Thank you for your comment. I am glad you found it helpful, and I’m very glad that you are excited about the prospect of spending your college years here at Covenant!

I have a good friend who encourages students attending secular institutions to engage in what he refers to as “double study” – the purposeful and systematic study of a parallel curriculum which helps the student think biblically about the frameworks, issues, questions, and answers presented in academic courses taught by professors who don’t acknowledge that in Jesus Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. His reasoning – with which I wholeheartedly agree – is that, without such parallel study, there is virtually no way for the Christian student to filter through the inaccuracies, fragmentation, and falsehood that will be their daily fare in the classroom. Campus ministries can help to some degree, but I know of very few campus ministers who are sufficiently competent in the academic disciplines to be able to help students with this complex and crucial task. The result is most often a radical separation between academic and spiritual life: souls nourished while minds (i.e. thinking, “taking every thought captive in obedience to Christ”) are lost. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you (and your father) to read Nancy Pearcey’s book Total Truth; she does an outstanding job in explaining and drawing out the implications of this separation.

One of our philosophy professors, recently retired, contends that throughout our lives we are confronted and bombarded with “conceptual recommendations” – appeals to us for what to believe, what to love, what to value, what to hope for. Without a well-formed biblical framework, properly informed across disciplines and touching every aspect of life, it is indeed unlikely that a person will be able thoroughly to think Christianly, i.e. according to the preeminence of Christ in all things.

Note that I’m speaking of the framing of a student’s mind – what and how they think about everything. I’m not here addressing the issue of the context of learning – the potential impact and influence of a secular campus. Tom Wolfe’s disturbing novel I Am Charlotte Simmons – which I do NOT recommend to you because of its graphic language – chronicles the moral demise of a young Christian woman on a university campus, with descriptions of campus life which can’t be denied. But that’s another topic.

Your phrase “from a financial aspect,” which I take to refer to your father’s concern about getting a good job, is very interesting to me. First of all, Covenant has a fine record of graduates who do well: they find jobs, they support their families, they give generously to churches and other causes. Our two sons (a senior and a sophomore) are being well-prepared for what will come next, and we are confident that they will find pathways through which they will thrive. But I don’t want to miss the opportunity to say that college is – MUST be – about more than the ramp-up to a good job. There is no period in life where minds and hearts are more comprehensively and even permanently shaped, and it is, in my opinion, a huge risk to sacrifice the opportunity to learn to think, love, and live Christianly for the sake of an entry-level job. (I’d love to share my own story in this regard.)

I hope this helps. I’d be delighted to continue this conversation, both with you and with your father. Thanks for taking the time to engage my blog.

Blessings –

Niel Nielson
President

“Students who study in such settings simply will not learn to think Christianly – unless there is, alongside the “normal” curriculum, some comprehensive and systematic study that demonstrates the preeminence of Jesus Christ and the biblical reality that in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3), and does so for every academic discipline which the student studies.”
By saying this, do you mean that a student who attends a secular university without having a “comprehensive and systematic study that demonstrates the preeminence of Jesus Christ…and does so for every academic discipline which the student studies” is unable to think Christianly?

Also, thank you for your attention to the dangers of a secular education. What a blessing to know I will spend those four important years at Covenant College!

Well said! As we struggle with pragmatism at the K-12 level, it is my hope that K-12 insitutions and Christian colleges, like Covenant, will start to form relationships to work together. I am thankful that we (WCA in Huntsville, AL) have begun that process with CC. Hopefully you will start to see more of our students attending CC. I pray for you often. Also, welcome to the world of blogging (monroebridge.blogspot.com)!