In eight grade math class I was “schooled” on how to pick locks. Mr. Walters was not the culprit but Ernie and Fred were. Those two were the notorious duo who enlightened us on everything from picking locks to the “birds and the bees” (that’s another blog story – Ernie and Fred enlightened that after Coach Sorenson brought his goat to gym class to explain those same “birds and bees.”). Back to the subject at hand.
In 2018 Ernie and Fred are out of a job. In a recent conversation with my future son-in-law he explained how he was able to “YouTube” how to pick his home lock safe when he had forgotten the combination. Yep, we can Google and YouTube anything these days...or just ask Alexa. Take this case scenario for instance: most of us remember learning to drive a car as an arduous process involving swerving around a parking lot with mom , dad, or a grandparent or maybe driving in the hay baling field then heading to the DMV, taking a written test and nervously navigating the road with a state trooper or driving instructor tracking our every move. All of that practice and instruction was rewarded with a driver’s license and its accompanying sense of freedom.
But what if you could skip all that hassle and just “YouTube it” instead? That’s what an 8-year-old boy in Ohio did on one recent Sunday night. Our young innovator had a problem: mom and dad had fallen asleep early, and the boy and his 4-year-old sister were “jonesing” for some McDonald’s. The golden arches were a mile and a half away — too far for a walk in the dark. So the boy did what any self-respecting Gen-Z kid would do when confronted with a conundrum. He looked up “How to drive a car” on YouTube, emptied his piggy bank, then bundled his sister into the car and headed out for a cheeseburger.
Police said later that the boy obeyed all the traffic laws, didn’t hit a single thing, and drove “effortlessly” through town as though he had been driving for years — all because he watched a few minutes of video instruction and then did precisely what it said to do.
The pint-sized adventurer seems to have grasped early on what many of us grasped much later in life. That is that, on the internet, someone somewhere has created a video to show you how to do what you’re about to attempt. Whether it’s a repair for your home or your car, how to put on makeup, learning self-defense or making dinner, all you need to do is look it up on the world’s most popular video site and soon you’ll be an expert yourself — even if it’s expertise on the best way to massage your pet opossum (because, apparently, opossums need massages — something else you can only learn on YouTube! And here I am thinking all opossums do is play dead).
There are millions of these tutorial videos, most produced by average people who have learned a skill and simply want to share it. It’s the crowd sourcing of expertise that makes it possible for the most mechanically inept person to fix a faucet, or a maker of microwave mac and cheese to become a gourmet chef. Of course, all this instruction depends on the viewer’s willingness to experiment and put the information into practice. Without that, it’s just another internet time-waster.
Well, when I was growing up (I’m officially talking like my parents and grandparents) we obviously didn’t have YouTube. Most of my learning was accomplished by watching someone in person teach and model the activity in question face to face or, at times, receiving instructions my what we now call “snail mail” (which took way longer than even dial-up internet service! Anyone remember that?). In person driver's ed I think still exists but the challenges are exponentially different.
Faithfulness is rooted in the trustworthiness of God. In the Greco-Roman world, many people consulted astrology and the alignment of the stars as a kind of first-century YouTube to help determine their course of action. Faithfulness puts God’s word (and that, for me, is first and foremost the Bible) into demonstrable and visible action. So how does that word get activated in our lives?
James says that you have to practice it. “But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.". The purpose of receiving instruction, receiving the “word of truth,” is to put the information into practice. If, say, I watch a YouTube video on how to fix a leaky faucet but never pull out the tools and get to work putting what I’ve learned to good use, then I will still be stuck with a constant drip. If I really want to fix the problem, I need to set up my phone next to the sink and follow along step by step with the video.
On the other hand, if I just watch the video and say, “Yeah, I’ll get back to that sometime,” I’ll quickly forget everything I’ve learned. James says the same thing happens when we only hear the word of God and don’t put it into practice. It’s as though we looked at ourselves in a mirror briefly and then walked away, almost instantly forgetting what we looked like. If, on the other hand, we keep our focus on “the perfect law, the law of liberty,” and persevere in the midst of trial, being hearers and doers, we will be “blessed” in our doing. In fact, it’s the “doing” of the word that matters most for James.
Now, to be real, some YouTube tutorials don’t quite convey the information in a way that’s easy to follow. Try tying a tie while watching a video or looking at a chart, for example. It’s extremely difficult because that mirror image forces us to do everything backwards. To tie that bow tie effectively we need someone standing beside us to show you how, guiding our fingers and helping us develop the internal memory of the process until it becomes second nature. It’s one thing to conceptualize the process, and quite another to execute it.
The same is true for real “religion,” says James. It’s not simply about running at the mouth and declaring our faith as a matter of intellectual belief; nor is it about lashing out at those who might be challenging us. " Religion that is “pure and undefiled before God,” on the other hand, is religion that is demonstrated in practice — practice that comes as second nature to those who have internalized the word of truth. It’s religion that cares for the most vulnerable people and keeps oneself “unstained by the world."
It is real religion, in other words, that uses the model of Jesus for both its belief and its practice. Like tying that tie, there are some things YouTube just can’t teach. It can’t teach us how to be a follower of Jesus.
Well, why not just ask Alexa? She, too, can teach us the principles of discipleship, but to really learn it we have to have someone live it out in front of us and guide us along the way. Information alone won’t get it; it takes imitation as well.
That’s why we need a community of faith to guide us and give us examples for putting the word into practice. In a culture where there is plenty of social upheaval, we must see the opportunity to be shining stars that reflect God’s glory rather than lash out in fear or join in the culture’s calamity. We shine most brightly when we are doing the Word of God in a way that causes others to see us and want to be instructed in how to do the same.
An 8-year-old learned to drive perfectly by watching a tutorial video and then grabbing the keys. All the motivation he needed was found in the prospect of a Happy Meal. May we be motivated to take the instruction we have been given by the word of truth, put it into practice and then head out to an even greater destination.
Have a great week.
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