By now, most people know that I don’t care too much about the convention of ‘bad words’. Most notably the four big ones. I thought about whether or not to list them, but I decided it probably just wasn’t really necessary. We all, for the most part, know what I’m talking about.

The church, or people who’ve been brought up with traditional church-ish values usually turn their noses up to these words. They’re offended by them and often will even instruct others not to use them because it’s ‘wrong’. Of course, biblically, that’s a pretty hard made case—and even when it is made it’s flimsy at best. But that’s not what I’m getting at today.

It’s actually something that I think is a much bigger deal. Many people in my geographic church community have an adverse reaction to the traditional set of ‘bad’ words. Yet there are other words that are used with a level of regularity that could probably make a sailor blush.

I’m talking specifically about two words: ‘Retarded’ and ‘Gay’.

These words have worked their way so well into regular conversation that the original meaning has altogether vanished from the speaker’s mind. But in the ears of people close to those issues, there stands massive potential for pointless, albeit perhaps subtle division.

Consider these two statements:

“That movie was so fucking shitty.”

Were you offended by that? If so, how come? It’s most likely not because the word ‘fucking’ makes you think of the ‘offensive’ act of sexual intercourse. And it probably doesn’t have anything to do with fecal matter. More than likely, it’s social convention. Now consider this one.

“that movie was so retarded.”

Now, how about that one? Were you offended by that? Probably not. But if you were, there’s a good chance that someone you know or are close to suffered from some serious set of difficult mental disabilities.

To try and really drive the point home, lets try a quick hypothetical:

“That movie was worse that 9/11.”

Get the idea?

So, my question is for the church. Why such reaction over ‘foul’ language? They’re words with virtually no offensive meaning in and of themselves. Whatever offense people experience is probably simply because they were taught to take offense.

Meanwhile, no one bats an eye as new words are adopted that really do have an intrinsic offensive nature to them, to someone. Someone I’m sure the church would someday like to preach the Gospel to.

If a Christian feels strongly that he shouldn’t ever use ‘foul’ language. I respect that and he should do it. But only pending a personal ban on the more popularly accepted, significantly more offensive substitutes. Anything less lacks everything resembling logic.