Christian Living

PARADOX OF EXAGGERATION

by GLENN PEASE
03/19/22
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INTRODUCTION

When someone tells you they had to carry their groceries into the house by themselves yesterday,and they weighed a ton, or that the guy who waited on them at the store was as old as Methusalah, they are not demonstrating that they are deficient in guesstimating skills, for they are just exaggerating. This is very common in every day conversation. When they say they were in Nevada on vacation and it was as hot as the devil, they are not trying to convey their theological precision in measuring the temperature of the host of hell. They are just exaggerating to convey that it was miserable heat. You do not call these people liars, for you understand that they are using hyperbole to convey strong feelings about what they are communicating. When they say, “I am starving to death, and I am so hungry I could eat a horse,” you do not run for cover for fear they will go mad and begin to start gnawing on your arm or leg. You know they are just saying by this exaggerated language that they are very hungry. We accept hyperbole in everyday communication as a normal way of making strong statements. They express a higher degree of significance than mere literal words like, I feel hot, or I am hungry. By saying I am sweating to death you get an immediate impression of the intensity of their hotness. When they say, my stomach is eating me up, you know it is time to get going for some food. Exaggeration communicates more than just information. It communicates emotion and intensity of feelings. When I say my grandson is as light as a feather, I am just saying it is easy for me to lift him and throw him around in fun. You could weigh him and then weigh a feather to prove me a liar, but that would be missing the whole point. I am not expressing a scientific fact, but a feeling that is real for me.

All the exaggeration we do when it comes to numbers is not a demonstration of our pathetic lack of math skills. It is a demonstration of our feelings. We tell someone about our great fishing experience, and the fish we caught, or the one that got away, was no run of the mill fish. It was a creature of the sea with the teeth of the shark, and the fins like the wings of a plane. We stretch out our hands to give a measure of the creature that is longer than what we know are the facts, but we are not communicating facts. We are communicating excitement, and the joy or our experience. We are not giving the measure of the catch, but the measure of our pleasure. It works the same way with negative emotions. When a friend says “The coach was so hard on us today. He must have made us run a hundred miles in track”, he is not lying, but telling you he feels tired from what he had to do. He feels it was too much, and he did not like it. When your buddy says, “It is going to take a bazillion years to get through medical School”, you don't look up bazillion to see just how much that is, for you know he is just saying this is going to be a long haul, and I am feeling stressed about it. Exaggeration is expressing feelings and not facts.

That is what love poetry is all about. It is not about scientific measurements of the beauty of the lovers face, body and all other charming factors. It is an expression of feelings, and love feelings demand exaggeration. If you read the Song of Songs in the Bible, you will read lovers describing each other. In 4:4-7 we read him saying to her, “ Your neck is like the tower of David, built with elegance; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors. Your two breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of incense. All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you.” Later on in 7:4-7 he says, “Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus. Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. Your hair is like royal tapestry; the king is held captive by its tresses. How beautiful you are and how pleasing, O love, with your delights!Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit.” The whole love story is filled with exaggerations, for love cannot speak without them. Hyperbole is a key tool in expressing love, and all other strong emotions. It is almost impossible to be truly excited about anything, or anybody, and not use hyperbole in your speech.

So when we come to the Bible, the most important and exciting book on the planet, it is to be expected that we will encounter hyperbole. It is a book filled with numerous high thoughts and emotions, and these are frequently communicated by means of hyperbole, or exaggeration. What we will see is that exaggeration is paradoxical because it can be used in a way that is bad and harmful, but also in a way that is good and helpful. It is both a vice and a virtue depending on how we use it.

A. THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF EXAGGERATION

1. When it is used as an excuse. We see this in Num. 33:33, "And there we saw the giants ... And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." I am sure the giants were not sky scrapers, but they had to be really tall. I was in a restaurant a while back when a father and son came into eat, and I was feeling intimidated by the largeness of the son. Dad was a good size as well, but the son was so big and tall that he towered over all normal people. The waitress made comment about his size to us as she walked by, for it was somewhat shocking. As big as he was, however, I did not feel like a grasshopper. I felt small in comparison, but I was not on the level where these Israelites felt before the giants of the land. The point is, they were exaggerating, and by this they were communicating their fears of trying to take the land away from them. Fear of obeying God to take on these giants was real, but they blew it way out of proportion in order to justify not obeying God. They really felt inferior, and so their exaggeration was a valid expression of their emotions, but they were using it in a negative way to justify disobedience to God. They had valid reason to be fearful, but even more reason to be faithful after all God had done for them in delivering them from Egypt and preserving them against all plagues and enemies. This exaggeration of the size of the giants they had to face to take the Promised Land captivated their spirit and they became cowards. Only Joshua and Gideon were faithful, and were ready to take the land by faith in God's power to give them victory. The cowards all died in the wilderness, and never got to enter the promised land, and it was all because of their foolish exaggeration. In Deut. 1:29 they said they could not fight the Anakites because their cities had walls up to the sky. They scared themselves into cowardice by means of their wild exaggerations.

2. The Proverbs portray lazy men as great exaggerators. "The lazy man says, ‘there is a lion on the road, a lion is between the streets’ " (Proverbs 26:13). He exaggerates in order to justify doing nothing. "The door turns on its hinges, and the lazy man on his bed" (Proverbs 26:14). The door turns on its hinges but goes nowhere, so too the lazy man turns on his bed from side to side but does not get up. "The lazy man buries his hand in the dish; it wearies him to return it to his mouth" (Proverbs 26:15). He is too lazy even to bring the food to his mouth. " We see the folly of the lazy man in his seeking to justify his not getting out of bed to go to work by declaring that he would be risking a lion attack. This is an exaggerated picture of the lazy due to their using exaggeration in their excuses for being lazy. People tend to exaggerate whenever they wish to justify their behavior that is unacceptable to others. It is a bad character trait.

3. It becomes a form of lying when you embellish a story by exaggeration to the point that it is really false information. John W. Ritenbaugh wrote, “ I like to tell stories, and my family has told me more than once that I sometimes exaggerate things. I always justified it as good humor and in fun. I have come to learn, however, the exaggerations, boasts, or little white lies that "spice up" stories or humor can often hurt and damage others. Sometimes someone hearing the story remembers the situation, and it was not as funny or, from his perspective, happened some other way.” Some of this in the right setting is a valid kind of humor, and I will deal with it on the positive side, but it is frequently just plain lying when people exaggerate. Teens who brag about their conquests when all that really happened is they got slapped are liars. They exaggerate to be a part of the cool people, but it is lying. So it is with so much of the boasting that goes on in the world, and in the church. Nobody really knows how many people have truly come to the Lord at a crusade for Christ, but you can count on it the numbers will be inflated beyond reality. It is a form of Christian lying to build the ego of the evangelist and the people who support him. It is a good feeling to be successful, and exaggeration can help greatly in giving that feeling.

4. The press is notorious in exaggerating their stories to gain attention by making everything more spectacular than it really is in fact. Irish singer ANDREA CORR condemns the press for exaggerating remarks she makes in interviews - and is frustrated her quotes are often misinterpreted. The star insists journalists spin up stories about her - including one incident in which she was reported to have slammed the Bible. She says, "This is what gets picked up on. I once said I wanted to read the Bible the whole way through but I stopped when it said that women endure the pain of childbirth because of what Eve did with the apple. "I said I shut the Bible and that I'd had enough at that point. Then the papers reported, 'Andrea Corr slams the Bible!' Of course I didn't slam the Bible. You've got to be careful what you say." This exaggeration could lead to her being called a Bible slammer for the rest of her life, and it is based on a lie. This story is repeated daily by the thousands of things that come out in print that exaggerate what people say and do, and mean. The press can make or break people by means of exaggeration. They constantly blow things out of proportion and create anxiety, for they have to be provocative in order to get attention. Exaggeration is the name of the game, and a lot of people get hurt in that game. The Urban Dictionary calls this an exaggerlie. “An exaggeration that contains more falsehoods than truth. Statements that are closer to being a lie than the truth. The famous actor claimed the news report of his out-of-control drug addiction was an exaggerlie because he had only smoked pot a few times.”

