"I SWEAR..."

"Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." (Ephesians 4:29)

"I Swear" is the title of a very popular soft rock love song by the group "All-4-One". It was a Number One hit in 1994. But that's not what this posting is about! It's really about SWEARING. You know: #^$&(@($#, #@!#@&*, +%&##%&, etc.

The Town of Middleborough, MA (pronounced: "Middleboro") in southeastern Massachusetts near Cape Cod recently passed a bylaw invoking fines on people who swear in public. Our state's Attorney General Martha Coakley is already carefully researching this, trying to figure out if the law is constitutional. When I was a kid, you NEVER heard swearing on television. NEVER. This was the era of the George Carlin "Seven Deadly Words" (or whatever he entitled that monologue). Occasional "damns" and "hells" began to pop up on television dramas in the mid-1960s to a LOT of raised eyebrows. It was "All in the Family" in the 1970s that brought swearing commonly into a popular sit-com, but even that show could and would NEVER use the "F-word". My parents did swear on occasion, but it was usually when something REALLY bad happened, and was not so much commonplace speech for them.

I'm not proud of it, but in my early teens, I had a mouth like a cesspool. Around my friends and my peers I probably swore around two hundred or three hundred times A DAY! I honestly thought nothing of it. My friends and peers did the same...if anything they swore even more. At age 15 and a half, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Personal Lord and Savior. The young man who "witnessed" to me of Christ told me, "Christians don't swear". I though this would be the HARDEST part of being a born-again Christian. HOW was I going to go all day without swearing?! Yet, amazingly I almost never swore after becoming a born-again Christian, and when I DID swear, I felt very bad about it. In those days, you could hang around at any evangelical church and never, and I mean NEVER hear anybody swear. NEVER. I spent thirty years as an Assemblies of God minister, and in that time, I was privy to a lot of "stuff" behind the scenes, AND I've heard so many horror stories of abuse of children and crimes and all kinds of things. I feel like not too much shocks me. Yet, about a year ago, I read in a Christian magazine that a new trend in many "emergent" and "relevant" and (my terms here) cool and hip churches that attract mostly people under age 35 is that they not only dress casually and feature hard rock music in the services, but that they ROUTINELY swear and see NOTHING wrong with it! Folks, this is just NOT the Evangelical Baptist Church of 1973! Frankly, many of my friends and acquaintances consider me culturally (not politically) liberal and would think I'd have NO problem with this trend. WRONG!! I do have a major problem with it! I know for instance that Bono of U-2 fame professes to be a born-again Christian and yet as an emergent, relevant, hip and cool guy drops F-bombs like confetti; but I have a major problem with that.

The Bible DOES say in passages such as the one above that we are to let NO corrupt communication come out of our mouths. Is my speech perfect? Far from it. But I DO desire for my words to be pleasing to the Lord. "Positive Confession" preachers such as Kenneth Copeland and the late Kenneth Hagin, Sr. have been reviled by mainstream evangelicals for their emphasis on the importance on "EVERY WORD" that comes out of your mouth. Listen, they may not be right about EVERYTHING, but they're actually far more RIGHT than wrong about speech and what comes out of your mouth. Words are powerful. They can bring life or death. Back in the 1990s, I used to hear the guy who lived next door to me dressing down his elementary school aged son, using the vilest of language, and calling him stupid, etc. What do you suppose that's DONE to that young man? I guarantee it's done a lot of damage! The Book of James in chapter three warns of people that praise the Lord one minute and then have profanity coming out of their mouths the next. It makes it clear that there is NO place for that!

Now this next part is going to SHOCK a lot of people, especially YOUNG people: In God's eyes the WORST swearing is NOT the F-Word, nor is it the four letter word for excrement. Nor is it the vulgar term for a woman's vagina, or a man's penis. I actually quoted above what God considers the WORST words: "Hell" and "Damn". It's ironic that I would not dare spell out the F-word on my blog, but I know it's not going to be controversial to write "Hell" or "Damn." In fact, they are FAR more vile and offensive terms than the F-Word. Have I ever used them, even since I became a born-again Christian? I'm ashamed to say, "Yes". I'm not proud of that at all. I should never use those words. Never! "Hell" refers to the place where those who die without a personal commitment to Christ will spend a horrific eternity of suffering beyond anything we can imagine. "Damn" refers to the act of punishment of people being sent to Hell. "Goddamn" refers to the act of God allowing people to go to Hell or sending them there (depending on your exact theological views about this). There will be millions and millions of people lost and suffering for all eternity. Do you think this is FUNNY?! Is this something to speak flippantly about? Should you say, "Oh dammit, I lost my car keys!"? NO! When we do this we're saying, "You know what, God, You're a JOKE and your ways STINK! So I'm going to speak flippantly about you and about your ways!".

I don't ever want to communicate that to or about God.

How about "Suck" and "Sucks". No kidding, in the 1970s, "Suck" was SUCH an offensive and profane term that the ONLY one worse was the F-Word. Do you think I would EVER have said in my parents' presence something like "My school sucks" or "All old teachers suck"?! My father would have backhanded me. It was considered very vile. I know, I know, but we can say, "The vacuum cleaner sucked up all the dirt". Fine, That's a totally different usage. Does God know the difference? Well, YEAH!

The Christian film, "Joshua" is a great film. Yet, in that film, a priest uses "Suck" and "Sucks" and the Jesus character of Joshua does, too! They would never have included those words in a film like that back in the 1970s!

My friend Dave has kids who are my kids' ages (20s). He was frustrated with his own kids' usage of "Suck" and "Sucks". One time he commented to me, "My kids say those words are not swears anymore, but to me, they ARE!". David is correct. They are. For any of you who don't know this, "Suck" and "Sucks" are vulgar terms for oral sex.

Sometimes, we think we can skate away from swearing by using euphemisms. People will say, "I hate these friggin' taxes" and figure it's OK. Listen, my wife called me on getting angry and using the word "Blank". I would say things like, "I hate this Blank car!!" or "The Blank policies of the liberals are disgusting!" She said when I said that stuff, I was actually swearing. Know what? She's right. In God's sight, I was. I have purposed to stop saying that.

I know I strongly implied above that the WORST things you can say are "Hell" "Damn" and "Goddamn". Well, they're among the worst, but the very worst is taking the Lord's name in vain. A guy named Gary was an active Member at the church I pastored in Framimgham. Gary said the way he KNEW he was TRULY saved was that when he played softball shortly after he'd "gotten saved" he missed an easy catch.

"JESUS CHRIST!" he yelled.

He had to walk away from the game, weeping and ashamed. He had just blasphemed the God who loved Him and saved him. He never used that name profanely again.

And, as silly as this may sound, the valley girl thing of "Oh, my God" is something that in my book's gotta go.

I don't expect to win a lot of acclaim for writing this, and I have admitted that my own speech is not always perfect. But for those of you who have received the Lord as your Savior, he really wants our speech to be HIGHER than the world's and honoring to Him. And, for those of you average people in the world who think (as I once did) that you could never get through a day without swearing two hundred times, you'd be amazed at what the Lord could do in your life.