A New Discovery: GodTube

I was skeptical. I am still.

This week I glimpsed the title of an article on The Christian Post which had the words "GodTube" in it. Since I currently have The Christian Post as my homepage, I saw the article's title several times this week on my way going to other sites. One evening I finally stopped long enough to click on the title, and by doing so learned that GodTube which came into existence last year is the Christian answer to YouTube.

I admit that I love YouTube because it offers much to me who loves history, culture, art, music, and other cute curiosities such as videos of babies' reactions to eating their first lemon. Like I have said in an earlier post, I define myself as a "primitive" Christian, one who believes that the church in America needs to go back to its' roots and follow Christ's teaching of love, sacrifice, and pacifism. Elements in American Christianity need to see God as One who not only loves but Who also reserves the sole right to judge and to punish.

Too much of American Christianity is ruled by greed and ignorance of God and His Word The Bible. There are some preachers who meddle and dabble too much in politics. This has particularly been the case with the Bush administration where preachers like John Hagee has espoused pre-emptive strikes against Iran even though the country is mired in two wars. Many preachers, especially many African-American preachers have poor theological training and just preach God's Word according to how black preachers have traditionally gotten into their pulpits and spoken or shouted for generations. Others are slick con men and women. The problems in the end are not an issue of color because misinformation and deception are flowing from preachers of varying colors and of both genders. Church has become a business in America.

So often I do not find in American Christianity what I know The Bible and God is about. We do not have the humbleness or knowledge of the early church. It is very disturbing to see so much mediocrity and ignorance.

So what about GodTube? I cannot say very much right now. You watch and decide. The little that I have watched proves that Chris Wyatt, the CEO of GodTube and its' creator has offered nothing really creatively unique. Wyatt has admitted that he wanted to create a family friendly or sanitized version of YouTube. The idea in portions of the Christian community in America is that in order to draw more people to Christianity, the church should get ideas from popular culture and mold what it gets into a Christian copy. Often what popular culture itself offers is low in standard, so what the church ends up with is nothing to really inspire or bring a kind of passionate truth to the world.

The church in America is not growing. For all the effort and good intensions of those who create sites and items like GodTube or MyChurch.org, the Christian answer to MySpace.com, the end results are not profound and artistic. Where are the spices to jazz up the bland fare we get? Where are the Christian scholars, especially in the Protestant evangelical church here?

It may be too early to come to final negative critique of GodTube since it is young and hopefully evolving. For those who feel like me, lets hope it evolves into something as beautiful and innovative as pre-Renaissance and Renaissance Christian art. I own some Greek icons which I purchased when I visited the Greek island of Rhodes in 2003, so lets hope they can arrive at the level of primitive beauty and creativity of an icon at least.

Where are the artists and Christian intellectuals in America? We truly need them.

Here is GodTube's answer to Desperate Housewives called Desperate Housewives of The Bible. I did find it quite funny, but in the end still rather bland fare.