5. It is not just the press, for many individuals have the same mentality. They delight in exaggerating the most minor things into major issues. It is their way of getting attention. They create a dramarama over events that are trivial, and they work at drawing others in so that it becomes a major point of contention that gets people stirred up. They are not happy unless there is chaos somewhere, and so they will exaggerate until people are persuaded it is a big deal.

6. Brown nosing is exaggerating how much you care and appreciate someone when you don't care at all. Compliments only for selfish ends are all fake. You tell your hostess, “That was the best meal of my life,” and, “I have never had a home cooked meal like that ever.” But when you get in the car to go home you complain that the vegetables were overcooked. You were just using exaggeration to win some favor with the hostess, and especially so if she had the power to get your child into a special school that you were hoping would happen for your child. When we go beyond facts to compliment people it is a form of deceit. We are all tempted to use exaggeration in this way to benefit ourselves, but it does fall into the negative side of its usefulness. This is almost universal when dealing with the death of someone we know. We encourage the loved ones by over emphasizing the character of the departed. Mark Twain was right when he said, “It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead.” I remember of reading of a pastor who did not know how to say anything nice about the man he was burying. He was the worst type of person that he knew. The whole family were really bad, and so all he could come up with was this: “He was not the best man, but he was still better than his brother.” The point is, we are tempted to lie or stretch the truth when dealing with the departed, and this means we use exaggeration to be polite and to gain favor. This may be just being kind rather than mean, and so there can be a virtuous side to it, but it can also be just plain lying about what we know is not the truth.

7. Pride is exaggeration of self importance. It is a competitive world, and so we have to make our resume look superior to that of others. We use exaggeration to the point that it borders on outright lying in order to impress those who have the authority to hire us. Paul tells us that we ought not to thing of ourselves more highly than we ought, and this goes for trying to make others think of us more highly than they ought by exaggerating our skills and character.

8. Exaggeration can do damage to relationships, and we need to be careful in how we praise others in the presence of those who may be in a competitive relationship. In I Sam. 18:6-9 we read, “When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with tambourines and lutes. 7 As they danced, they sang: "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." 8 Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. "They have credited David with tens of thousands," he thought, "but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?

And from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David.” This led to a lifetime of jealousy against David, and it ruined their relationship that was once ideal. The women meant no harm, but they by this exaggeration exalted David to a point that it made the king seem like a nobody in comparison. Saul also blew it out of proportion rather than just take it as an expression of great joy at David's victory over the Philistines. He exaggerated his being put down as a rejection, when that was not the case at all. The women would likely feel rotten if they were told how bad it made the king feel. This whole account helps us see the dangers involved in expressing our feelings in exaggerated ways. Saul so exaggerated his negative feelings that he went on to try and kill David. History is filled with murders that are committed by people who have so exaggerated their jealousy or other emotions, that they lose the control of common sense to hold them back from such folly.

9. Many will exaggerate a certain aspect of a truth to the exclusion of other aspects, and the end result is a lie, or a false impression. That is often what theological controversy is all about. Bible believing people are in contention over issues where both use the Bible to prove their perspective, but each defends their texts but ignores and explains away the texts of the other side. This exaggeration of one side of a paradox is wrong, for it refused to look at the whole truth of an issue to see that both side do have a valid perspective, and they both need to be accepted as valid Biblical truth to be really believing the Bible. Most cults are based on taking a partial truth and blowing it all out of proportion to be the whole truth. Exaggeration has many bad sides to it. Some have gone so far as to say, “Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.” Hosea Ballou; 'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson; “Exaggeration misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive.” ~Eliza Cook

