As this school year comes to an end, I hear parents talking about what university their children got into and how excited the family is about this next phase of life. As a university professor, I relate to this wholeheartedly. Raising your children to finish high school and go on to university is one of the biggest duties Christian parents will accomplish.

But there is a question Christian parents almost never ask: Why do we send our children into institutions that will work against the very faith we spent 18 years trying to instill?

You will routinely find professors lambasting Christianity in their classes as an oppressive colonizer religion that must be deconstructed.

No one says it that way, of course. Instead, the conversation sounds something like this: “We’ve found a good campus. There’s even a strong Christian student group.”

Now, let me say plainly: Those groups can be wonderful. I thank God for them. But pause for a moment and consider what that assumption reveals. You are already expecting that Christian community will exist outside the mission of the university. You are hoping your child will find a refuge within an otherwise hostile environment.

In other words, you are not sending your child into a place that reinforces truth, but into a storm, and praying they find a bunker. And you are probably paying tens of thousands of dollars to do it.

That should trouble us more than it does, because it wasn’t always this way. Institutions like Princeton, Harvard, and Yale were not founded as neutral arenas of inquiry. They were explicitly Christian. Their purpose was to cultivate piety, train ministers, and teach the knowledge of God to all students.

Universities have always had a vision of truth. The only difference now is that the vision has changed.

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Today’s university is not neutral. It is structured around a set of ideas that systematically undermine Christianity while presenting themselves as morally superior. Take the influence of Michel Foucault. Students are taught, often implicitly, that truth is not something discovered but constructed. Knowledge is tied to power. What earlier generations called “truth,” we are told, is really just the perspective of those who happened to win.

Then there is Paulo Freire, whose approach to education has become foundational in teacher training and pedagogy. Education, in this view, is not about learning what is true but about liberating the oppressed. The world is divided into oppressors and oppressed, and students are trained to dismantle the oppressors.

Guess which category Christianity lands in?

Add to this the ever-present language of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” along with intersectionality. These frameworks redefine truth itself as something tied to identity. Moral authority is assigned based on lived experience, and disagreement is often recast as harm.

The Bible, under this lens, is no longer read as the word of God. It is treated as a cultural artifact, one that has historically supported systems of oppression.

None of this is presented as an attack on Christianity. That would be too obvious. Or at least, you would have thought so even 10 years ago. But now you will routinely find professors lambasting Christianity in their classes as an oppressive colonizer religion that must be deconstructed.

And all of this is framed to the students as compassion and empathy. It is justice. It is only fair. And “that’s not fair!” is a very powerful argument for university students.

Young people have a strong instinct for fairness. When they hear, “That’s not fair,” they lean in. But what they are rarely told is that the definition of fairness itself has been quietly replaced.

Disagreement is recast as harm, hierarchy becomes injustice, and truth becomes a tool of whoever is in power. The Bible is a social construct invented by the patriarchy to retain power.

First comes disorientation: “Everything I learned growing up is being questioned.”

Then pressure: “If you don’t agree, you’re part of the problem.”

Then isolation: fewer Christian friends, fewer edifying conversations. More immoral filth where “love is love” is used to justify the basest forms of lust.

Then internal shift: Doubt feels like intellectual maturity.

And finally, exit or compromise. Some abandon the faith outright. Others keep the label but redefine it until it fits comfortably within the system that once challenged it.

Parents are often blindsided by this. They assume education is neutral. Sure, they had atheist professors and the standard left-wing nut, but those professors were just that: nuts.

Now, the crazy is normalized and the sane, holy, and faithful are institutionalized. Don’t assume that if your child finds a good group, everything will be fine.

This is not a neutral environment occasionally disrupted by bad ideas. It is an environment structured in a particular direction, with occasional pockets of resistance. Those Christian groups we celebrate are the bastions, not the foundation.

So what should parents do?

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First, don’t just ask whether your children will succeed academically or professionally. Ask whether they will remain faithful to Christ. Help them equip themselves with the armor of God described in Ephesians chapter 6.

Second, prepare them intellectually. They need to understand not only what they believe, but why, and how it contrasts with the frameworks they will encounter. Teach them the Bible and the historic Christian faith.

Third, help your children make faith in Christ their own. This is not merely an intellectual enterprise. Teach your children to love Christ and put their trust in salvation by Christ alone. When they know Him as their savior and trust His promises, they will stand firmly in that day of spiritual battle.

Third, expose hostile frameworks early. Teach them about Foucault, Freire, and the assumptions behind DEI before they hear those ideas in a classroom. If they have already heard the anti-Christian, anti-Bible arguments because you covered them together as preparation, they will be ready to dismantle them.

Fourth, stay engaged. Ask what their professors are teaching. You can look up their professors on the university webpages. Their bios probably won’t say “DEI anti-Christian radical,” but you will get a good sense of what they think by looking at their published works and conference presentations.

Above all, stop assuming neutrality where none exists. This is a spiritual battle of good vs. evil.

The real question is not whether universities shape your children’s beliefs. They will. The question is whether you will prepare your child to recognize that shaping and to stand firm in the truth.

Because if Christ is Lord of all truth, then no institution gets to undermine Him under the guise of “social justice advocacy.”

All parents should prepare their children for this spiritual reality. These university professors want your child’s soul.