I was reading some snippets from different press releases about different things and I came across a quote from Dr. Phil Mitchell, PhD.. Dr. Mitchell used to be a professor of history at the University of Colorado. He got axed by the U of C after requiring his social history class students to read a book by author Charles Sheldon entitled, "In His Steps".

The University of Colorado has had a lot of press in the last couple of years, largely due to the remarks of one Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies, who made some remarkably terrible comments about the 9/11 attacks on our country. I won't give space to them here because I think most of us are familiar with them and if you want to suffer yourself to read them again, they're easy enough to dig up on the internet. Suffice it to say though, that after all of the defenses he's made of the remarks in his now infamous essay, he still claims that we brought it all upon ourselves because of our nation's poor foreign policies. Does this mean the maniacs who flew planes into the Trade Towers and the Pentagon and attempted to fly one into the White House were not responsible for their actions? Hardly.

The insulting thing is, Professor Churchill remains on the faculty at the University of Colorado at a salary of ninety grand a year. It's their choice I guess, but that's what it boils down to doesn't it? Choice? Professor Churchill responds by trying to smooth over his extremely insensitive and inflammatory remarks and he's just a beleaguered underdog promoting 'truth, justice and the American way', and must be kept on staff. Dr. Mitchell on the other hand must be removed, because, as a history professor, he had the audacity to make reading about the most important, most meaningful and most influential person in history, required for a course of study.

This is nothing new really. Jesus said;
24 If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father. 25 But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, 'They hated Me without a cause.' John 15:23-25

People are still hating Jesus without a cause. They hate Him because they don't know Him. If they did know Him the hate would be gone. This struggle between purposeless hatred and peace has not been more plainly demonstrated anywhere than on the University campuses around the world, but particularly the public university campuses of this nation.

I'm not against people going to college. Few things in life bring the kind of return to a person as does time invested in education, but nowadays, one has to be careful to be alert to certain things. We have an active high school youth group at our church, and one of the things our pastor has constantly encouraged the youth leaders to do is prepare college bound kids to be prepared for an assault on their faith. This is done by giving them a solid foundation in the Word, and in other ways too.

Sound like an extreme reaction? Maybe we should ask Dr. Mitchell. He said, "The truth is, universities are the most hostile, narrow-minded and intolerant environment in society." I think he knows what he's talking about. It makes a huge difference in your life to lose your job for something you shouldn't have been dismissed for, when you have a wife, six birth children and three you've adopted. He also said that, "Christian faculty and students face an atmosphere of unrelenting anger, prejudice, bigotry and discrimination."

It wasn't always like that. "Veritas Christos et Ecclesiae," or "Truth for Christ and the Church," used to be the motto of Harvard University when it was founded. On its crest it showed three books. One of them was turned down in order to represent the limits of mankind's knowledge. By contrast today, Harvard's crest sports three books, all of which are turned up and the motto has been simplified reading only, "Veritas", or "Truth". This is only a small example of how Jesus has been dismissed by so many campuses in favor of something more accepted by the world that hates His name.

I was not blessed with children. If I had them, and if they were headed off to a public university, I would take steps to ensure that they knew what they might be faced with. Often the attacks deal with peer pressure. I believe raising children in a way that gives them right decisions to make, thereby creating patterns of successes, will help them to see a friend's wrong influence for what it is and continue to make right decisions when it counts. Sometimes the attacks are more overt, and students are required to voice an opinion that brings consequences to deal with, even in the form of a bad grade. I know this because I've seen it, and there are plenty of stories about young Christian students who've gone to college and been overwhelmed and deceived by an intimidating teacher.

I admire guys like Dr. Mitchell, who take a stand for something they feel is important. I'm sure that if he'd backed down from his decision things might have gone more smoothly for him, but smooth isn't what Dr. Mitchell must have wanted. He wanted to be true to Jesus.