B. THE POSITIVE SIDE OF EXAGGERATION

1. It is a wonderful way to express great excitement and pleasure. Almost every celebration includes exaggeration, for it is a time of great joy, and joy needs exaggeration for expression. Jesus used it to shut the mouth of the grumpy old Pharisees who were complaining about all the joyfulness of the crowds when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He made it clear that this was a part of God's plan, and nothing was going to stop it. We read in Luke 19:37-40, “When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest." Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher rebuke your disciples!' "I tell you," he replied. "if they keep quiet, THE STONES WILL CRY OUT." Jesus was using hyperbole to express his deep emotions about what was happening, and had the crowds stopped shouting his praises, it was his conviction that his heavenly father would give the very stones he rode on voices to continue the praises. Jesus was exaggerating, for God, we assume, would have just kept the people singing praise rather than the rocks. This could have been the beginning of rock music, but it was not, for nothing could turn these people off from their praises. That is just what Jesus meant by his exaggeration.

Barnes in his commentary wrote, “It would be impossible to restrain the people, and improper to attempt it. The language here is strong proverbial language to denote that fact. We are not to suppose, therefore, that our Savior meant to say that the stones were “conscious” of his coming, or that God would “make” them speak, but only that there was “great joy” among the people; that it was “proper” that they should express it in this manner, and that it was not fit that he should attempt to repress it.”

2. One of the greatest examples of exaggeration that expresses excitement and pleasure is that of the Apostle John. He gives us an exaggeration to convey the importance and value of every act of Jesus. This could not be expressed in plain language. Exaggeration is needed in love relationships for normal language cannot say what needs to be said about the feelings of love. So the Apostle whom Jesus loved in a unique way wrote, “If everything Jesus ever did were written down, the world could not hold all the books.” (John 21:25). Nobody has ever calculated how many books would so fill the world that we would need space travel to build libraries on other planets to hold the books that could not fit into this globe, but we know it is a figure that is beyond imagination. By exaggeration John is expressing his feelings about the enormous number of acts of Jesus that will not be recorded for all time. In any one day Jesus did more wondrous miracles and acts of healing mercy than are in all four of the Gospels. Nobody was taking notes to preserve them, and so John is saying, what Jesus did is so much more than anyone can ever know. He is not trying to communicate a statistic, but an emotion about the infinite wonder of all the acts of love that Jesus did. The only way he could express his emotions was by hyperbole, for who could be impressed had he written, “It would take a lot of books to cover all that Jesus did.”

When you are dealing with extreme emotions you need extreme language.

3. It is a powerful way to make a point. Jesus used it often. Probably the most famous hyperbole is found in Matt. 19:24 (Mark 10:25; Luke 18:25): "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." This is often explained away by the theory that there was a low gate that a camel could just barely squeeze through, but that is a mere fabrication with no basis in fact. The reason for such a made up story is that the message is too shocking to accept. It means that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Nobody wants to hear that or believe that, and so they concoct some fake way to get around it. The fact is, Jesus is saying it is impossible. No camel will ever go through the eye of a needle, and Jesus is saying this impossible thing is more likely than a rich man making it into the kingdom of God. Jesus made this drastic exaggeration not to damn the rich forever, but to make it clear that it is impossible for them to make it on their own. Jesus goes on to say, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” The rich can make it by God's grace, but none will make it by being rich, or famous, or wise, or by any other human achievement. By exaggeration Jesus locked in a major theological truth that can never be changed, and it demands that man cease to try and save himself, and turn to God's provision for salvation by faith in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. Another example is when Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matt. 23:24, NIV) They were not literally blind, and we know they never actually swallowed a camel. Jesus was not describing their diet, but their stupid focus on the trivial while neglecting matters of eternal significance. Jesus is not communicating facts, but feelings, for he was very angry at them for their indifference to what really matters. All they cared about was their legalistic adherence to their additions to the law. They cared not for people and their desperate needs, but only their own selfish need for attention and authority. Exaggeration is a means by which anger and disapproval is expressed in order to get a message through thick headedness. That is why mothers who are fed up with bad behavior use exaggerations. “If you kids don't stop fighting we are never coming to the park again.” Mom knows they will be back, but the “never” might strike a fear into the little rascals so they maintain the peace for awhile.

