'Tis graduation season. High School graduates are ready to take on the new adventure of college. I have 4 pieces of advice for Christian students entering the lion's den of college.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. We walked into church on Sunday yesterday and there were these tables set up and a booth on each table for each of the kids that are graduating from high school. And each booth had a couple of things about each of the kids and if they were going to college, where they're going to college next
year and one of the kids is going to Yale. to college, where they're going to college next year.
And one of the kids is going to Yale. I've never met this kid before. So I sought him out and said, hello. We only had about a minute or so. But I was thinking, what would my advice be to this young man, young Christian man
who's going off into the lion's den? Do you have any graduates that you know?
Tis the season, right? Kids graduating high school, going off to college, grandkids perhaps for you. And what do we do with that now? It's very different than even just a few decades ago. What do you say to a young man or woman who's going off into the lion's den?
I was walking down the hall of the church and there's another guy at the church around my age who went to Princeton. And he said, hey, did you meet the Yale kid? I was like, oh yeah, yeah. I wish I saw him a couple of weeks ago. I would have told him not to do it.
Don't go there. Joking. And then he immediately said, nope, too late for that. Only positive thoughts. We're only doing positive thoughts now. He's in, he accepted, he's going. Positive thoughts. So I got thinking about some positive thoughts for this young man and any man. I guess woman too, but in my head I was thinking a man. Maybe I have some
extra pieces of advice for women going off to college too. Advice to young men going off to college and really these days it young men going off to college, and really these days, it doesn't matter where you're going. There's very few places that are not completely lost. So you have to be completely ready and you have to have the armor of God. This young man is going to major in physics and
philosophy. He went to a classical school here in town. If you have any younger kids or younger grandkids, I recommend a classical school, classical Christian school to send your kids to. They're phenomenal. But this guy, this kid, is gonna study physics and philosophy. What beautiful majors to worship God. My goodness, study the physical world of God's creation and study the love of wisdom. That's what philosophy means. Of course, the philosophy departments have
strayed from this in horrific ways, but philosophy literally means the love of wisdom. So you can study God's creation and the laws of physics that he created, we've merely discovered, and then spend your time studying the love of wisdom. What a wonderful way to worship God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. But you have to do it with the whole armor of God. One last thought of Yale and then I'll broaden it out. The president of Yale in 1937. So all the
Ivy League schools started off as seminaries, we talked about that before, and they've strayed many times since then, maybe never more than right now. But in 1937, the president of Yale said, I call on all the members of the faculty as members of a thinking body freely
to recognize the tremendous validity and power of Christ in our life and death struggle against the forces of selfish materialism. If we lose that struggle, judging from present events abroad, scholarship as well as religion will disappear. Scholarship as well as religion. I would argue that the religion at these schools certainly has disappeared, and in many cases the scholarship has as well. So this president of Yale in 1937 nailed it. All right, so my advice to Christian kids
going off to college. First, know that you are going to battle. Now, battle doesn't mean that you need to be combative all the time, but you're going into enemy territory. C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity,
a longer quote, but let me do it. He said, one of the things that surprised me is C.S. Lewis, when I first started reading the New Testament seriously, was that it talked so much about a dark power in the universe, a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the power behind death and disease and sin. This dark power was created by God and was good when he was created, but then rebelled and went wrong. Thus, the universe is at war, a civil war, a rebellion, and we are living in a part of
the universe occupied by the dark power that is rebelling against good. Enemy occupied territory. That is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise as one of us, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. So when you go to church, you're really listening in to the secret communications from our friends.
That is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going to church or reading the Bible. He does it by playing on our conceit and pride and laziness and intellectual snobbery. Plenty of that at the elite institutions. I know some will ask me, do you really mean at this time of day to reintroduce our old friend the devil? Hoofs and horns and all? Well what the time of day has to do with it I do not know and I'm not particular about the hoofs and horns. Yet in other respects my answer is yes I do. But I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance.
If anybody really wants to know him, I would say to that person, don't worry, if you really want to know him, the devil, better you will. Whether you'll like him when you do is another question. You're going to college to learn, but learning doesn't mean that whatever you hear is true or good but it's still good to learn to learn what the enemy is saying to learn what other people think who are wrong even if they are wrong and maybe you'll learn things
that are true and good and right and that's great take those with you but learning what is wrong can also make you even wiser and can strengthen your arguments as well because the devil is going to come at you with some good stuff, effective stuff. Are you prepared? Learn along the way so you can get prepared. Milton Friedman said he was very grateful for Karl Marx, made him a better economist.
