When I decided to take a mission trip to Peru when I was 16, my father was concerned with the direction of my life. My father was not religious and did not attend church much. My father wanted his son to get a quality education (to him that was secular college) and make a decent living. For years before my father passed away, he pressed me to go to a secular college to earn a decent paycheck. 

My father wasn’t very spiritual, but I am shocked to hear how many supposedly spiritual believers are for their children attending a secular college. The reasons for doing so are normally along the lines of: “Christian colleges do not offer the instruction and degrees for the job I’m pursuing.” Some will also include “They’re/I’m going to have to work in the secular work force someday. Secular college is not any different from the secular work force.” However, secular college is different from working in the secular work force. In a secular college, the student is purposely placing themselves under the teaching. Since most of the professors in secular college do not teach only the perfect and pure truths of God, that student is placing themselves willingly under humanistic teaching. In our text, Proverbs 19:27, God expressly commands His children to cease hearing any instruction that turns you “from the word of knowledge”. True knowledge, friend, is not America’s top universities and colleges. No, true knowledge is found in God and His Word. To sit under any teaching that undermines God and His Word is disobedience. 

God also commands His children to “turn away” from anyone who even appears moral and godly but denies God and His power: 

• II Timothy 3:5 “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” 
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Going to a secular college where God is rejected, evolution and humanism is taught, and where a false morality is endorsed is absolutely not scriptural. Attending these places is, in fact, direct disobedience to God’s commands to “cease” from such instruction and “turn away” from such people. 

Even if it seems that there is no Christian college offering the degree you need, you still need to hold firm to God’s Word. If you follow Jesus’ exhortation in Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”, Jesus promised “all these things shall be added unto you.” The end doesn’t justify the means. Your desire to please God in a certain occupation doesn’t make getting a secular, God-rejecting education right. However, if you put God and His righteousness first, God will always make sure you are blessed for your righteous choice. Do not belittle your God with “No Christian college offers…” and “I won’t get a job for…” and “It will be impossible to pursue…”. God excels in the impossible… if you trust and obey!