We are running out of superlatives

Well Hurricane Florence has been down graded several times to the point she is now a low-pressure system with a lot of rain.  Thankfully the loss of life was small and most of the damage appears to come from flooding.  I wonder if there are some in the media that are disappointed.  I don’t mean to speak lightly of the losses suffered by people during hurricane Florence.  For those who have lost home property and or loved ones this is a tragedy of heartbreak magnitude.  But as the storm approached the warnings by many in the media went over the top with a predictive description of how bad it was going to be.  It was labeled “the storm of a lifetime”.  In October of 1780 a hurricane moved through the Caribbean killing in excess of 22,000 people, devastating the British Navy, on some islands destroying 100% of the buildings, and had winds of about 200 mph.   Think of a tornado the size of Texas.  That is a storm of the century that is a storm of a lifetime.  Compared with many major hurricanes Florence is just a lot of rain and localized flooding. 

The problem with predictive descriptions is that they are 100% unreliable.  It is not unlike the hype associated with college football games labeled as “THE Game of the Century”.  In fact there were 10 games that had the title “THE Game of the Century” during the 20^th century, we have had three games of the century so far this century.  We believe we must become shriller to be heard. During election season there is an explosion of negative campaign ads that seem to escalate in shrillness every two years.  In the age of Internet stardom everyone is attempting to create a brand for themselves and to do that everyone must stand out from the crowd, by being more extreme more radical.  Everything has to be labeled with superlatives, and we are running out of superlatives.  When a soft drink (artificially colored and flavored sugar water) is AWESOME what can you say about stars and galaxies?   

This tendency toward narcissistic hyperbolic announcements does nothing to aid communication.  In fact it offers two powerful negatives.  First it inhibits trustworthiness.  “I rode out last year’s hurricane of a lifetime, I can ride out this year’s mega storm as well.”  But what if this year’s storm is really dangerous.  One has to wonder if some of those who lost there lives in Florence failed to leave early because they didn’t take the warnings seriously.  When everything is labeled a catastrophe and the catastrophic never appears we become dubious of future warnings.   It is the old story of the boy, or in this case the media, who cried wolf.  The second, and ironically the opposite error, is worry.  If the newscaster can work us into a sufficient state of panic we will become glued to their every word.  We will be dependent on the constant flow of information or stimulation.  We will believe them when they say, “Save yourself,” or “the government will save you” or “information (which we provide) will save you”.  The greater our worry the greater we are likely to become co-dependent with the voices of woe, and their advertisers.  Worry is honestly foolish.  Worry is the belief that somewhere in the future there is a place without God.

I am not advising carelessness about potential problems.  I have prepared for emergency, we all should.  But we must refuse to allow the siren song singing the tune of demise to be the background music for our lives.  We need to care for those who are facing the flooding in the aftermath of this storm.  But we need to realize that until the new Heaven and the new Earth comes, the fluctuations of weather will be a part of life and all the worry in the world will change nothing.   As the song says, “Odds are everything is going to be alright”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sw9Fh6uk4Q

Psalm 46:10 tells us to “Be still and know that I am God”.  So the next time you hear the call to worry or panic hear your Father in Heaven as He says, “Chill out I got this”.