5. The Pharisees also used exaggeration to express their deep feelings of fear and insecurity. When massive crowds began to follow Jesus after he raised Lazarus from the dead, they were so fearful of losing the respect of the people they said to one another in John 12:19, “Look how the whole world has gone after him.” Again, they were not doing any statistical study, but were expressing their anger and frustration about the popularity of Jesus. They still had plenty of followers, but it looked like the whole world had turned on them in their emotional life. When we have deep feelings that are either negative or positive, we will express them by the use of exaggeration. This is a valid use of hyperbole because it helps us release our tension. Many cuss and use vulgar language to express their anger and frustration, but this is not acceptable to a Christian. The use of exaggeration, however, is a valid way to release pent up emotions.

6. Jesus used exaggeration to shock people into full awareness of what they were doing when they committed themselves to be his disciple. He knew there were many just following along with the crowd who had no real commitment, and so he said in Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." We know that Jesus is not demanding that we hate our whole family, for love of family is one of the most important responsibilities that the Word of God stresses. This is the Jesus version of the first commandment to have no other gods but Jehovah. Jesus is saying that no other love can come between him and his disciples. You cannot put him second to anyone, for this is to deny him as your Lord. He must be loved supremely over all other loves in your life. If you love yourself, or any member of your family on a level greater than your love for him, you have displaced him as number one in your life, and this means you have ceased to follow him as your God, Master, and Redeemer.

Matthew Henry wrote, “Every good man loves his relations; and yet, if he be a disciple of Christ, he must comparatively hate them, must love them less than Christ, as Leah is said to be hated when Rachel was better loved. Not that their persons must be in any degree hated, but our comfort and satisfaction in them must be lost and swallowed up in our love to Christ..... When our duty to our parents comes in competition with our evident duty to Christ, we must give Christ the preference. If we must either deny Christ or be banished from our families and relations (as many of the primitive Christians were), we must rather lose their society than his favor. [2.] Every man loves his own life, no man ever yet hated it; and we cannot be Christ's disciples if we do not love him better than our own lives, so as rather to have our lives embittered by cruel bondage, nay, and taken away by cruel deaths, than to dishonor Christ, or depart from any of his truths and ways. The experience of the pleasures of the spiritual life, and the believing hopes and prospects of eternal life, will make this hard saying easy. When tribulation and persecution arise because of the word, then chiefly the trial is, whether we love better, Christ or our relations and lives; yet even in the days of peace this matter is sometimes brought to the trial. Those that decline the service of Christ, and opportunities of converse with him, and are ashamed to confess him, for fear of disobliging a relation or friend, or losing a customer, give cause to suspect that they love him better than Christ.”

An unknown author wrote this about the folly of thinking Jesus meant that we must literally hate our family to follow him: “One way to misinterpret this verse is to take it literally. Cults often operate on the premise that the statement is literally true — that it pits loyalty to the group against love for family. In doing so, they attempt to distance followers from family members who might make them fall away. Critics of Christianity in turn point to the verse in order to denigrate the Christian faith. An atheist, for example, quotes the verse as “a perfect illustration of how a cult operates. Sort of makes you wonder about all those conservative religionists that preach ‘traditional family values!’” A deist scolds Christians who do not interpret the verse literally. After noting that Luke chose the Greek word meaning “hate” and not another word meaning “love less,” this person writes, “All you are attempting here is to explain away an uncomfortable teaching because you cannot live up to it; in effect, you do not really believe it.” Someone who calls himself a satanist castigates Christianity on the ground that, in light of Jesus’ statement, “one must question Christ’s idea of the family.” One final aberration needs to be added to the mix. A gnostic source asserts that early Assyrian churches took Jesus’ statement to mean that only celibate men could become Christians.

