There are traps and snares for the college aged Christian. Here are 5 of the most deadly ones.
Don't Believe Everything you Hear
When I went to college and even though it was a Christian college, the way some of the students lived was anything but Christian. I heard all sorts of skepticism from the students but I also heard it, disappointingly, from the faculty too. Not only can you not believe everything you hear at college, you cannot believe everything you read. Why a Christian bookstore and library would offer books that criticized the authenticity of the Bible is beyond me. I looked at it this way; a book that says that the Bible is untrustworthy because it was written by men I would ask, “Well, who wrote the book that is criticizing the Bible? An angel? No, it was written by man too but it has no archeological support or historical support to prove what he was writing about and it never claims that it was inspired by the Spirit of God as does the Bible (2 Tim 3:16). How ironic that a book written by a man would critique the Bible because it was written by men!
Running with the Crowd
The Bible shows that most of the time, the majority was wrong and that frequently, the minority was the only ones who were right so if you’re in college or if you’re a young Christian adult and someone tells you that “everybody’s doing it” remind them that just because most people think its okay doesn’t mean that it’s right. Right and wrong is never established by using words like “everyone” and “you should” and because “all the others” are doing something. Anytime someone uses the world “always, never, everyone,” and “all” you know it’s probably not true. If someone invited you to go out on the town with the rest of them you might ask them where they are going, what they plan on doing, and when do they expect to return? The Bible is clear that “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Prov 13:20).
Neither a Borrower nor Lender Be
You know someone who’s probably a procrastinator don’t you? They keep putting things off again and again until they finally end up never doing it. I had someone who owed me money for years and he swore that he was going to pay me back after he got some of his bills caught up but he never did. Instead, I later saw him driving a brand new car. He wasn’t really interested in paying me back so I vowed to never loan him money again. It’s never a good idea to loan money to someone but especially family or a college dorm roommate. If you’re a college age student, loaning money to a dorm roommate might be just as bad as loaning money to a family member. If they keep procrastinating on paying you back or they never do, this could be cause for a serious rift in your relationship with them. The problem with a roommate is that you’re stuck with them. You’ve got little choice but to live with them so the best advice is to neither borrow money (unless you are 100% certain you can pay it back when you say you’ll pay it back) or to lend money. Money can separate even the closest of friends.
Procrastinating
The first thing to address is for those who have never even begun college or have not yet made a decision. From what I have been able to discover from speaking to some college students and some who never went, even though they had plans, the longer you put off this decision, the harder the decision to go to college will be. I was going to write about procrastination in the first paragraph but I kept putting it off (kidding to make my point). If I kept putting it off, I would likely have never written about this subject but it’s often an overlooked one. Another thing this subject addresses is homework assignments. In college, I tried to always do the most difficult thing first so that it would get easier as the week progressed. If you get the most time-sensitive and most difficult assignments done first, you’ll be less likely to procrastinate on the rest of your assignments. People that do things in the reverse order; that is the easiest things first will find that the last, most difficult assignments will get harder and harder to do the closer they get to the due date. You might even end up with a late assignment and being graded appropriately for it. Here’s a way to tackle your assignments, even if they seem overwhelming. Take the number of assignments and then divide them by the number of days that you have to do them or when they are due, and then do as much as each day requires. Break them down by assignment and again, as I might suggest, start with the hardest subjects first. Your homework assignments might look like a mountain but you can move a mountain; you just have to do it one stone at a time.
No Time for God
This is one of the greatest risks for the college student or the young adult who moves out on their own. The more you neglect the Word of God, the Bible, the further you’ll drift away from God. The same goes for worship. Most colleges have churches nearby and some have their own place of worship. If you neglect Bible study just because you’re busy or you decide to just sleep in on Sundays, you will find yourself drifting further and further away from God and from praying. The longer the separation, the harder it will be to get back into it. The last thing I heard was that about 86% of all young people who went off to college abandon their faith and that is a tragic loss. When there is no time for God, there’ll be no time for prayer, when there’s no time for prayer, there’s no conviction between what is right and wrong and before you know it you’ll have a serious drift toward the sinful pleasures of the world and anyone that chooses to sin is really choosing to suffer.
Conclusion
College is a serious step in life. The young college student is stepping into enemy territory and he will try to fill your head with doubt about God’s way and God’s existence. You’ll be tempted to start running with the crowd and that can lead to grievous sinful activities. Then you’ll keep putting off and taking your college assignments seriously. And finally, there’ll be no time for God anymore and you’ll drift further and further away from God and as a result, sinful patters will start to develop and soon, you’ll start to pay consequences for those choices and for that neglect. These are five serious traps that every college-aged Christian should avoid.
Article by Pastor Jack Wellman