internet callouses

Yesterday I watched a video on YouTube of a baby laughing its little head off when its mother said the words “chicken noodle.” “Do you want some – pause – chicken noodle?” “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

It went on for over two minutes, but I only watched a few seconds. My wife and I got a kick out of it, but enough was enough. If it had been one of my kids, I would have immortalized it and forced all visitors to watch it when they came over.

But someone else’s child is different. A few seconds and I am through.

I realized that I had seen some of the cutest and dumbest things. We are bombarded by so much that is both good and bad that it changes the way we look at stuff.

Most of the advertisements on Yahoo and other places have a picture accompanying that is designed for nothing else but to catch your attention. Most of the time it has nothing to do with the product.

Maybe an old guy with long white hair and beard and no shirt on, maybe a young woman with her eyes bugged out. One has an old man going back and forth from the camera to his laptop. Sometimes it is young women running. None of them are outright offensive, but many of them are ugly.

I have decided that I will make a strong attempt to not buy anything advertised in this way.

What it means though is that we are slowly but surely callusing ourselves to stuff. We are able to see surprising, sometimes shocking things and not really notice. Images that are not necessarily bad, just sometimes kind of upsetting, go past out eyes several times a day.

Pictures on the internet are many times pictures of people doing things, again that are not necessarily bad, but things I really didn’t care to see.

What can I do about it? Nothing.

Of course, I could get rid of the internet in my home, but that is kind of like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

After all, I use the internet for a lot of stuff, including Bible study and general reading. I keep up with news and I enjoy Facebook.

But as the culture coarsens, things come up that I hate.

The other day, a guy that is one of my “friends” on Facebook was hacked (I like to think) and posted a bunch of ugly things. You see it, you delete it, but what is seen is hard to un-see.

The same with other stuff. I was checking to see if there was an online Bible I wanted. I put Thomson Chain Interlinear into Google, clicked it, and began to check.  There was one link named Thomson_Chain_ Interlinear dot something or other. I was happy to have found it. When I went on it, it was an internet porn service from Denmark. I learned that you never click onto sites that have a DE or DN or whatever instead of dot com or the like.

The picture was a naked girl dancing on a pole. I clicked back fast, but there it was. I can see it now in my mind.

The Bible says to be pure and put away impure things. That means you gotta be really careful in what you read and what you click on when you are looking on the computer.

The baby was cute, as were the kittens I see occasionally.

Not sure what to do about it. An on-going problem.

youtube videos

Not long ago, I watched a YouTube video of a young woman who was trying to keep a large black and white cow out of her bathroom. It insisted on coming through the door squashing her behind the door while she cried.

Why was I watching this, you ask?

To tell you the truth, because it was there. Ella and I were watching videos of cats doing stuff, and this one was referenced on the video as another something to watch, so we did.

Several things came to mind. One was what was a cow doing in the house? I barely like the cat in the house, much less livestock.

Second, why was she trying to keep it out of the bathroom. If you are going to let the cow in the house, you might as well let it come in the bathroom. At least that is what I figure.

And third, what is it that possesses a grown man to watch a video of a cow mashing a woman in its desire to come into a bathroom?

Ella said, because it was funny. And who was filming it? And why was he not doing anything about it while his wife cried being mashed behind a door by a large cow?

Of course, I also watched a video of chickens attacking a woman and then getting into a Volkswagen and driving over her. There was a lot of blood.

I will have to admit: the internet is full of stuff to do.

But it also can be a black hole for your time if you let it.

In fact lots of things can be. TV, reading, internet – anything that occupies more of your time than God. If you read stuff more than you read your Bible, it will not be surprising if you don’t think in terms of godliness.

The old expression says Garbage In, Garbage Out. In other words, you are what you eat. If you “eat”, or take in, junk, junk will come out. If you take in things of God, they will come in.

That is why the Bible says, Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:1-3).

YouTube videos are good and fun, and there is a lot of good stuff there. And don’t let anyone tell you there is not a place for everything in the Christian’s life.

But don’t let them rule your life