“To be sure”…my foot.
All was quiet. The kids were tucked nicely in their beds as I sat curled in a winter ball of fluff on the couch, relaxing after a long day of school facilitation. Scott was gone hanging out with some friends in the freezing cold and I was spoiling myself by doing my nails while watching an upbeat Rom-Com. I was content and peaceful until a commercial came on that made me irate, sad, and irritated all at the same time.
It was a new commercial, introducing a new form of an antibacterial spray that can magically kill germs on fabric. The scene starts with a father coming in the front door and stripping off his jacket and shoes. Soon to follow, a strapping young teenage boy meets his father, spray in hand, proceeding to spray off his jacket and shoes before allowing him to enter their home. The commercial then shows the boy spraying various other fabric surfaces that the spray is effective on. It all seemed innocent enough, until the final scene.
The father is sitting on a couch talking to the viewers about the effectiveness of the spray when the teenage boy enters the room again interrupting him. He grabs a pillow from beside his dad to spray down, who replies with a look of confusion as to why he’s even spraying it. As Dad inquires what he is doing with his furrowed brows, the son replies to his nonverbal question by saying, “Just to be sure.” The father then replies to the camera, “Yes, just to be sure.” He sounds resolved and slightly defeated with his response, but the phrase lingers as they end the commercial with a close-up shot of the bottle of antibacterial glory.
I sat frozen in shock at what I’d seen. I’d basically witnessed a public example of a father enabling a teenage child to perform a compulsion and excuse it, all for the sake of selling a product. Sure, we’ve all seen commercials meant to convince us into buying products that promise to kill 99.9 % of germs (I’m sure my friends who sell Norwex are currently yelling, “you don’t need that stuff!”). Sure, these products can serve a purpose in our lives, but this was overkill on steroids. The phrase being used by the boy, “just to be sure” even sounds like a phrase that would be used to validate a compulsion in the mind of someone with OCD. The commercial is justifying behaviors that sometimes take years to rehabilitate and it is normalizing behaviors that aren’t healthy. What would have once appeared as a radical display of neurotic behavior was being portrayed as the norm. This is not okay people.
Coronavirus has turned our world upside down and made germs the focus of our lives more than ever before. As we move into a new normal with the herd immunity close at hand, I pray that we as a culture can remember that no spray or mask, or wipe can truly save us. God is in control of all of this and no matter how in charge we feel, He is ultimately in charge. We will and should use the many medical tools God has given us in the same way I have to use medication for my mental health, however, our hope should not be in those things alone. The commercial I saw showed me that our world is more afraid than ever and even advertisers know that people are looking for a cure for that fear. Nothing but Jesus can fully cure our fears. We all need to be on guard for socially inappropriate fears. We can take heart that God will get us out of this pandemic as He ordains while wisely being safe in how we live without crossing over into obsessive thoughts or compulsive behaviors.
