“Save me, Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues,” (Psalm 120:2).
To all those who are shocked about the coming winter storm, please note that it is, in fact, winter. I only point this out in response to the worst-case scenario headlines and ‘Snowmageddon’ references competing for ‘look at me’ readership.
We seem to be so desperate for attention, to acquire clicks and likes and hits and shares, that we exhaust all possible five-alarm alerts long before anything actually happens. We so badly want to be noticed that we resort to anything to get people to look our way. When they do, we have little of substance to say.
What baffles me about all the hyperbole and bluster and flat-out lying is that the truth is usually more interesting. If only we take the trouble to find it.
I visited a movie set, and it looked like the main street of a town. Signs and window displays invited us into shops, a hotel, a bar, even a church. Yet if you walk to the end and look around, there is nothing there. It’s all facade with no depth or substance or content.
I am concerned that we live our lives looking at the signs and the windows and the ads, but we fail to take the trouble to read for content or look on the inside. We are in a ‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain’ moment in the world right now.
We have to become more interested in truth. We have to look beyond the cardboard cutouts and the hype and the strobe lights and the smoke on the stage.
We were issued with some pretty good brains when we were born, most of us have gone to school and basic research is not that hard of a task if we are motivated.
So, what’s stopping us? Aren’t we tired of the hype, the politics, the deception, the misinformation, the headlines that lead nowhere and the facades in front of empty spaces?
Snowstorm or snow job — we really need to be more discerning consumers of information.
— DEREK