It can be true for all of us. The enemy can make you stronger. So go into the barracks of the enemy and learn, learn, learn as much as you can. Another thing that C.S. Lewis was talking there, this is my second point,
while you're in enemy-occupied territory, is go to church, right? C.S. Lewis was talking about how the enemy's gonna try to keep you from going to church in college. Go to church. You have to connect, reconnect with the source of truth all the time. Certainly every week, every day, in other ways, but you have to go to church. If you
don't get your recharging, I'll use that word, I can't think of maybe a better word, but you're with me. If you get your recharging, if you don't get your recharging from God at church, you'll get it somewhere else at college. And of college and there's plenty of other places that the devil wants you to go to recharge or have fun or sin or rest or whatever using all these sins to try to keep you away from from God. People think that they need these other things in order to thrive. Nope. Church? Go. Go to a church. Find a local church. Maybe it's even disconnected from the school, disconnected from the campus.
Maybe safer that way. but go every week. Everyone else is gonna be hung over on Sunday morning. You're gonna be a church instead and your life trajectory every single week will be completely different because of it. And at the end of four years,
you'll be in a totally different place because you dedicated even just those Sunday mornings. So first order of business is to learn, recognize you're in battle. Now again, that doesn't mean be combative, but just know you're in enemy occupied territory.
Second point, go to church. Third, Matthew 10, 16, behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves." Love that scripture. We have to be wise, so we have to avoid the traps that are set up for us, but you also got to be innocent. You would need to serve God blamelessly as you proceed. The enemy is gonna try to take you out and there's
a lot of shiny things at college, more so than anywhere else, maybe in the whole country. Shininess is all over the place, fun, fun, fun everywhere. But consider, is it? Or is it just the devil trying to take you out? Now, I'm not trying to be a prude here. Some of it's awesome, good fun,
and you gotta take part in all the opportunities that you think are good, but not all of them are. Fourth point, my advice to kids going to college, if you go to an elite school, you must constantly remember you're not better than anyone. One of the tools the devil uses against people, especially in elite schools, is pride.
And even in the elite schools, people are so ingrained with eliteness that they make elite things in the elite schools. So you go to an elite college, but that's not enough. You have to create a group inside the college that's elite. And then literally, the New York Times wrote an article about this,
about elite groups at Yale that are setting up elite subsections of the elite groups in the elite colleges. And it just goes forever. And it can really affect your soul. And very easily get you to think
that you're better than everyone else who isn't in this group anymore. First Corinthians 1 27, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
And I'll share verse three or chapter three, 18 to 20. Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you're wise by the standards of this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile. There's a lot of fools on college campuses. Now, some of them are in charge of your grade,
so you don't need to call them out every opportunity. Be wise in how you share the truth. But know that even outside these ivory halls, there are the Gothic architecture and all the rest. Just know that there's a lot of people out there who don't have the fancy degrees, but have read the Bible in and out and have more common
sense than anyone inside these Ivy League schools and they may be a hillbilly, they may talk like a hillbilly, they may sound like a hillbilly and look like one, but they're wiser than all the professors put together inside of these universities and I know that's true. Fourth point or fifth point, whatever one I'm on, armor of God. Ephesians 6 10, finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. I love this part, before you put on the armor you have to be strong, then you put on the armor. This is important, if you're
weak, the armor of God doesn't do any good. You got to be strong first. Now, I wanna save this for, we should maybe do this the rest of the week. We'll see how the rest of the week goes with news, but Martin Lloyd Jones listed all the ways that Christians waste their strength. They waste their strength, and they apply to college in profound ways. Let me actually share them tomorrow
because it applies to us beyond just college too. We'll save those for tomorrow. But be strong and then put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Take up the whole armor of God and stand, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the
fiery darts of the wicked one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God." Man, how good is that? Just study that, meditate on that, pray that all the time. Print that out, put it on your wall. Praying always with all power and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints and for me that utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains,
that in it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. That is my prayer also for every Christian college student going into the lion's den. Speak boldly, fear the same for what is true. Mike Slater dot locals.com is the website. If you want to go there, the transcript, and there's no commercials. If you want to listen to it every day over on the website, Mike Slater dot locals dot com is the website. If you want to go there, the transcript, and there's no commercials, if you want to listen to it every day, over on the website, Mike
If you want to listen to it every day over on the website, Mike Slater dot locals dot com is the website. If you want to go there, the transcript, and there's no commercials, if you want to listen to it every day, over on the website, Mike Slater dot locals dot com.
