Friday, December 05, 2008

Active Sharing on Youtube

Well, it's my 49th birthday!

All is well here. God is good. Trying to stick to a very rigid diet. Aaaargh. But I sleep better when I do. Much mid-life crisis regret about health, life, child's health, but I feel God is telling me to endure and to expect great things. So am trying to understand Jesus and God as restorers. . . that perhaps life for me in my latter end will be better than it's been the past 49 years. Tough to learn to look at hope when life has been such a trial for so long. But I'm growing in my knowledge of how truly great and loving God is.

What else? I'm becoming more and more myself. . . whatever that is. An example:

So I've been on active sharing on youtube for about two months now and let me tell you it's the most public conscientious activity I have ever done.
"Really?" you ask.
"Yes, really," I answer.

The trouble is I am what many Christians would consider a "carnal" Christian. Granted, I don't think I'm that carnal. At least I'm not carnal in the way St Paul meant it. When St Paul described carnal Christians in 1 Corinthians 3:3-4 and 2 Corinthians 10:4 and Hebrews 9:10 he was talking about the type of Christian who walks by sight, who actually believes in and fights about earthly stuff such as denominations, who actually think following external rules of eating drinking clothing etc are signs of holiness. That's not me. But most Christians will think I'm carnal because I do have that horrendous crush on Cloud from Final Fantasy and I actually listen to music and watch movies no Christian would be caught watching.

So here's the problem. When you do active sharing on youtube, ALL your youtube friends can see what it is you're actually watching. They see what you've rated, what you've favorited, what you've uploaded, etc.

So my youtube friends can see that I've favorited the (somewhat potty-mouthed) Canadian East-Indian comedian Russell Peters. And Chocolate News. And . . . well, everything I've done.

This wouldn't be so bad if I had only one kind of friends. If say, I had only secular non-believing friends, they'd see my proclivities and all the religious stuff I rate and favorite and think I'm odd but they'd probably not think I was being sinful.

But the problem is with my Christian friends. One of them is quite cool and easygoing. But the other...well, I like him but I find myself wondering. Okay, he's white Christian so he didn't vote for Obama. I see him rating and favoriting stuff against Obama, but do I care? No! I'm cool. I let things go. I don't think he's a racist. But what does this guy think when he sees the stuff I've been seeing? Lord knows. He hasn't been talking to me in a while. Hasn't returned my emails. Ahem. So. . .uhm. . .I shouldn't assume anything. He's probably just off on vacation. But my history with Christians make me worry that he saw one too many "Cloud is so sexy" video on my favorite list and dumped me.

Of course I had the choice of taking myself off active sharing. But I did not. Why? Because I am trying to be myself without fear. Yeah, stupid reason and stupid thing to do when you know how easily some Christians judge. But I put myself and my heart on my blog and I'm not going to start hiding aspects of myself. A true witness delivers souls, as the Proverbs say.

5 comments:

Tia Nevitt said...

Happy Birthday!!! Best of luck with that diet. I'm doing the same thing.

chrisa511 said...

Happy Birthday to you Carole!!!!! Hope it's a good one :D

Carole McDonnell said...

Thanks, Tia and Chris.

It was fun with some interesting surprises. Hope you guys are doing well. -C

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday!

You know what? Keep sharing your videos. The breadth of your interests is what makes you a good writer.

It's always been a disappointment to me that the people I know who are most vocal about being Christians are the ones who are the most insular and judgmental (and God forbid they find out I'm a Roman Catholic; I was surprised to find out that some people I know don't even consider us to be Christians).

I notice this insularity with some books by Christian novelists who have so detached themselves from "The World" that they can't recognize the difference between honoring faith and beating nonbelievers (figuratively) over the head.

I can tell whether that's going to be the case with most Christian fiction within three pages, and I've almost never been wrong.

Carole McDonnell said...

Hi Asha!

Yeah, some folks do kinda go with the judging folks by what denomination they're in. Thanks so much for the good wishes.

-C

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