Emergence

Ok, so the title of the blog is a bit of an exaggeration. That's exactly my point.

Sensationalism is an epidemic these days (that may be exaggerated, too). Everywhere you look, things are overstated (maybe not everywhere).

One of the places where this problem became most apparent to me was in news outlets. In the days after 9/11, I, like many others, couldn't peel myself away from the 24 hour cable news networks. Back then, my diet consisted of primarily Fox News. Since then, my diet has changed (like most people my age and younger--John Stewart usually gives me my nightly update), but my eyes were glued to the TV every time I heard a "Fox News Alert" hit the screen. At first, it was a necessary evil. "Are we safe? Is there another attack?" These things were incessantly playing through my mind.

Soon, however, these alerts began to have a wallpaper effect. There seemed to be a new one every 5 minutes. The airtime once reserved for imminent threats began to be used to highlight the most mundane of breaking news. The exaggeration was profound, and it made me turn off the news altogether.

The frustration of unnecessary superlative hit me again as I ran into this article a couple of days ago. First, a few observations. Here in the United States, we are in a recession. I did not live through the depression, but my guess is that anyone who did would never make the comparison to today.

As an example, here is a line in 1932:

this line was for... FOOD.

Here is a line from 2010:

In a depression such as this one, what could this line be for? An iPad.

Here's the problem: when everything becomes important, nothing is important. When exaggeration rules the day, honesty and authenticity are lost.

In church, it is no different. What is important to the church today? If it is politics, a particular sin issue, or even church programs, it makes everything else less important. If we overexaggerate the importance of lesser matters, it only hinders our ability to communicate the true importance of greater matters.

People aren't dumb. No one thinks our recession is anything like the great depression--and bevcause the headline says so, you lose credibility.

I hope that as a people, we can look realistically at the issues of life, and not turn unimportant things into headlines or "news alerts"--when they really shouldn't be. It'll make the real headlines all the more believable.

What's your headline? Should it be a headline at all?