7. In Matthew 5:29 we read Jesus warning of the dangers of lust, and he said, “ If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away...” That was shocking language that got attention, but Jesus would be horrified if all of his followers would have gouged out their right eye, and he would have had all one eyed disciples. That was not his intention. He knew that all men are lustful. When he said for the man without sin to cast the first stone at the woman taken in adultery he knew there would be no throwers, for he knew they all had lust. He did not literally expect any to actually gouge out an eye. It was his radical way of saying that you have to fight lust with great determination, for it is a powerful force, and if you do not use some radical methods of controlling it, it will take you down. There have been men in history who have tried this literally, and all they learned is that you can lust with one eye the same as with two. Literally digging out an eye does not have much effect on your lust problem. The point is, Jesus used exaggeration to make it clear that lust is not an enemy that you can treat with kid gloves. You have to take it seriously as a major threat to your life, your marriage, and your faithfulness to God.

8. Jesus said in Luke 9:25, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” He could have toned it down to what if a man gained millions, or what if a man gained ownership of all Israel, or what if a man became the riches man in the world. He did not tone it down, however, but went all the way to the ultimate level of gaining the whole world. He did this to make it clear that there is absolutely no level of wealth or power that could ever make it world losing your soul, and being cast out of God's presence for all eternity. By means of exaggeration Jesus closed the door on any speculation that there might be something better in life than what he was offering them. The salvation of their very selves was the highest value conceivable, and to lose that for the gaining even of the whole world is a bad deal. Satan offered Jesus the control of the whole world if he would bow down to him, but Jesus said no deal. That is to be our response when tempted to forsake the will of God for anything the devil can offer. When he says deal of no deal, always go with no deal, for nothing he can offer is worth losing the favor of God over.

9. Exaggeration is common in poetry, and especially when deep emotions are being communicated. We read in Psalm 119:136, "Rivers of water run down from my eyes, Because men do not keep Your law." Nobody thinks he actually had rivers running down his face, for they know that he is saying that he is deeply disturbed by the situation of lawlessness. He weeps over the folly of man. He could have just said I don't like what is going on, but his exaggeration makes it far more impressive as to his emotional state of frustration and sorrow.

10. We looked at the danger of compliments, and the brown nosing to win favor, but there is a positive side of exaggerated words of encouragement. In the Bible lands it is a notorious reality that people are over expressive in hospitality. A guest in their home is the most important person on the planet, and there is an obligation to do everything possible to preserve their happiness and safety. Lot was willing to even offer his daughters to be raped rather than let the mob abuse his guests. Rihbany offers an example of what might be a common experience. Here is a welcome he received from an old friend when he came to his home: "You have extremely honored me by coming into my abode. I am not worthy of it. This house is yours; you may burn it if you wish. My children are also at your disposal; I would sacrifice them all for your pleasure." The Westerner who hears this might well be shocked and offended, but what is being said behind the verbiage is no more than "I am delighted to see you; please make yourself at home." In Bible lands and culture people express kind and loving things in exaggerated language. It is not expected that you will take advantage of their hospitality and burn the house down for your pleasure, but it is expected that you truly feel completely free to relax and be yourself. It is a positive way to make your guest fee no obligation as if they are taking advantage of you.

11. Another area where exaggeration has a positive role is in the whole world of humor. Humor caricature artists use exaggeration to produce a likeness of a person, but with features that makes you laugh. Their exaggerated features are funny. Much other humor is also based on exaggeration, and when it is good clean humor it is a blessing, for it makes people laugh, and that is good for the health of body and mind. Mark Twain habitually bemoaned the poor quality of French coffee. It was his insistence that the concoction was brewed by, "rubbing a chicory bean against a coffee bean and dropping the chicory bean in the water." Comedians are using exaggeration all the time to get people to laugh. I found this funny poem that seeks to get at least a smile, by an exaggeration.

“There was a young man of Japan

Whose poetry never would scan.

When asked why it was,

He said, ‘Well, because

I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.’”

Dumb blonde jokes are all based on exaggeration, and so it is with most jokes that make fun of other types of people other than the speaker or crowd. This type of humor can be abused and be very mean and degrading, but it can also be good fun. There is nothing funny about hot weather, but if you blow it way out of proportion it can be amusing. For example:

How hot was it? It gets so hot in my town that

The ice cream cone on the Baskin-Robbins sign melted.

