As we think about our daily call to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, we need to remind ourselves once more that the goal of the Christian life is not merely subscribing to a certain set of beliefs. Though it’s true that what we think is vital for the Christian life, the goal of the Christian life is that we are increasingly conformed to the likeness of Jesus. 

A few weeks ago my four-year-old daughter was obsessed with learning to ride a bike without training wheels. I was tired so I suggested a less demanding activity, ideally one that didn’t need me to bend at an awkward angle for long periods of time. But my daughter was persistent that now was the right time for her to learn. My own lethargy wasn’t a good enough reason to hold my daughter back. So on a sunny spring afternoon she put on her pink helmet and hopped on her hand-me-down Minnie Mouse bike.
She was so excited to ride a big girl bike. I awkwardly arched my back and started running behind her with my hand on the seat. I gave a few simple tips: Keep pedaling, sweetie! Look straight ahead!
We got to the end of the road. We did this a few times. I held on, and I repeated my expert advice over and over.
As my daughter became more comfortable, she began to get distracted with where she was looking. She started looking to the sides, gazing behind her to see if Mom was still watching, or looking at her feet pushing the pedals. Whenever she got distracted and looked in a different direction, she began to wobble. Eventually, the only advice I found myself repeating was: Look straight ahead, sweetie!
Before each attempt I would ask her two questions, the first one: Will you look to the side, or at your hands, or at your feet? She would respond with a smile: No. Then I would ask: Will you look straight ahead? She would respond again with a smile: Yes.
Looking to Jesus
She eventually got the hang of it. She knew she had to keep pedaling to stay moving, and she knew she had to look straight ahead to stay balanced. Where she fixed her eyes made all the difference.
This sunny spring afternoon provided a helpful image for the daily life of a disciple of Jesus. Christianity is not merely about mentally affirming certain ideas and events.
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Written by C.R. Carmichael |
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Thankfully, transhumanists will eventually fail in their effort to “lengthen their days” and thwart God’s will (Ecclesiastes 8:13). Yet until that divine judgment comes upon them, they may very well lead much of humanity down a primrose path and pathology that will cause immense harm to those who were specifically created by God to thrive, not in the windmills of the imagination, but in the nourishing physical world our Creator gave to us for our dominion and well-being (Genesis 1:28).

Modern Technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is looking at. He takes no time to retreat or reflect. No rest, no meditation, no reflection or conversation. The senses are overloaded with stimuli. Man doesn’t learn to question his world any longer, the screen provides all the answers.—Psychoanalyst Joost Meerloo in 1956
Now the real world is dying as everybody moves into the cloud…Everyone stares at the screens.—Weezer
Introduction
Whether one realizes it or not, we are currently living through a spiritually-significant skirmish between the Analog and the Digital that will surely decide the future trajectory of humankind and whether we thrive as a God-fearing civilization or fall into further ruin.
The Analog, in case you were wondering, refers to God’s established reality in Creation; and the Digital is the synthetic counterfeit of man’s corrupted imagination.
This seemingly-innocuous controversy between the Analog and the Digital first emerged in the 1970s with the advent of the Third Industrial Revolution when the invention of user-friendly computers and their digitized processing began to have a colossal impact on how society creates, transfers and maintains the world around us. To be sure, many tasks in our daily lives have become more swiftly and efficiently performed with the use of digitization.
Yet now, some five decades later, we find ourselves at the forefront of a so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution that seeks to drive us into the forbidden territory of an indiscriminate, fully-digitized existence outside of God’s natural world. Using the implements of our advancing technology, the aim of these techno-rebels is to force mankind into the evolutionary climax of “Singularity” — that perceived point in time when human beings will be fully integrated with the machinery of artificial intelligence and genetically reengineered into a death-defying “post-human” species.
Sadly, this mad dash to digitize humanity is no longer the stuff of science fiction. In fact, there is a growing global movement called Transhumanism which is actively pursuing this agenda; and if the influential apostles of this godless philosophy have their way, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will, according to one report, soon challenge the “ideas” of what it means to be “human.”
In reality, of course, these transhumanists are not challenging “ideas,” but rather God Himself. Their shameless attempts to step on their Creator’s toes is clear evidence of their rebellion. Despite mankind’s sacred history of being created by God in His image, commanded to bring fruitfulness upon the earth, and toiling away for many thousands of years to build a human civilization that brings glory to the Creator, these techno-rebels still foolishly believe that our only hope of transcendence is to be plugged into a computer and enslaved by the cold calculations of the Digital.
In their spiritual blindness, however, they have failed to see the preeminent nature of the Analog of God and the path to eternal life found, not in digitization, but in the righteous precision and power of Jesus Christ, who is “before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).
The Corrupting Influence of the Digital
It might seem laughable to some folks when our latest digitally-driven technologies are perceived as an existential threat to mankind if left unchecked. Yet this isn’t some wild Luddite speculation. There are many prominent voices out there who have raised legitimate concerns in recent years about where this rapid rise in technology might be leading us.
In 2019, for example, philosopher Nick Bostrom was one of the first to warn about the possibility of there being “some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets devastated by default.” Fast forward to late March 2023, and we already have some confirmation that Bostrom’s concerns are warranted.
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Highlights:Young adults today have grown up far less likely to have participated in formal worship services or observed religious behaviors in their parents.The well-being of young adults has dramatically declined compared to older age groups—a decline that is much larger for age than for any other variable, including gender or race.Religious participation in adolescence is associated with greater psychological well-being, character strengths, and lower risks of mental illness.

