YouTubes and Youth Faith
Our unusual blog title needs explanation. YouTube users watch billions of hours of YouTubes each day. YouTube is a video-sharing website which can be accessed by computers and mobile phones. YouTube contents range widely from nature and wildlife to advertising, music, sports, travel, science, and an abundance of other subjects.
Some senior citizens hardly understand what modern social media platforms are, not to mention what they can accomplish. Social media platforms are a mixed blessing. Who can fault or criticize our ready access to information? We live in the ‘information age.’ However, much of this information is beneficial or useful in our modern day. YouTube is the second most common website on the internet, second only to Google.
This blogger has utilized a desirable social media venue which helps my grandson exult in various forms of wildlife. When his father needs uninterrupted quality time to complete online graduate work, he drops his son off at our house. Our 5-year old grandson has completed the ‘dinosaur stage’ of his interest. Currently he is fascinated with living creatures inhabiting our planet – snakes, lizards, cheetahs, sharks, and spiders, to name a few. YouTube videos to the rescue! He often enters our home with the words, “You know what I want to see.” Yes, we know what he wants to see. The Google search feature quickly accesses multiple video events from our natural world. Talented photographers feature action shots of animals and insects on the hunt for food to sustain their existence. Inter-species animal fights are part of the normal course of events in our natural world. They are preludes to food acquisition. Some nature lovers find this trait disturbing.
To the contrary, animal predation is not beyond the creative wisdom of God expressed in the Old Testament Book of Job. In Chapter 38, the Lord inquires of Job “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the ravens when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?” (Job 38:39-41 NIV)
When I remind my grandson of the intricate beauty of nature’s designed features and marvelous functionality, even at his age it is not difficult for him to understand such traits could not have designed themselves. It took a Master Designer to produce these features. The Master Designer is the God of Creation! Usually a single YouTube feature on animals highlights only a single species of 1.7 million classified living species. Millions more species have been divinely created but remain unclassified.
The YouTube videos feature masterful close-up and distant photography of wildlife. My grandson has learned to appreciate the intricate design features of many animals and plants. One commentator remarked that YouTube is not merely part of social media but also a social media behemoth. Secular YouTube videos highlight the wonders of the natural world and offer strong intuitional support for belief in God’s existence and creative power. Below we link two past blog posts in which we discussed various ways Christian parents may promote God-awareness even in our young children.
https://jasscience.blogspot.com/2016/06/divine-credibility-for-children.html
https://jasscience.blogspot.com/2017/03/youth-sciencefaith-apologetics.html
“The Bible teaches that God created animals. They aren’t the product of fortuitous natural processes any more than humans are. Genesis 1:24-25 says that God created the animals, from the beasts of the field to the creeping insects. Scripture even tells us that the breath of life resides within them. (Gen. 7:15).” (Barrett Duke writing in a Montana Southern Baptist Convention publication: 10 Biblical truths about animals.)
Our God experienced joy in creating all things (Genesis 1:31a NIV). Our trust is in the Living God “who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (I Timothy 6:17b).
