Ok, pardon the title, I just wanted to get your attention so I could share a bit about my perspective on four letter words (and others that may have more or fewer letters but still fall into the category).
I think I said my first cuss word on accident. I heard someone say bastard in a movie and I had never heard it before. I had no reason to think it was a no no word so I said it freely…until someone told me otherwise. I think I was like twenty four at the time.*
Cussing was never much a part of my vocabulary, nor was it heard in my house much at all growing up. As a matter of fact, as a child I was encouraged not to say crass words such as “butt” “crap” and “sucks”.
As an adult I wouldn’t call myself foul mouthed by any means. Generally I think that cuss words make you sound unintelligent. Specifically the F-bomb is a worthless word in my understanding because when a word can mean anything it really means nothing. Isn’t that the case with the f-bomb? It can be a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, an adverb, etc. You can put it in between any words in your sentence and it fits (even multiple times if you wish). So in my book, it’s a worthless word that ruins your vocabulary. But other so called naughty words are quite useful. Sometimes those words exactly express what you’re feeling, thinking, or experiencing. So in those cases why not drop a four letter word?
Some might argue from Scripture that we’re not supposed to let any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths…which is true. But my understanding of this Scripture (from the book of Ephesians) is that it’s written to a group experiencing conflict within their community. They’re trying to figure out how to do life together in this new context as followers of Christ. The continuation of this scripture is that we’re not to use unwholesome speech but instead should be building each other up and encouraging each other. So here’s the question I pose to you: is this verse challenging our vocabulary or our content? Is Paul (who wrote those words) telling us not to use bad words or telling us not to speak badly about others? I firmly believe that the Biblical challenge is not to avoid saying “ass” but to avoid taking away the dignity of others by saying negative things about them, by gossiping about them, by denigrating who they are, etc. It’s not just that it’s mean, but by speaking about people that way we’re attacking God as the creator of these people…and we have absolutely non right to do this! How dare we call ugly what God has deemed beautiful.
So when Jones tells Jessica that she needs to “cut your damn dreads off” we chose not to yell at him, put him in time out, etc. We simply communicated to him that damn was not the best kind of word to use. But when Jones tells us or another child to shut up or calls someone an idiot (thanks Disney movies) he gets in big trouble because he’s trying to take away the dignity of another person.
You can disagree with me and I’m cool with that. But I personally feel like we spent so much effort in the church teaching our children to not say cuss words while gossip in the church was rampant. We taught our children to guard their vocabulary instead of guarding their content. We challenged them to focus on words instead of focusing on people.
peace.
* This may or may not be an exageration.
Last night I took my son to see Hubble at the Omnimax theater in Portland. It was amazing. At one point we were staring at images 10 frillion* light-years away, we watched stars forming in their embryonic stages, we saw galaxies spread across the universe like legos on my children’s floor. It was amazing and breathtaking. I absolutely loved that the take home message that narrator Leonardo DiCaprio left us with was that the earth is completely unique. We circle one star (the sun) in a galaxy that is filled with billions of stars, in a universe that is filled with billions of galaxies…and yet there is something distinct and unique about earth.