Today's Scripture Reading (January 20, 2022): Deuteronomy 19
Recently I sat with my daughter and son-in-law and
watched a video of a comedian talking about "misheard song lyrics." I have seen several of these videos, but I hadn't seen this one. And there is a difference between reading an article about
misheard song lyrics, which was how we got on the topic, and listening to a comedian demonstrating misheard
song lyrics. As I read the article, my immediate reaction was, "who could have heard that lyric in that song." But with the comedian, he spoke the misheard lyric and then played the song. And
once you know the misheard version of the lyrics, it is hard to hear the
intended message of words.
It is a phenomenon that we
experienced first-hand in the late nineties in my family. In 1997, the Danish Europop musical group, Aqua,
released their hit song, "Barbie Girl." The song might sound like nonsense, but it actually
has a serious message. "Barbie Girl" is about the inflated value of sex appeal in our
society. This
reality is emphasized with a doll that is aimed at our children, possessing an impossibly small waist and big breasts. The
suggestive nature of the song is clear.
I'm a Barbie girl in the Barbie world
Life
in plastic, it's fantastic!
You
can brush my hair, undress me everywhere
Imagination,
life is your creation (Soren Rasted, Claus Norreen, Rene Dif, Lene Nystrom).
But, for my family, it is the next line that we can't unhear. The song's next line is "Come on, Barbie, let's go party." But in my family, that lyric was misheard by my then
two-year-old niece. Because of the stage of life that she was going through at
the time, what she heard when she listened to the song was "Come on, Barbie, let's go potty." As a result, I simply can't hear the song's original words.
The mind is a wonderful thing, and with misheard lyrics
and many other perceptions, it can play tricks on you. With something as silly
as misheard song lyrics, it tricks you into hearing words that are wrong. It fills in the gap so that the song makes sense for
you. "Come on, Barbie, let's go potty" makes sense to a two-year-old
who has just passed through the toilet training phase of life. But it can also trick you in what you see. The
reality is that many people have been convicted of crimes by eyewitnesses who
watched the crime go down and got it wrong. The mind filled in the blanks, and
what they saw was what they expected to see or thought that they saw. It doesn't feel like this should be true, but eyewitness
testimony is one of the least accurate proofs available to us in a criminal
trial. We see and remember what we expect, not what really happened.
But in the ancient world, it was often the only
evidence available. It was a time when fingerprints and DNA were unknown. The only thing that officials had to rely on was what
the witnesses saw and maybe the motives for the crime. But one witness was not
considered enough, not because of the expectation that a witness might lie, but because we often see (and hear) what we expect and not what is real. Conviction of a crime, and maybe especially in a
capital crime, needed to have witness confirmation by at least two or three witnesses, even for things that we are
sure we saw. And even then, eyewitness testimony can be problematic because our
minds can convince us of things that are just not true.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 20
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