Who’s Gonna Tell Me What to Do?
In 1965 Congress passed a law that required cigarette companies to put a warning label on packages of cigarettes. The warning had to say: WARNING: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health.
In 1969 Congress passed a more comprehensive law. Television and radio stations could no longer advertise cigarettes. The law required a new warning label: WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that cigarette smoking is hazardous to health.
By 1984 Congress had learned that cigarette labels weren’t really changing people’s attitudes about smoking, so they made a new law. It required cigarette companies to rotate between four different very specific labels that told exactly how cigarette smoking was hazardous to health.
The last time I was in a hotel room I saw this sign:
Do people really leave children unattended in hotel rooms? Do parents really look at a sign like this and say to themselves, “Oh, I see. Leaving a child unattended in a hotel room is a bad idea. I didn’t know that. Huh. Learn something new everyday! Now that I have learned that truth from this sign, I won’t do that anymore.”
I have always remembered a film I saw in college. While the film showed what a person sees driving down a city street, a voice read every word of every sign in view. The words were a fast-paced bunch of indecipherable gibberish.
I like some signs. Exit signs are necessary. Signs identifying buildings are helpful. Stop signs are essential. Some signs are beautiful. Some signs are handy reminders.
But signs are not the best teachers.
The signs on the city street in the film I saw in college were different. They were road signs and advertising signs. Their purpose was not to teach behavior, but to identify, to inform, and to advertise.
It seems to me that I see more and more signs that tell me how to live, how to function as a human being. I wonder if that 1965 warning label started a trend. If we needed that mini-sign on a cigarette package to teach us what we need to do about one aspect of health, then maybe we needed other signs to teach us how to live our daily lives.
I pity the person who has to learn those important things by running across signs of instruction as they go about their daily lives. I admire the person who takes the responsibility for teaching those important things one on one to their own children. I especially admire the person who introduces children to God and His word so they always have a way to know exactly what they need to do in every situation that comes their way — whether there is a sign there telling them what to do or not.
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.
2 Peter 1:2-3
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