Over the past few days, I’ve been having conversations around a fire. For whatever reason, the conversation has continually returned to the topic of using swear words.
Having worked with a church in the past, I’m familiar with the church culture that tends to over-emphasize one issue while seriously under-emphasizing others. Some times—all too often—emphasizing issues that aren’t even issues at all and not paying any attention at all to things that are in fact huge problems.
After hearing about the reprimand of a friend by his church for using swear words, I’ve decided that I’m fed up with the issue being an issue. I think that if we want to use swear words, we should free to use them. There is no implicit problem with it at all. In fact, when Churches are up-tight about the issue, most of the time, it’s just another way of making non-Christians feel as if they need to get their act together before they can roll with the holy-huddle.
Think about it. When you speak to an unbeliever on the street. If they use swear words a lot in their speech, then later find out you’re a Christian, they often feel weird and offer lots of awkward apologies. As far as I can tell, about 80% of the reason people don’t use swear words is because of Christians and ‘traditional’ Christian values.
Words are just words. In reality, it’s all in the way we decide to use them. Therefore, banning certain words isn’t necessarily going to clean up anyone’s speech, but it might continue to ostracize a group of people from entering an already needlessly exclusive group of people.
So, I now say unashamedly that at times I enjoy using swear words. As with any words, I’ll try my best to use them with grace. If you’re offended by swear words, I hope you’ll ask why before getting upset.
