Feeling anxious is part of living in a broken world, and God weaves those feelings into his providential plan for our spiritual growth. As we mature, our feelings of anxiety may abate, or they may swell. What runs constant is God’s call to trust him and act in the context of our feelings. Simply listening to our kids express their feelings is a great way to ease their burden by assuring them of our non-judgmental presence.

It takes time for us to realize we aren’t made of glass, that shattering isn’t imminent, that God can always bring us through to the other side—no matter what hellish things we experience. Time teaches us. In fact, for any person of faith, time is the only tutor.
But kids don’t have time yet—at least, they have more ahead than behind. Each day holds out threats without the assurance of safety, let alone the promise of strength for having weathered hard things. And so, for kids, fragility comes naturally. They see their smallness in a wild world. A tiny scratch demands a Band Aid. The sidewalk cracks threaten their bicycle tires. Honey bees have daggers attached to their abdomens. The world is big. Children are small. Dangers abound.
As parents, with more time behind than ahead, we go through seasons when we feel confident in God’s sovereign care, maybe even impervious to harm (or at least ignorant of it). But the longer we live, the more quickly we spot this feeling as a momentary illusion. We lose a parent. Our highschool friend dies of spinal cancer at thirty-one. A Yellowstone mudslide wipes out a bridge as if it were built of toothpicks and glue. Health issues crop up like weeds in everyday conversations. The world is uncontrollable. And though we’re more confident in God’s control than we used to be, we’re still small. And dangers abound.
Maybe that’s why nearly 20% of the American population battles an anxiety disorder, including yours truly for the last 16 years.1 I’ve written about my own anxiety war in Struck Down but Not Destroyed. But I’ve also had the joy of being a parent for nearly 9 years, which means I’ve had to take what God has shown me about anxiety and use it to help my own children. I approach them with deep empathy, as one whom the Lord has shattered and put back together many times. Let me offer what I’ve learned so far and then point you to some resources I’ve found helpful along the way.
What I’ve Learned
1. Kids are very perceptive.
While children deal with their own fears and worries, they’re also watching you, taking cues on how they should respond. As parents, we tend to think it’s best to shield our children from our anxiety, and there are times when that’s appropriate. But shielding them and denying the presence of anxiety teaches them to do the same. That’s unhealthy, and it’s unbiblical. The psalmists didn’t bottle things up; they poured everything out. That doesn’t mean you should pour out your soul before your kids each day. But it does mean they should see it’s okay that you deal with fear and anxiety, too, and you do something about it: you turn to your heavenly Father in prayer. You read his word. You walk by faith. You believe. Showing them what to do with anxiety is much healthier than modeling denial.
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Written by C.R. Carmichael |
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Arrogance is at the root of our problem, as pride arrives just in time to initiate the tragic fall (Proverbs 16:18). We may be technologically advanced, but it isn’t helping us if we wield our latest digital tools as weapons against God….Thankfully, all is not lost because God is still in control, the Spirit is still moving, and salvation is always near with the redeeming power of Jesus Christ—f we only have faith.

