Sounds like a no-win situation. With an intellectual establishment generally hostile to the Christian faith, Christian students face lots of challenges in university classrooms. Yet, the conflicts you face on campus can be a good thing. The intellectual, moral and spiritual issues that divide Christians and non-Christians will become very clear; prayer, scripture, and your church will emerge — more than ever before — as real sources of power; and you will be fighting the good fight on the front lines.

The end result is worth it, so how can you deal with the daily slings and arrows of an outrageous professor? How can you be an effective witness for Christ — both to the professor and the rest of the class — in a hostile atmosphere? It is one thing to be martyred for your faith (thankfully, things don’t typically go that far in college classrooms). But you also need to pass the course!

My suggestions, rooted in the study of how a Biblical worldview can interact with secular thought, stem from my experience running the academic gamut. From a student in secular universities — freshman through Ph.D. — to a professor at both secular and Christian colleges, I know how students act and professors think.

Realize Your Advantage
"I have more understanding than my teachers," wrote the psalmist, "for I meditate on your statutes" (Psalm 119:99). This doesn’t mean that by studying the Bible you know more than your professors about calculus or the Taft Hartley Act, but it does spell out one clear advantage you have in the academic world — especially today.

Having rejected God over the last two centuries, our intellectual establishment has run up against the dead end Christians predicted they would encounter. Without God, there is no basis for truth, morality, logic or beauty. Sadly, instead of turning to God, many academicians conclude that "truth is relative, everyone creates his own reality and there are no absolutes." Academics don’t have a foundation for truth. Christians do.

The biblical worldview is so much bigger, deeper and more complex than the secularists’. Human-made theories tend to latch on to a small detail of reality — whether one that debases human beings or one that exalts them past all measure — then stretch it to account for all of life. Christians have the big picture — human beings are both depraved sinners and bearers of God’s image. You have nothing to fear. If, and only if, you have meditated long and hard on God’s Word, you know more than your teachers do.

Be Excellent
The Bible says, "be above reproach" (1 Timothy 3:2). Christians often have the reputation in academia for being anti-intellectual, narrow-minded and willfully ignorant. This is because, in many cases, they are. To gain respect in academic circles, prove those preconceptions wrong.

Be prepared for class. Study the assignments. Work hard for the professor. Show an interest. Participate in class. You have no idea how much professors appreciate this.

Many students are so apathetic, so cynical about their education, so oblivious to using their minds, that Christians, again, have an advantage. Believe it or not, professors in faculty lounges and the pages of professional journals across the country can be heard saying, "These Christians are about the only ones among my students who care about ideas!"

Respect Authority
The Bible says that you may have more understanding than your teacher. It also says, however, that the teacher has authority over his student. "I would not obey my teachers or listen to my instructors," laments the foolish son in Proverbs. "I have come to the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly" (Proverbs 5: 13-14).

Show respect for your professor, if not for the person, for the office (which is, like all "secular" vocations, a calling ordained by God). Respect and deference toward teachers have become rare in today’s egalitarian youth culture. Most professors will love you for it.

Conversely, professors resent it when students try to dominate their class — launching into long tirades, getting the class off onto a meandering and pointless discussion and otherwise taking up valuable and limited class time for something only one student is interested in. Like major league umpires, they also hate being showed up — dealing with an in-your-face attitude or being made to look bad.

See your professors privately if you want to pursue a long question or want to argue with her. Professors, on the whole, appreciate student visitors during office hours.

A Winsome Weapon
Thankfully, respect for authority and active class participation aren’t mutually exclusive. Do participate in class discussions. This is a forum for you to challenge what seems wrong and, importantly, raise alternatives for your classmates.

Though you may often be put on the defensive about your faith, it is easier to be proactive and play offense. Paul encouraged the church at Corinth, saying, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God" (2 Corinthians 10: 5). Ancient warriors had two kinds of weapons for "demolishing strongholds" (10:4). The most familiar to us is the heavy weight for bashing down doors. The other, lesser known, is a long, sharp probe that was inserted between two stones in the wall. By working the probe as a lever, a stone could be pried out of the structure, causing the whole wall to come tumbling down.

Don’t rely solely on frontal assaults. An effective, polite way of undermining an opposing worldview — one that puts the burden on the professor instead of you — is to raise questions.

Did you notice that the two reigning dogmas in the academic establishment today — feminism and multi-culturalism — are contradictory? When your prof extols the virtues of cultural relativism, innocently ask, "What about the way many of these cultures treat women?" You will likely get an answer about how women are, in fact, mistreated in many cultures and how this is something that needs to be changed. Then your devastating follow-up: "So you are saying that there is a moral order that transcends culture?"