Everyone carries oven mitts in case they have to turn a doorknob.

The local radio station plays only one song, "We're Having a Heat Wave."

The stripes on the barber pole have run together.

Recipe for hot soup: put bouillon cubes and ice cubes in a bowl, stir, and drink immediately.

Dave Barry is famous for his use of exaggeration to make people laugh. He wrote, “It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells ... to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin." Again he wrote, “..an explicit lingerie outfit: it was "so sheer you could read an appliance warranty through it in an unlit closet." And, "Aging faster than a day-old bagel in a hot dumpster."

Drew Carey said, “Like I said, all comedy is based on exaggeration, big or small, whatever you can get away with.”

Clowns are funny because they are exaggerated, and comedians thrive on exaggeration. Late-night-talk-show-host Johnny Carson was a master at telling exaggeration jokes. His opening monologue was peppered with so many exaggeration jokes that the studio audience became trained to recognize and react to Carson's set ups.

Johnny Carson: You know, I was visiting a small town last week.

At this point the well-trained audience joins in with one voice, How small was it?

Carson: The Enter and Exit signs for the town were on the same pole.

Here is a good joke to tell on your pastor. It is an exaggeration, but it is based on substantial truth as well. It is the exaggeration that makes it funny. “Three friends decided to go deer hunting together. One was a lawyer, one a doctor, and the other a preacher.

As they were walking, along came a big buck. The three of them shot simultaneously. Immediately the buck dropped to the ground and all three rushed up to see how big it actually was.

Upon reaching it they found out that it was dead but had only one bullet hole. Thus a debate followed concerning whose buck it was.

A few minutes later a game officer came by and asked what the problem was. The doctor told him their reason for the debate. The officer told them he would take a look and tell them who shot it.

Within a few seconds the game officer said with much confidence, "The pastor shot the buck!"

They all wondered how he knew that so quickly.

The officer said, "Easy. The bullet went in one ear and out the other."

Kenn Nesbitt writes children's poetry, and he specializes in exaggeration because that is the way to give kids a good laugh. Here is an example of how he writes:

I ate a spicy pepper
From my brother on a dare.
The pepper caught my head on fire
And burned off all my hair.

My mouth erupted lava
And my tongue began to melt.
My ears were shooting jets of steam.
At least that's how they felt.

I ricocheted around the room.
I ran across the ceiling.
I dove right in the freezer
To relieve the burning feeling.

I drank a thousand soda pops
And chewed a ton of ice
To try to stop the scorching
Of that spicy pepper's spice.

At last, the flames extinguished,
I admitted to my brother,
"That pepper was the best one yet.
May I please have another?"

That is a clever and entertaining use of exaggeration, for I know people who love that hot stuff, and it is hard for me to believe it is valid that they can like it. I see it with my own eyes, however, and so I know it is true even though it seems crazy to me. I can choke just watching them take a bite. On second thought, that is an exaggeration. What I mean is I don't like the feeling of just thinking of taking a bite of such hot stuff.

CONCLUSION

I have just given you a taste of the bad and the good side of exaggeration. There are many more examples in the Bible. In fact, I have a book of 242 pages before me dealing with the hyperbole in the New Testament. I wrote this brief example to add to the list of my writings on the paradoxes of the Bible. I think it is necessary for believers to grasp the reality of the many paradoxes in God's Word in order to be wiser in discerning what is true and false; what is valid and not valid in the interpretation and practical application of what God has revealed to us. Those who lack a grasp of paradox become the trouble makers in the body of Christ. They are the ones who see a partial truth and magnify it to the point that they call all who do not see it as they do, heretics and unbelievers. Paradox lovers, and the history of God's great leaders are full of them, are the peacemakers, for they see the need to try and reconcile opposite perspectives, and when they cannot, they accept them as part of the mystery of God who is himself the greatest paradox in the universe.