I have been asked several times if I have seen the film God is Not Dead. I mostly laugh off the question by telling people that I have limited time and money budget for films and Winter Soldier took up all the allotted funds.
That answer is partially true. I would rather see the Captain America movie than watch Hercules as an evil Philosophy professor. Generally, Christian movies don't have a great reputation for being well made or nuanced (yes, I realize that I just implied that a Marvel comic movie has more nuance than Christian films. I defy anyone to prove me wrong). Winter Soldier on the other hand, flipped the entire Marvel film universe upside down! Seriously, see this film.
As I understand the premise, God is Not Dead is about a college student who is bullied into acknowledging that God doesn't exist by zealously Atheist philosophy professor. The student is threatened with a failing grade if he chooses to acknowledge God's existence without proving it to a degree that is satisfying for the professor. I can see why people would want me to see this film. I am a missionary to the University world and I have Philosophy degree. From the outside looking in, I may seem like the target audience for a film like this. In actuality, I have gone from not caring about the movie, to being disturbed by its existence (which yes, will lead me to actually seeing it).
I went to a Christian high school and public University. I have spent significant time in both the Christian and secular education worlds. While I was in high school, scores of recruiters from Christian colleges visited our school. They emphasized not only their educational standards, but their mission to raise Christians who could combat secularism and fight the good intellectual fight for the faith. To listen to these recruiters, there was an army of professors who saw it as their life mission to torpedo the faith of thousands of incoming freshmen every year. Going to these Christian schools would not only protect your faith, but would make you an agent for good that could beat back these influencers.
If you know my story, you know that I not only went to Washington State University, but had a profound re-introduction to Jesus. The faith decisions that I made at my secular college continues to influence my life, both personally and vocationally. In my studies, I was never asked to abandon my faith or ridiculed for having it. As a philosophy major, I wrote about Jesus and his influence in almost every paper I wrote. If I saw an opportunity to juxtapose Jesus and Kant, I took it. As long as I made good and thoughtful arguments, I was never punished for my views. My grades were fine and the higher level my classes were in my major, the more my own thoughts and opinions were welcomed. As far as I know, none of my professors shared my beliefs, but that didn't cause them to deride them. While I was a middle of the road student, the two most accomplished students in my class were also professing Christians.
Somewhere between 50-75% of incoming Christian freshman college students will leave the faith by the time they are 30 (according the Pew Research Group and Barna). That is a sobering fact. No one seems to totally understand how to stem the tide. Concerned parents, pastors and church-goers want to understand why. It seems like in humanity, we prefer simple answers that make intuitive sense, rather than complicated answers that draw from a variety of sources. Universities become the villains in the narrative that surrounds this exodus. Sometimes it is simpler to narrow that villainy to the professors. I also can imagine that there are enough stories of particularly militant professors out there to create a confirmation bias ("my best friends cousin's nephew was told that only science can be fact"). Truth be told, I have looked for simple solutions to a complex problem in my desire to be more effective on campus.
InterVarsity's (my employer) vision is to see "Students and Faculty Transformed, Campuses Renewed and World Changers Developed". I will be the first to admit that "Campuses Renewed" feels like the most daunting task. Campus renewal is a huge call, that requires not only a desire to see the campus be more Christ-centered, but a deep and authentic love for the University. That is my actual issue with God is Not Dead. I love the universities. I see the ones in my Area as my home. I love the environment of learning. I agree John Ortberg's statement that "ignorance is the devil's tool, that God is the God of truth". As long as Universities serve as the mustache twirling villains in the Christian imagination, they are not places to be renewed, but to be torn down.
I am deeply grateful for my college education. My philosophy degree serves me every day. I learned how to think and how to reason. I learned how to form effective arguments. I learned that I don't get to take my ball and go home when I don't like what someone else is saying (I also am aware that in most of my classes, I would have been docked for that cliche).
I also can freely acknowledge that WSU was and is not perfect. In fact it was pretty screwed up. In my 14 years in the Palouse, we rarely go a year without an ugly racial or sexually motivated hate crime emanating from my Alma Mater. Drinking is a real issue, and it leads to death, sexual coping and wasted years that do not result in degrees. Pervasive loneliness drives hundreds of students into video game addictions that remove people from real community and relationships.
And yes, while there are about a dozen Christian groups active, only about 10% of the campus is engaged in Christian community. The exodus is alive and well at WSU.
Dallas Willard commented that general attitude towards God at universities is not hostility, but irrelevance. Students are not told that their faith is a matter of the lack of intelligence, but it is actually minimized to being a insignificant part of who they are. Students are told by pastors and parents that they are supposed to "put God first", yet they spend almost all of their time working on majors that seem to them to be completely disconnected to their faith. On the campuses that I work, God is not dead, he is "cute". How is a weekly one-hour Bible study, or worse, a twice a year trip to a home church supposed to compete with such a pervasive message?
I think that we need to help students see that their majors and their studies are important parts of their own faith lives and of God's purposes in the world. God IS a God of truth. God loves knowledge and is the author of all knowledge. Their faith belongs in the classroom, because without God their is no classroom.
Jesus was more than a teacher, but he was still a teacher. Jesus educated people. He called his followers to follow him with their hearts, strength and minds. The message that the university needs is not that God exists, but that he matters. He matters in engineering, biology, sociology, politics and yes, in philosophy.
Too many students come into college with the message; "find a nice Christian group, hunker down and don't lose your faith". What would it look to invite our students to engage the campus, learn all you can learn, find God's fingerprints in your major and point them out until others can also see?
I think that if everyone could see the campus that I see fear would be replaced by compassion and excitement about what could happen. Millions of students every year are exposed to teachings that can change their lives and their communities. Now we have to learn how to get better at helping that experience be part of their faith development. We need to lay down our fear, and ask God for new eyes to see. We need to repent of any fear of knowledge that we have and instead ask for God to be revealed. We can only learn what God already knows. Jesus, as God in the flesh, was the smartest person to ever walk the earth, and he was called "teacher". Let us walk in the footsteps of our creator, savior and teacher.
