Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Set Your Mind Above Podcast! I’m your host BJ Sipe – I’m a Christian, a preacher, a husband, and a father. In this podcast we take everyday, ordinary events and explore how they can teach us extraordinary, eternal truths. I’m so glad that you joined me for this episode. Now, let’s open up our minds, our hearts, and our Bible’s together. 

I’m a YouTube guy, and by that I mean this is a platform that I use every single day. I have used YouTube for Biblical research, watching Ted Talks, sermons, documentaries, or other types of video content. I have used YouTube for my own personal outreach, posting devotional videos and other things of that nature. I use YouTube for all kinds of other research, such as watching reviews on different tech or products I might purchase as well. I even enjoy watching certain reaction channels where full time YouTubers (because that’s a thing) break down and explain different music, historical events, or different takes on all things sports. If you are familiar with this platform, you are also familiar with all the options you have while watching a YouTube video. You can like or dislike the video, subscribe to the channel that posted it, and hit the notification bell to be updated on future releases from that channel. Well, as I was YouTube today doing some research like I normally do, I was puzzled to see that the video I was watching showed right underneath the number of likes that it had as usual, but the dislikes were gone. I mean, you could still hit “dislike” – but the number of dislikes was no longer displayed for me to be able to see. I clicked on a few more videos to see if it was just this particular channel, but no – it was every single one. After a quick google search, I discovered that recently YouTube had actually taken away the number of dislikes from a video being visible to the viewer! I was shocked. I have always loved this feature. For example, when I watch channels that review tech, the number of likes vs dislikes often tells me what others in the tech community thought of their particular take on this camera or microphone, etc. It helps me in many cases to gauge the credibility of a channel. Well, while there have been many explanations given by YouTube as to why they have done this, what it really boils down to is that they don’t want to create what they call a “hostile” or “hateful” environment. As I read this I just had to shake my head, because this is essentially what they have just declared: if you don’t like what I have said or done, then you hate me and are attacking me. Instead of getting honest feedback, even if that feedback is negative, YouTube has essentially created a platform where now you can only see what someone wants to hear. I can see all of the likes on a video and all of the positive responses, but I can’t see anyone who disagreed. In my opinion, this is a very, very dangerous move on the part of YouTube. How sad is it that we live in a society that interprets any kind of disagreement as hostility and an attack? How sad is it that we would rather only hear affirmations from others about what we already think rather than have our thinking challenged or corrected? Perhaps providentially, earlier today I saw a post that was shared from a friend that essentially captures the direction we want to go with our podcast today from this recent change. The post said the following: “What they say: just preach the word! What they mean: just preach what I already believe.”

This recent move by YouTube is just another example of this sad truth: we don’t really want the truth, many times we would much rather believe a lie. Don’t tell me what I need to hear, tell me what I want to hear. And sadly, often this happens from those who profess to follow Jesus & be his disciple. Consider the exhortation and the warning that Paul gives to Timothy, the young evangelist, in 2 Timothy 4:1-5, “I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of his appearing and his kingdom: Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths. But as for you, exercise self-control in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” In the world that we live in today, unfortunately for many their understanding of “Christianity” is the farthest thing from it. For them, Christianity is easy and costs us nothing. We attend services, when it is convenient, and do so in a place that has the most to offer to me. The pulpit is not a place for correction, rebuking, or doctrinal discussion, but rather a place for a puppet. Someone who will tell me simply what I want to hear, nothing more and nothing less. Someone to tell me, “God loves me just the way I am,” so that I feel no need to be obedient or be holy as he is holy. Someone to tell me, “God is a God of love” but be sure to leave out that stuff about God’s judgment and discipline. Someone to tell me, “The church must adapt to our culture” rather than challenge the church to live counter-culturally and be willing to suffer persecution. Yet, this is the message that sounds forth from so many pulpits across the world, and it is because that is the message that so many desire. Tell me what I want to hear, but not what I need to hear. Allow me to believe the lie or only the portions of the truth that I agree with while leaving the rest out because it’s hard, challenging, or makes me uncomfortable. But my friends, believing a lie does not change the truth, or my need to conform myself to it. That is why Paul told Timothy to preach the word, to be sound in his teaching and to not shrink back from doing the difficult things: correcting, rebuking, and encouraging. Why do so many preachers fail to do this? Why are so many who stand in the pulpits so timid to tackle the hard subjects and challenge their listeners? I believe the reason is often because such a message & such an individual will be interpreted with hostility. To tell someone they are wrong, in need or repentance, or that they are lost is now considered “hate speech” and amazing even branded as “un-Christlike”. And yet I am reminded of Paul’s words to the Galatians in 4:12-16, as he penned a letter of correction towards a people that had already abandoned the truth, he says to them, “I beg you, brothers and sisters: Become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You have not wronged me; you know that previously I preached the gospel to you because of a weakness of the flesh. You did not despise or reject me though my physical condition was a trial for you. On the contrary, you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself. Where, then, is your blessing? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. So then, have I become your enemy because I told you the truth?” The Galatians had changed in their attitude towards Paul, why? Because he was not telling them what they wanted to hear, but was correcting them. Where before they had embraced him, now they viewed him with hostility. But Paul calls them on the carpet: speaking the truth is never wrong. You are not someone’s enemy because you have spoken the truth, even the hard truths, but you are their friend. May we strive to always speak the truth in love, and never shrink back away from it because it’s not what we wanted to hear. 

Thank you for tuning in to today’s episode, and I would invite you back Tuesdays-Fridays for a brand-new episode each day. If you haven’t already, be sure to find us on Facebook for occasional announcements and special video sessions. If you have benefited from this podcast, please if you’re able be sure to share it with someone else that you think could benefit from it as well. Until next time, know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each & every day set our minds above.