Deception

There is a phenomenon that is almost as old as dirt - for it is virtually as old as human nature, which is, in truth, only three days older than humans and by virtue human nature - that produces an immense disparity between reality and perception.  That is to say, when a certain idea, or even object, is consistently paraded in front of a person, the intrinsic worth or importance of that idea or object is often over-inflated.  As if every float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade were of Snoopy the Dog, one might begin to think that the "Peanuts" cartoon, and specifically and especially Snoopy the Dog, were preeminently important not merely to the affairs of childhood entertainment, but to the affairs of the whole world.  Similarly with Adam - yes, the one in Eden - when he likely had tens of thousands of trees that had an explicit metaphorical "Yes" stamped on them, the one 'Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil' that had an explicit "No" stamped on it was the one that he couldn't seem to get out of his head.  More to the point, though, is that the mere assertion of a fact or idea without properly qualifying context surrounding that fact or idea, can lead to a vastly skewed perception of reality.  For example, the assertion that sharks are deadly and dangerous creatures and kill multiple people per year is, indeed, true - and patently so.  Moreover, there exists a whole litany of excerpts, documentaries, shows, movies, and news reels cataloguing every variety of shark bite or fatality, both imagined and real.  Sharks are dangerous, and there are several species I would have no pleasure in meeting face to face in the open water.  But the simple fact is, that sharks worldwide are responsible, on average, for a grand total of four human deaths per year...not 4,000 or even 400, but simply 4.  Upon inspection of this fact in the context of the prior one, there seems to be a wildly disproportionate representation of shark attacks in the media as opposed to the number of shark attacks and fatalities that actually occur.  Most would rather shut their ears to the fact that dogs, those precious cuddly house pets we "adopt" as a "part of the family" and overly calibrate with anthropomorphic sentiments...yes, dogs kill about 13,000 people a year.  And they are only number five in the tirade of animal kingdom killers of humankind, along with (in descending order) mosquitoes, other humans, snakes, sandflies, dogs, snails, assassin (or kissing) bugs, roundworms, scorpions, tsetse flies, crocodiles, tapeworms, hippopotamuses, elephants, lions, bees, tigers, jellyfish, wolves, and finally sharks.  I have not seen many movies on the great killer and assassin that is the snail - or the assassin that is the assassin bug, for that matter.  For most of these, not living in Africa gives you a pretty high likelihood of avoiding their deadliness, though they are all still significantly and even extremely more deadly than sharks, numerically speaking; though I imagine that the average person on the street is significantly more afraid of a shark than a tapeworm or sandfly, even though the death by these latter examples would likely be more agonizing and slow.  It is overwhelmingly the spectacle that has made the shark fearsome, with minor extra credit given to the reality of the piercing jaws.  Plane crashes get far more attention than the mundane routine occurrence of car crash fatalities, even though plane deaths account for around 42 per year, while car crashes account for around 26,000 in the U.S. alone.  It is the spectacle that creates the monstrosity.  I venture to think what other overly brandished and embellished spectacles have created monsters out of moles and molehills, and villains out viruses that would not seem so if the truth and context of the matter fully known! 

It was Madam Roland who proclaimed at the peak of the French Revolution, “Liberty, what crimes have been committed in thy name!” It may be said today, “News reporting, what crimes have been committed in thy name!” Let us be on guard against deception and seek after the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God!