Oh, The Profanity
I grew up in a cuss free home. I never heard either of my parents swear even once. (I did hear my mom say crap once. It was in reference to Redbook magazine. She didn't like it.) I never heard my siblings swear. (My sister once called me "toilet face" but I don't think that counts). My dad was very uncomfortable with any words that could be considered "dirty". We didn't say butt, we said bottom or maybe behind. We didn't say pee, we said wet. We didn't say poop, we said (wait for it) stinky. It was an atmosphere of pristine audio hygiene. (The one exception to this was me at age three, after discovering my Cracker Jack prize in the trash but that's a story for a different day)
My lack of exposure to colorful language extended beyond just my family. Starting in the first grade and all the way through high school, I attended a small, Christian school that was sponsored by our church. This was an environment where saying, "That sucks, "could land you in detention. My social circle and even the jobs I had as a teenager revolved around the church and school I attended. It wasn't like I wasn't aware of the "bad words"; I just didn't have a context for using them that wouldn't create an uncomfortable situation. (Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do in those days was to create discomfort. I much preferred comfort.)
Following high school, I attended Bible college which held the same views
on swearing that I was used to from my childhood. I remember one day in
my dorm, a bunch of us were sitting in the lounge talking about
something, when a stressed-out classmate, who had just broken off his
engagement, burst in and said something about not being able to find his
damn ring. It is the only time I can remember hearing anyone swear on
that campus.
I partially blame my father for this. One day he was relating an incident that happened to him. He was driving and he accidentally cut off another car. The woman driving the other car proceeded to show him her middle finger. He then commented, "If you take the meaning of what she did literally, wasn't she saying that she wanted to have sex with me? I just waved to her and said no thank you". Fair point. From that time on whenever I was around strong language, I tended to interpret it literally. For instance: "That fornicating fragment of excrement really makes my hind-quarters dry and itchy".
My amusement was not just limited to taking these words literally. It made sense to me that if someone was hurt, or surprised, or very passionate about something that swearing would add emphasis to what they were expressing. What caught my attention was when people would curse just for the sake of cursing. Using expletives as adjectives and adverbs even when the sentence didn't really need those parts of speech. "I'm going #@&^* eat my *&%^#@ lunch in my &^#$@ truck". (That is a sentence I actually heard one time.) I found it hilarious.
Why was "pure speech" such a priority in my small corner of the world? For that, we go to the Bible. There are two key instructions from the Bible that were used to encourage unsalty language. The first is one of the Ten Commandments. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" (Ex.20:7 KJV) We took this to mean that one should not use God or Jesus as an exclamation or pejorative. This was expanded to discourage using words like damn and hell outside of their religious context. The second verse was "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth... (Eph.4:29 KJV) This covered vulgarities. There were other passages, but these summed up the reasoning behind our verbal restrictions. There was room for some discussion. Some folks felt like these prohibitions extended to euphemisms (your goshes, darns, and Jiminy Christmases of the world) while others were more lax. But the consensus was that using bad words was a poor reflection of what being a good Christian was supposed to be.
Some of you probably noticed something. When I quoted Ephesians 4:29 I only quoted the first part of the verse. Here is the complete verse: "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," This covers a lot more territory than simply using what the culture might consider "dirty words". If I am only supposed to be saying things that are edifying, or as the New International Version puts it, "...only what is helpful for building others up...", that presents a lot more options for what might be considered "corrupt communication".
When I take a hard, honest look my speech back in my Evangelical days, it doesn't look quite as pristine as I thought it was. I may not have used the F-word, but I did disparage others behind their backs. I didn't use God as an expletive but used him as an excuse to bad mouth certain kinds of people. I never called a woman the B-word, but I did make misogynist statements. I never cussed anybody out, but I told racist jokes. It all seems pretty corrupt looking at it now.
As I moved away from the confinements of my past life and have spent more time in the secular world, my language has become saltier. I will sometimes use some of those forbidden words. I'm not proud of it. Perhaps it is a bit of verbal laziness, but it isn't something I am too worried about it either. I'm working a lot harder on the other kind of corrupt speech.
We live in a time and place where dehumanizing those we disagree with has become the norm. I am trying to avoid doing that (even when they do it). I am trying to remember that saying that I am joking doesn't erase the harm my words might be causing someone else. I am trying to speak about other people the way I would like other people to speak about me and the people I love. I don't claim that I never fail at these things. Corruption has a way of sneaking past my defenses. But damn it, I'm working on it.
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