The Art of Exaggeration

"Always; never; everyone; nobody; every time; nothing; total; everything; all; none; constant; gigantic; not even close; minuscule, and many more." These are all words and phrases used by an exaggerator... of which I am one! We freely use them as statements in place of more accurate descriptive terms. For example: 'always' might be used when 'most of the time' would be more accurate (accuracy is not relevant to exaggeration).

The words and phrases that an exaggerator use are bothersome to a literalist. The literalist does not elevate the abstract... of which exaggeration is a prime example. They take things at their face value. They take them literally. When an exaggerator makes a blanket statement, (using always, never, every, etc) the literalists interprets this as inaccurate. The exagerator never intended for the statement to be taken at face value, they simply meant for it to utilize the impact of over-emphasis to drive home a truth.

Many years ago when I was teaching a Sunday school class, we came to the verse 'Titus 1:12' which reads "One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” The apostle Paul is quoting a Cretan poet who not only uses the explicative 'always' but greatly exaggerates all that he says about his fellow Cretans. I was not bothered by Paul's quotation... it was nothing more than an exaggeration to make a point. This verse bothered the literalists in the class. They were unable to accept that Paul would mean this literally. One student even suggested Paul was poking fun of the Cretan poet (what!!?). Though this exaggeration was not said by Paul, he was freely and unapologetically quoting it with full acceptance! This acceptance of an exaggeration and the fact that it even ended-up in scripture was hard for a literalist to accept. The class came to an end with the literalists unconvinced that an exaggeration had made it into scripture.

I enjoy a good exaggeration. If you want to be exposed to some of the best, read any of Mark Twain's literary prose. The man is one of the best. He would have no problem with the statement, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” Actually, it could have been written by himself.
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