Plugged In recorded its weekly podcast yesterday (you can download it here), and I had the honor of sitting in on a fascinating conversation centered on profanity.
No, no. They weren’t using profanity. Host Bob Smithouser and guest Alex McFarland were discussing profanity, and how using it has become so normative in today’s society—even among Christians.
I won’t divulge the whole conversation, but one thing that particularly struck me—something I had not thought of before—was that swearing is, essentially, a sign of disrespect: Not just to the people we’re talking to, but to God.
According to McFarland, folks who lived back in the Victorian era really took to heart the fact that we were all created in the image of God. To use bad language in front of one another, and even with each other, was thought to demean our sacred model, and thus our sacred Maker. The very word profanity comes from, of course, the word profane, which means unholy. Pretty interesting.
Now, I’ve never been much of a curser: Even back in my college days, swearing just felt, to me, like linguistic laziness. We’ve been blessed with a language of hundreds of thousands of words: Why overuse the handful that offend? It just never made sense to me.
Defenders of profanity would say that words are just words—collections of consonants and vowels that, in themselves, have no real power. “There are no bad words,” said George Carlin, creator of the classic “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” comedy sketch. “Bad thoughts, bad intentions.”
And, on a certain level, he’s right. Words are bad because we make them bad—infuse them with weight and meaning that go far beyond how it forms in your mouth. But the fact is, we have invested certain words with power—and, in the case of bad language, it’s the power to offend. The irony of Carlin’s assault on bad words is that, if his words were as powerless as he said they were, Carlin might’ve never found national notoriety. He might’ve quietly faded from the spotlight and become an actuary or something.
Folks use bad language because it does have power—and the irony of our coarsening culture is that the more we use such words, the reason we use them—the power we’ve given them—diminishes bit by bit. And that may make for an interesting linguistic landscape in the future.
When our current crop of bad words completely lose their ability to shock, what words will earthy playwrights, screenwriters and sixth-graders everywhere use when they want to say something shocking? It seems as though culture will have to find a new lexicon of forbidden words. And perhaps the process is already beginning. While the f-word won’t necessarily even earn a fine from the FCC these days, there are still words that’ll shock, offend and even get you fired.
I, for one, am all about using language judiciously and, as McFarland says, respectfully. There’s no compelling reason to use bad language, as far as I can figure: I’ve never read a book, watched a movie or been involved in a conversation that was made markedly better through the use of profanity.
Curse words are like fussy toddlers: They holler and cry and demand that you pay attention to them. But language, at its best, humbly deflects attention away from itself and instead makes us ponder the deeper meaning behind the words.
Sounds a little like what we’re supposed to do as Christians, doesn’t it?
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