On our summer trip to the US, a family member blessed us and took our whole family to a famous amusement park. At the end of the a long day of rides and sun, we settled in to watch the nighttime show and fireworks. It was a moment of bliss and calm in a day of crowds and little kids, and I was enjoying the fruit of my labor with a well deserved waffle cone. Suddenly, my youngest son, who has just finished off a mocha ice cream waffle cone with sprinkles, looks at me with a sudden look of panic on his face. Apparently, when you mix soda, hot dogs, fries, churros, cotton candy, frozen lemonade, and ice cream all together in a little kid, then throw them on roller coasters and rides for a day, the result is that all that junk is coming out of one hole or another with explosive force. Who knew? This one was coming in a downward trajectory, so I immediately began to look for the closest bathroom. My wife told me it was far away and we better start making a run for it (before the runs caught us).
In a moment of father son bonding, we began sprinting for the other side of the plaza we were sitting in. In order to have crowd control and good traffic flow, the park had ropes up everywhere to keep people moving in the right directions and area. My son decided that he could not make it to the very end of the roped area and headed directly for the nearest rope. Right as he made it to the rope that he wasn’t suppose to go under, the security guard was standing with his back to the rope and literally holding the rope up for some reason. My son took this as a sign of divine providence and ducked under and kept going. The very moment I made it to the rope, the security guard had turned around and dropped the rope back down.
“Hey, you can’t go through here,” he told me sternly. I quickly pointed to my son running away and said, “That is my son and he is trying to make it to the bathroom.” “I am sorry sir, but you are still going to have to go all the way down to the end and enter the other side there.” Desperate, I tried to appeal to the man’s humanity, “Do you want my son to get lost and hurt without me?” It was my best attempt at manipulation and guilt tripping. “No,” he said, “but you are still going to have to go all the way to the end.” At this point, sheer rage mixed with the animal father instincts to protect my kid. Without any thought apparently whatsoever, I looked the guy directly in the eyes, and yelled, “!?$%&!”
Now, for those of you who might be second language or not familiar with what someone means when they write a bunch of punctuation marks in parenthesis, it is a kind and euphemistic way to tell you that either they or someone else cussed like a sailor. Some of you even supplied your own cuss word when you saw those punctuation marks or tried to guess what cuss word I would use in that situation. I won’t tell you what I said, but let’s just say that it sounded like the name of a popular new game where you throw corn stuffed bean bags at a board.
I wish that I could say I was at least willing to be logical and pragmatic at the moment of my crises. Instead of wasting time thinking up a cuss word to call him, I should have been using the time to run and make sure I could catch up with my son. “Sorry son, I would have found you sooner, but it was well worth the time to curse that guy! I feel much better even though you were crying and huddled in a corner of the park.” The good news is that I was able to find my son, and even better, he made it to the bathroom before Mount Vesuvius erupted. As I walked back with him, my full intention was to find a park security manger and give him an earful about how their employees should know when a child’s safety is more important than park traffic flow rules. However, I was too embarrassed to do that because I would have to point out the guy, and he could bring up the fact that I cussed at him. So, still inwardly stewing over the experience, I put my head down and walked my son quickly back over to the rest of our family.
As I have thought and prayed about that incident, a teaching and rebuke that Jesus gave in Mark chapter 7 came into my mind. Jesus was having another confrontation with the Pharisees, and wanted to highlight their pursuit of outer righteousness while ignoring their inner heart conditions.
20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Jesus wasn’t faulting the Pharisees for trying to pursue observance of the law and their desire to lead holy lives. The thing that he was trying to impress upon them was that no matter how many rules and regulations they followed, if they didn’t deal with their heart condition and thoughts, they were not getting to the root of sin and defilement.
For me, at the moment of my stress, anger, and concern for my son, what came out of my heart surprised and saddened me. Of course, a good father should be protective of his children and there is such a thing as righteous anger. But is it completely impossible or unrealistic to hope that the first thing that came out of my heart at that moment would have been a prayer? “Jesus, protect my son and help me find him after I run to the other end.” In a split second though, what came out of my mouth is a word I would never allow my children to say. If it hadn’t already been in my “heart”, it wouldn’t have jumped out so quickly in that stressful time. Where did it come from? The television and movies that I have watched. Period.