For decades, well-being across adulthood has followed what social scientists call a “U-shaped pattern:” higher well-being in young adulthood, a dip during midlife, and increased well-being in older age. But earlier this year, the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University released troubling findings showing that there has been a complete flattening out of the left side of this U-curve. The well-being of young adults has dramatically declined compared to older age groups—a decline that is much larger for age than for any other variable, including gender or race.
As reported in JAMA Psychiatry, “Our findings support evidence of a mental health crisis and increase in loneliness in the U.S. that has disproportionately affected young adults” and extends “to multiple additional facets of well-being beyond mental health.” Happiness, physical health, meaning, character, social relationships, and financial stability have all significantly declined for young adults. In Vanderweele’s words, this goes beyond a mental health crisis, with “potentially dire implications for the future of our nation.”
Potential causes for the mental health crisis among youth and young adults have been part of an ongoing cultural discussion. As the National Alliance on Mental Illness recently suggested, social media’s “constant comparisons and challenges to keep up with the pressure to perform,” the expectation that you need to “always be on” that is part of a technological world, the grief and fear resulting from a global crisis, and constant access to troubling news cycles surely all play a role.
But the decline across so many aspects of well-being suggests something even more fundamental is at work. Vanderweele calls it a crisis in meaning and identity, and with it, a crisis in connection. His conclusions parallel those of Columbia University’s, Lisa Miller, whose extensive work as a clinical psychologist and brain researcher led her to conclude that it is “the absence of support for children’s spiritual growth”—the innate set of perceptual capacities through which we experience connection, unity, love and a sense of guidance from the life force within in and through us—that has contributed to alarming rates of depression, substance abuse, addictive behaviors, and decreased well-being.
As Vanderweele and Miller both note, religion has traditionally supplied this essential support with significant implications for adolescent development and health. In fact, evidence suggests that religious involvement may have even more profound health effects for adolescence than for adulthood, with far reaching implications across the life course. A 2003 review of research on the role of religion in the lives of American adolescents attempted to summarize what was known up to that time. Among other positive effects, the report found striking and consistent relationships between adolescent religiosity and healthy lifestyle behaviors, a modest relationship between religiosity and self-esteem and moral self-worth, and “modest protective effects” against alcohol, smoking, and drug use. Stronger effects were reported for sexual activity with multiple facets of religiosity, including attendance, the importance of faith, and denomination, typically predicting later sexual engagement and less risky behaviors.
Recent research incorporating more robust methodological designs has confirmed what these other cross-sectional studies found: religious participation in adolescence is associated with greater psychological well-being, character strengths, and lower risks of mental illness. For example, a recent longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents found that religious observance reduced probabilities for drug use, risky sexual behaviors, and depression. Lisa Miller similarly found that adolescents who had a positive, active relationship to spirituality were significantly less likely to use and abuse substances (40% less likely), experience depression (60%), or engage in risky or unprotected sex (80%).
Understanding the mechanisms through which religion positively impacts adolescent and young adult development further clarifies the expanse of its influence. Previous research suggested that religion was largely about social control—encouraging adolescents “not do something they otherwise might have done.” But it quickly became clear that a more multi-faceted theory of religious influence was necessary, including how religion shapes them through the families in which they grow up. As noted in the 2003 review of research, research consistently confirms the “common sense notion” that parents and their own religious practices are among “the strongest influences on the religious behavior of adolescents.” That means, of course, how parents model and teach religious behaviors. But it also means that religion shapes how parents relate to their children, whether in more authoritarian, authoritative, or permissive ways, influencing the quality of the relationship through which their religious beliefs are transmitted.
Christian Smith’s extensive research of adolescent religiosity led him to articulate three additional mechanisms through which religion positively impacts adolescent and young adult well-being. First, religion provides a set of moral orders that delineate good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable ways of being, and a focus on “virtuousness,” including self-regulation, a strong sense of self, and compassion for others. Second, religious participation builds competencies, including coping skills, knowledge, and cultural capital, that strengthen health, social status, and “life chances.” Finally, religious participation opens relationship ties with adults and peers who provide helpful resources and opportunities, emotional support and guidance in development, and models of demonstrated life paths from which to pattern their own lives.
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