

Abby’s first chapter discusses freshmen orientation week at her secular university. I thought back to my first week of college which included meaningful conversations with my RAs (Residence Assistants), a special chapel service, a square dance, light-hearted skits, and dinner with my new freshman hallmates. Orientation week left a wonderful imprint on my whole college experience.

Little did I know what friends like Abby were experiencing at their own places of higher education. Abby describes attending mandatory meetings that involved disclosing your personal views on homosexuality, crowd mixer sessions that encouraged (dating) behavior (with strangers), and a lecture that concluded with the statement that all religions are the same. What surprised Abby most was not that she was confronted with these liberal ideas, but that she was expected to accept them without comment. She writes:

Our institutions of higher education greet freshmen not as individuals on the threshold of adulthood, but as embodiments of group identity, largely defined in terms of blood and history, who are to be infantilized at every turn.

Kudos to Abby for speaking out about this forced infantilization. Her book serves as encouragement to any Christian college student seeking to swim upstream against the harsh current of postmodern brainwashing.

And for all those freshmen attending Christian colleges this fall, don’t complain about getting up at 6 a.m. for that sunrise praise and worship service.