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Photo from my first Bible YouTube channel video on June 6, 2019. You've probably heard about the negative effects social media can have on people. Most of us ignore it or try to add boundaries in order to keep those effects from impacting us. Social media is relatively new, exciting, and addictive. It has brought strangers as close as a comment or a tweet away from each other. People that we would have never had a chance to speak to suddenly became accessible. Platforms that would have never been an option grew through social media. There's a reward, but there is also a cost.
I first discovered the blessings of joining an online community of believers on Youtube a little before the Covid pandemic began. I was able to learn about the beliefs of different Christians around the world. I began to learn things about the Bible more deeply, including entered several niches online like the Christian apologetics community on YouTube. I loved feeling a part of a small community even by simply writing my thoughts in the comments section or live chats. I learned about the cost first hand recently. I had seen some of the cost noticing how often I depended on social media throughout the day and night and how it had an unrelenting pull towards me. Many people don't like to acknowledge this effect in them, but I will. The constant supposed need to share my thoughts on a platform, or answer people who responded to them. All of the things that these apps keep people coming back, I felt them. The likes, the platform growth. The spread of my content. It had a significant impact on growing my own YouTube channel. Then came an unfortunate mistake. A bump of heads. An undoing of all of my efforts. Trusting people I shouldn't have with my time and words. They spread false rumors about me. They made me look like something I wasn't. Worse, it impacted the healthy path I had been on. It became too much, and I decided it was time to go. Something that saddened me especially was how all of the people I thought I meant something to in the last years of interacting on social media were silent when all of this happened publicly. I learned the cost of "freedom of speech" on Twitter: anyone, including professing Christians, can slander you and other Christians will say and do nothing.
This is why I am choosing to share my thoughts here now, where people can get information straight from me. Where people who wish to say something to me will have to do so privately and directly, the way it used to be before platforms made it easier to embarrass people publicly with false information. The Bible, and my pastor a few years ago, advised me to share what I have to say to people who will value it. Social media is a mixed bag of people. Many people aren't interested in really knowing who I am or what I believe, but those who seek the truth about me will find it.
I will continue to write and make videos to you. Thank you for your continual support, especially in the tough times. Thank you for sticking with me, and I'd appreciate your prayers, because I've never experienced such cold behavior from this online community the way I have recently. I no longer consider past acquaintances friends. My heart is sad. I began sharing videos online because I want to have done something for God with my time here on earth, and that is my sole purpose in continuing. I am encouraged by Jesus' words: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). I'm stepping away from the YouTube community and going solo on YouTube. I have a community of believers I meet with weekly. I look forward to connecting and growing with them now. What I do is not about growth or popularity, or even making a name for myself or creating a brand. I'm okay sharing with a handful of people. I simply want to take care of myself, my family, and serve the Lord as best as I can.