Understanding the Digital vs. the Analog
So what is meant by putting forth the metaphorical argument that “the Digital” of transhumanism is an evil and dangerous corruption of the righteous design of “the Analog” established by God for the fruitfulness of mankind?
Technically speaking, digitization is the process of converting analog information like an object, image, document, or signal into a computer-relatable language encoded with a mathematical combination of “ones and zeroes.” Though its primary function is to speedily generate and disseminate data, it has become a darling of transhumanists because digitization can also be used as a powerful tool to transplant reality and, according to journalist Gil Press, “encourage the replacement or augmentation of the physical with the virtual or online presence.”
Of course, the “physical” that they desire to replace is nothing less than the creation of God, which, in a rhetorical sense, is the “Analog” of God. This is so because long ago He spoke the world into existence and saw that everything He had made answered the plan which His eternal wisdom had conceived; and “Behold, it was very good” (Psalm 33:6-9; Genesis 1:31).
Why call it the Analog? Think of an analog watch built with a traditional clock face and hands. Back in the days before digital watches, it was just a “watch.” But now, to differentiate it from the digital display, we call the very first watch, “analog.” The name is an example of a retronym, which is defined as a word created to avoid confusion between older and newer types of creations, usually because of advancements in technology.
From a Biblical standpoint, therefore, the Analog can be broadly defined as the elemental state of the world as originally created by God (even after the “generation loss” caused by the Fall), and the Digital can be viewed as the latest attempt by man to improve upon or completely remake that original design by digitization or digitally-driven science and technology.
Today, most people would likely assume that the digital process is superior to the analog. But such is not always the case. In the area of sound recording, for example, many audiophiles will tell you that digitization has not served us well. As often reported by those who have ears to hear the difference, the digitized music presented in compact discs and streaming audio can generally sound compressed, lifeless, bass shy and synthetic; whereas analog from vinyl records and tapes has “a physicality and immediacy in the sound of musical instruments” that is “warm, airy, and much closer to a live performance.”
The public at large, in fact, seems to agree with this assessment. Worldwide sales of vinyl records have increased sharply in recent years as people everywhere have rediscovered their fondness for the analog listening experience which, as one audio engineer tells us, “feeds the soul” because it most faithfully captures the original signal and waveform of God.
Indeed, according to mathematician Katrina Morgan, there is a credible scientific reason for this perception. “Analog captures a physical process,” she explains, “whereas digital uses mathematics to reduce the process to finite bits of information. What, if anything, is lost in that reduction is difficult to pinpoint. But the limitations of math in replicating reality may factor in to the difference in listening experiences reported by so many vinyl lovers.”
If Morgan’s general assessment is correct, there is a real danger of corrupting reality when we try to copy it with a binary conversion process that is inherently limited and reductive. Is it not prudent, then, that we ask what other aspects of God’s “analog” world are not improved by digitization?
The Increasing Dissonance of the Digital
To put it plainly, human beings are not computerized robots; we are image-bearers of God formed from the earth and comprised of flesh, soul and spirit (Genesis 2:7; Zechariah 12:1; Matthew 26:41; 1 Thessalonians 5:23). While the Digital is nothing but a “hall of mirrors, deterministic, cold and sterile,” we as part of the Analog are “numinous, reverberative, warm and fertile.”
Can we not spiritually discern the important difference? Our earth and sea is vast and spacious and teeming with life, and it vibrates with His wisdom, eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20; Psalm 104:24-25). Did God not create the physical world with these nurturing properties so that mankind could “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28)?
Surely, this is why the Analog has a pleasing full-spectrum resonance, and the reason why we find that there is an increasing dissonance in the world when we blindly pursue a conversion to the Digital.
For decades, digitally-driven science and technology has been touted for their revolutionary capacity to usher in a new age of health and well-being, and yet in many ways our lives do not appear that much improved. Perhaps more than ever before, we are finding our highly-digitized world struggling with a malaise of the spirit, a strange wave of sicknesses, and the menacing advent of unexpected death. So why does it seem we are no longer truly thriving on this earth?
Statistically, we are in poorer overall health, despite amazing advancements in diagnostics, trauma medicine and other specialties. The CDC, in fact, has recently reported decreases in life expectancy and increases in obesity and drug overdose rates. Fertility rates have plummeted 50% over the last 70 years, post-pandemic deaths rates are up by 40%, and three million more people between the ages of 16-64 have been added to the U.S. disabled population in the last two years.
Even worse, our usually-resilient young people are now more prone to serious health problems. The incidence of cancer in people under 50 has increased around the world. Millennials have also noticed a spike in strokes among their peers, as 10% of U.S. victims are now under the age of 45. And the autism rate among American children (which back in 1970 only affected one in 10,000) has now dramatically risen to one in 36 (CDC).
Truth be told, something very strange is going on when public school systems are scrambling these days to provide more classroom space for the rising number of psychologically troubled or special-needs students.
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Besson’s greatest impact, however, was through his faithful preaching, constantly pointing his listeners to Christ and clearly distinguishing between law and gospel, and through his translation of the New Testament from Greek to Spanish, which continued to be used for generations. This translation was published as a single volume in 1919 and it was the first Bible translated in Latin America from the original languages.

From an Inherited Religion to an Understanding of the Gospel
Besson was born in Nod, canton of Berne, Switzerland, in 1848. His father Edward was a Reformed pastor who also served the community as a physician (he had studied both medicine and theology). His mother, Elisa Revel, was a descendant of Waldensians and told her son many stories of her predecessors’ heroism and faith in persecution. Since Paul was the only child, Edward prayed fervently that he might dedicate his life to God’s service.
With this prospect in mind, after finishing his basic studies, Paul moved on to an academy in nearby Neuchatel. Fearing that he would find his life too easy, Edward required his son to work part-time. In spite of this additional commitment, Paul finished with flying colors and continued his studies at Neuchâtel Theological College.
Everything was going well and Paul was excelling in every way. His biographer, …, illustrated the dangers of the ensuing self-satisfaction: “He began to feel satisfied with himself and full of that intellectual pride which is so natural at twenty years of age, when everything seems to be known.”[1] Later in life, Paul described himself as “a perfect pharisee.”[2]
It was the family’s cook, who had worked in the Besson home for years and had seen Paul grow up, that woke him up to his true condition. “You are missing something. You are missing something,” she repeated. “You are missing the main thing.”[3]
At first, Paul dismissed her warning and her encouragement to place his full trust in Christ crucified. After all, she was a cook and he was a theology student! But her words continued to ring in his mind.
It was a little later, at the University of Leipzig, Germany, that a Lutheran professor, Christoph Ernst Luthardt, impressed on Paul the full meaning of the gospel and justification by faith alone – something he never forgot.
The Free Church
Besson concluded his studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1870. After this, he supplied pulpits until April 1871, when he accepted a call as a pastor at Liniers, Neuchâtel.
By then, however, the state had been infringing for some time on the rights of the church in virtue of the fact that they were government-funded. At the same time, there was a proliferation of teachers who openly contested the validity of Scriptures. Ferdinand Buisson, for example, president of the National Association of Freethinkers, attacked the use of the Old Testament in schools because it “favored superstition and corrupted the youth.”[4]
In 1873, Freethinkers won a victory by convincing the government to modify its constitution so that every citizen could be a member of the church by virtue of his birth, without a confession of faith, and ministers could be allowed on any pulpit apart from subscription to any creed. In response, 27 out of the 47 pastors in Neuchâtel conservative pastors left the church, starting a new denomination, known as the Free Evangelical Church of Neuchâtel.
Besson was one of the dissenting pastors, but his congregation chose to stay with the established church. Because of this, he accepted a call from two pastors in Lyon, France, to help to evangelize the area. There, he challenged the municipal rules that forbade the sale of Bibles and the distribution of tracts, and was briefly imprisoned twice.
It was around this time that he met some Baptists who persuaded him to join their denomination. He did, working for six years with the Boston Baptist Mission in northern France and Belgium. Floris, who later invited him to move to Argentina, was one of his congregants.
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