I have teenage kids, so of course we have discussed the use of cuss words and why it is wrong. They told me that they have heard adult Christians say that cussing isn’t a big deal, and that there are far worse sins out there. (It is amazing how much detail my kids remember about a teaching when it serves their purposes and argument, but the same day not remember I told them to take out the trash three times!) Here is how the “Christian” argument about cussing not being a big deal goes… First, cuss words are just sounds and the words themselves may have had no meaning, or no bad meaning in their original use. I am amazed how often I see English cuss words on t-shirts here in Taiwan. They either don’t know the word is considered bad or it just doesn’t bother them in a second language. I do love how people suddenly become master’s level linguistics when defending a Christians right to cuss.
The second argument is that even Paul the apostle said a bad word in Greek in Philippians 3. In the famous verse where Paul says that everything he used to take pride in, he considers “rubbish/garbage” in order to gain Christ (the knowledge of Christ 3:8). The Greek word that Paul uses here, they say, was considered a cuss word equivalent to the English cuss word for poop. So, now, these people are not only linguistics but have also become Greek scholars. The context of these verses have nothing to do with Paul addressing speech. If you want that verse, you need to study Ephesians 4:29. If you aren’t familiar with this verse, let me summarize Paul’s command: don’t say bad words. To both of these lines of reasoning in support of Christian cussing, I believe that Paul would say: σκύβαλα.
Oh, but wait! The best argument has yet to come. “Sean, you are more concerned with people saying a bad word than you are with little children starving to death in the Third World.” So, If I do cuss or don’t care about cussing, starving children will immediately feel better or get fed? I have a secret: you can care about starving children and cussing at the same time. Try it. However, my real beef with how flippant we seem to be getting in the Western church (including myself) with this has more to do with what Jesus said about the heart. I know that my cuss word was in my heart because of the television and movies that I have watched. I am very careful to avoid movies with the occult or sexual sleaze. Violence and cuss words, well, my view becomes more complicated. I have justified it in movies/tv with thoughts like: “Hey, it’s a war movie. If you get your leg shot off, you aren’t going to say Owie or darn.” or this one, “this movie is not about believers, so it would lose “realism” if they had them never using cuss words.”
I could go on, but I realized that it was a heart problem with where these cuss words were originating for most Christians. 1) action movies with lots of violence: let’s just say there isn’t a lot of “turn the other cheek” in these films. What fun would Terminator have been if robot Arnold had said, “I won’t come back but Jesus will”? The correct outlet for anger in these movies is a punch in the face followed by an expletive (or expletive first, both suffice). 2) low brow comedies that use cuss words for comedic effect. I don’t know why it is funny to hear people drop the f-bomb every other word, but that seems to be the way these comedies go when they aren’t using sex jokes and drunkenness for side splitting hilarity.
If we as Christians spend a large amount of time watching these movies, do we really think that the worldview of the movies won’t make its way into our heart? Seriously, the cuss words are part of a package deal and in and of themselves are NOT the main problem. The worldview of returning injustice and injury with violence, coupled with the worldview that praises sexual immorality and scatological jokes that is the cancer of our heart. Look, I am not a raging Puritan who demands all Christians toss their televisions in the fiery pits of Hell from whence they came. All I am trying to say is that I was shocked by what came out of my heart in a moment when my son needed me and a whole crowd was watching and listening. In the times when I need Jesus the most, I want his name to be first out of my heart and on my lips and not a cuss word.
The whole thing has challenged me to look beyond the cuss words to the heart of the matter. If I watch programming with swearing, then the greatest danger is not that I will say one of those words in a moment of stress, the greatest danger is that I will start thinking and acting like the people in those shows. Instead of blessing those who curse me (or won’t let me protect my son), I will verbally punch them in the face (because if I got in a real fight, I would lose in a heartbeat. Bible teaching missionaries aren’t known as good fighters). Instead of calling out the name of Jesus, I will call out names that I would be ashamed to say if Jesus were standing next to me. If you think you can watch all those shows chocked full of cussing, immorality, wanton violence, and sin, and not have it make its way into your heart, well, then I believe you may be full of one of your favorite four letter words…
The Bible Nerd 