I built a fire with my eight-year-old son this week. He helped me gather the firewood. We stacked it together. He lit the fat lighter and watched it slowly ignite. An hour later, as we prepared dinner, the fire died because we had not tended it. I helped him place another piece of fat lighter among the hot coals and rearrange some wood and told him to wait.
He reached for the lighter, but I took it from him and told him to wait. He complained. “But, nothing is happening.” I told him to wait.
He sat close to the fire on the hearth and watched, exasperated. It was obvious to him that I was dumb and had sent him on a fool’s errand. Until, from the kitchen I heard, “It started again!”
My eight year old is all boy and he learns primarily through experience (a trait that terrifies me, most of the time). If I had turned on the TV for Sloan, I could have built a fire in peace and quiet. He would have appreciated the warmth, but he would have paid little notice to the process. But, when he participated in gathering wood and building the fire, this particular fire became his fire. He learned that a small spark can grow into a warm fire. He learned that hot coals can be brought back to life. He learned (I hope) that daddy knows what he’s talking about when he says “wait.” He learned because he experienced.
Increasingly as a parent (and pastor), I am convinced that families need to emphasize analog experiences. In the digital age, our kids need to feel hugs, experience personal connections, eat real food, take their own photographs, get splinters, skin their knees, and feel the pages of a Bible or book as they read it to themself or out loud. They need to stand with their parents and marvel at God’s glory in a sunset or even hold hands and cry at a funeral.
Analog families tend to have messy kitchens and cluttered yards. In an analog family, meals are prepared, not packaged. Fun is experienced, not watched. Board games are not always bored games, bicycles do not rust, and sticks get whittled. In analog families, sacrifices are made for hospitality and church attendance and friends who stop by. Tables become play-doh studios and tablecloths sometimes become finger-painting works of art.
Analog houses are tactile, warm, and inviting (if a bit chaotic at times).
Analog families do not have to avoid digital. In all honesty, iCal is one of the most valuable tools in our family. We still enjoy our TV and most of our music is played from a phone or tablet (though vinyl has a role in our home). Digital isn’t the devil. But digital is a terrible babysitter, a bad friend, and a pitiful parent.
The digital world is convenient, but it is insufficient for your family. You need more and your children need more. You all need real relationships, real places, and real things. You and your kids also need to experience failure, and often times failure in the tactile world has fewer long-term impacts than mistakes made in the digital world.
God created humans as relational beings designed to exercise dominion over his creation. God placed humans in a three-dimensional world with warmth and cold, hard tree trunks and soft grass.
A cell phone has never dried your tears. A television has never given you a hug. A smart watch counted your steps, but it never experienced the beauty of a sunset with you or taught you how to marvel at God’s creation or glorify the Lord. Alexa can recite a Bible verse for you, but Alexa can’t help you apply that Bible verse.
Analog has several definitions, but for families, perhaps the best one is this: analog is something that has an output that is proportional or similar to its input. Analog requires effort. You have to put some effort into it, but you can expect the outcome to be proportional. Do you invest love, time, and joy? Guess what you will get?
Proverbs 22:6 encourages parents with these words,
Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
What are you doing today to raise the kind of adults you want to claim as your children in the future? There’s a pretty good chance that their outcome will be proportional and similar to your investment today.
Photo by Conscious Design on Unsplash
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