The peril that has come upon your household by these invisible thieves is a sharp reminder that we dwell in a world where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. Your anxiety for your son’s name and future is natural and right, for it is no small thing to have one’s honest reputation besmirched at the very threshold of manhood. Yet while you pray concerning credit reports and stolen figures, let this trouble drive you to a far weightier concern. What shall it profit the young man if his financial record remains spotless and his soul is yet in danger? You would not have him daubed with the slime of Sodom, nor his bones broken by actual vice, and indeed a ruined credit is a grievous loss. But oh, how much more terrible to have his soul ruined for eternity while his credit score stands untouched! I recommend to you a character-insurance in the form of believing in Jesus Christ. That is the one register no hacker can defile, the one inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fades not away.
There is One who is able to keep you from falling and to guard what you have committed unto Him against that day. You cry out about information stolen through wires and signals, but do you cry out as earnestly that your son’s heart might not be stolen away by the wicked one? The text says of the young man in grace, “you have overcome the wicked one,” for the Word of God abides in him. If the eternal Word takes up residence within his soul, no power of darkness can plunder his true treasure. The safety of his spirit is a grander thing than the safety of his social security number. God’s throne might sooner fail than a saint can perish, but credit bureaus have no such permanence. Commit your son, therefore, and all his temporal circumstances, into the hands of God. Put yourself and all your fears and engagements there, and leave them. He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps, and no breach in your digital wall is hidden from His sight.
Does your son bear the yoke in his youth? It is good for a man to learn obedience and restraint early, and perhaps this very trial is the Lord’s strange way of breaking the ground of his heart. Young men who begin with a spotless record and easy days often end with nothing at all of lasting worth. Better to start with a battle and find Christ in the trenches than to coast into ruin with ease. Let your chief prayer be that he may go forth as a healthy calf from the stall, feeding on the Word, growing in grace, and making such advance that he surpasses even the most hopeful examples before him. A young man of integrity, who would not rob God though all the world tempts him, is a jewel in the crown of the church. What grand opportunities open before one who learns early to trust in the only wise God our Savior!
Do not imagine that these digital marauders have the final word over his days. The importance of a young life lies not in its credit score but in its being hid with Christ in God. If he is saved while yet young, religion will be a great preventive of sin, a wall of fire around his character that no identity thief can scale. I feel it a solemn thing for our land, and I would plead even unto tears that the sons and daughters give their young days to God. May your son be brought into the ark of safety, for there stands the door, Christ Jesus, and you must go through it yourselves and lead him there. You cannot expect the blessings of the covenant to rest upon a household where the sons are not decisively on the Lord’s side. Let your prayer, then, be that he may be found faultless at last, presented with exceeding joy, not merely with a repaired financial record but with a soul washed white in the blood of the Lamb. That is the only safety which no hacker can ever touch.