“In the last year or so, though, I’ve come to an odd realization about the prospect of sending my daughters to college. It might sound like back-peddling at first, but I would contend it’s simply a more accurate way of expressing my concerns. I would be happy to help my daughters go to the biggest, dumbest, most prestigious apostasy factory in the country on two conditions: they were 28 and married.
For years, I primarily attributed the high rate at which Christian kids give up the faith in college to the constant onslaught of attacks on Christianity (and sanity) which have become commonplace on college campuses, both in the classroom and on the quad. While this onslaught cannot be ignored, I’ve lately begun to think apostasy rates have more to do with the age at which young Christians are being made to bear the attacks on their faith. Simply put, the problem is the eighteen-ness of it all.
Obviously, people quit the faith in their late 20s and 30s, as well, but they do so for very different reasons than Christian kids who have just arrived at college. Apostasy in later life often emerges in the wake of some significant sin, especially adultery. For mature Christians, adultery and apostasy are often connected. Adultery is a big decision, though. It entails crossing an unambiguous line and requires a brazen willingness to turn one’s back on a well-established life, even if that life is also incredibly vexing and unsatisfying. Adultery feels momentous, final, portentous, even uncanny.
Quitting the faith at eighteen or nineteen doesn’t feel quite the same. It’s far, far easier. It takes far less.”
-from Apostasy In College on The Classical Teaching Institute blog
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There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. 