So much for cultural relativism. You have pried loose a single stone. However much the professor scrambles to do damage control, the whole structure collapses.

To Know Is Not to Be
You’ve made it to the halfway point, criticism and all, and now your professor wants you to discuss the evidence for Darwinian evolution. What "evidence," you think.

What about tests? Should you answer essay questions in defense of truth, instead of discussing the material the professor has been teaching? Well, no. When taking a test, demonstrate that you have learned what the professor has been teaching. You won’t get a good grade if you haven’t mastered the material (even if you disagree with it), nor would you deserve one.

Admittedly, some courses these days have no redemptive content whatsoever. They do little if anything to challenge your faith, and instead, waste your time. Most courses, however, will teach something of value. A philosophy course that teaches only pagan theories is, nevertheless, valuable for Christians. We should know what those secular theories are, in order to refute faulty thinking. Knowing the makeup of these theories does not require that you believe them to be true.

If, on a biology test, your professor asks for evidence for Darwin’s theory of evolution, you don’t need to fill the page with evidence for an immediate creation. You only have twenty minutes and you won’t get credit for your answer, since it doesn’t address the question. But you can answer it without committing apostasy. Begin, "Darwin believed ..." You are describing his beliefs and those of contemporary biologists, not your own. (In class discussions, however, you have asked embarrassingly probing questions exposing the weakness of the theory of evolution, drawn from your reading of Philip Johnson and Michael Behe.) By giving an accurate account of the theory and why many people believe it, you pass the test without compromising your beliefs.

The Power of Just Explaining
When opportunities arise to explain your faith in front of the professor and the whole class, remember that you don’t necessarily have to "prove" it. It is often enough to simply explain what you believe. Most professors have little knowledge about what Christians actually believe. Not only that, what they think Christians believe is often flat out wrong.

They ridicule Christians for believing that good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell (as if we were not all sinners for whom salvation is a free gift), and for believing in a God that allows human suffering (as if our God were not a crucified Jew). These attacks misfire in such a childish and ill-informed way, that they become occasions to simply set the record straight: to explain that Christians believe in Christ.

When you do this, you are not merely witnessing, you are proclaiming God’s Word, which "is living and active," penetrating "even to dividing soul and spirit," judging "the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4: 12).

A Line in the Sand
Know your limits. There may be times, though rare, when a class is actually leading you into sin. Complain. Drop the class if you have to. Compromise nothing.

I mean more than having to read a novel with bad words. The author may have sinned in writing it, but you can probably read it without sinning. Medical students necessarily study sex organs and dissect bodies that are naked. So to, English majors confront some contemporary literature that is not for the squeamish. Consider what is appropriate for your calling. Med students should perhaps stay away from certain contemporary novels, and English majors should avoid dead bodies.

If the novel does become an occasion for serious temptation, then it becomes a problem. (I have heard of far worse assignments — going to gay bars, cultivating various sexual experiences, playing with the occult, engaging in pagan worship and ... you’ve likely heard others.) At this point, confront your professor (privately), and explain how the assignment violates your religion. Ask for an alternative assignment that is even harder. Maybe the professor didn’t understand how offensive the book would be. Or possibly, the professor does understand very well and is trying to corrupt you.

Complain. Stand up for your beliefs. Go through the proper channels (usually the department chair and then the dean). Use the right terminology. Say that the professor is "insensitive to religious diversity," that sort of thing. (Though campus policies speak of respecting people "of every race, color, and creed," they usually forget the part about "creed.") Remember that you can always drop a class.

If all else fails, be honest when the time comes for the class evaluation. In the consumer-oriented climate that pervades higher education today, student dissatisfaction carries a lot of weight. But, this is the exception, not the rule. Be discerning. Don’t blow little problems out of proportion. It is seldom charitable to try to destroy a professor’s career. It is far better to put the Sermon on the Mount into action. "Pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5: 44).

Babylon U
Daniel and his friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, are a great example for thriving in a hostile classroom. They got full ride scholarships for four years at the ancient equivalent to college. The first chapter of Daniel finds them in pagan Babylon — and in God’s will. He placed them in an elite program, alongside defiling food and drink. They learned the language and the literature of the Babylonians, but they never compromised their faith. Through their diligence, obedience and dependence on God, they won their teachers over.

Their final exam was conducted by King Nebuchadnezzar himself, who recognized how superior they were as students, compared to those with false worldviews: "In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom" (Daniel 1: 20).