First, thanks for posting! It's so encouraging to me to see your feedback. Okay, now back to the point. I recently read the following off a Facebook post, and I thought it was pretty interesting. With the permission of the author, I'm posting it for discussion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fucking, Fuck, God, Damn, God Damn, Ass, Shit, Holy Shit, Hell ARE THE SAME AS Freaking, Fudge, Gosh, Darn, Gosh Darn, Butt, Crap/Crud, Holy Crud, Heck AND SO ON
I suppose this is mainly to Christians, or just those curious to read this because of the title.
What makes these words different from each other? Nothing! You can argue it all you want, but really it's nothing except one's a less formal way of talking *they're both non formal ways of talking and looked down upon by higher classes, but one is higher than the other*.
When are people going to realize it's not the words you say, but how you say them that determines the word "profanity". I'm not sure where we got all that wrong because even in the Bible it's made clear that cursing is specifically hurting someone with your words.
**If you'd like me to prove it to you, I shall pick scripture and we can sit down and DISCUSS this... But I have no intentions of arguing with you if you're not going to have an open mind and just be stubborn about it...
Back to what I was saying though... According to the Christian Bible *the only one I've read* saying "You Dummy" is cursing. It is lowering someone's moral, someones standards. It seems that cursing, according to everything the bible says, is hurting someone intentionally... So where did we get substitutes for words that aren't effecting anyone?
If you watch Good Will Hunting, they say those "curse" words almost every other line. But that's how they were raised, that's the language they learned growing up. They're not hurting anyone by saying "Fuck You" when they say it, they're saying what you'd normally say "whatever" or "yeah right". It might seem a bit harsh because everywhere around us we see that those words are "curse words" thus hurtful to society. You're not even allowed to say FUCK on national TV, but FUDGE and FREAK is just fine when using it in the same sense. It's so ridiculous. And why do we stand for it? A bunch of ignorant folks decided to change the meaning of cursing because they weren't please with the phonics of the words...
BTW, this post was caused by me watching the NIGER South Park Episode. Great show, interesting concept... And not what they were trying to get across, but it drove my attention span a bit over the line. :-P
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I decided to post the actual words without bleeping it out because well, this is life. (And I'm a firm believer of telling it how it is.) This has been another topic that I've had to think through in the past, and I've even Wikied it for answers. There's even an article on the "4-letter words". After all, if Wikipedia is any indication of general trends, it should give a pretty good definition of what our *society* thinks of curse words. (Really, who knows what we consider society to be over the Net??) Anyhow, I'd like to hear your thoughts before I give mine.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
2 scriptures readily come to mind:
1) Ephesians 4:17ff, but esp 4:29 -
"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."
2) Matthew 5:21-26, but esp. 21 -
"But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says, to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell."
On looking at the wider passages, both these teachings support the hypothesis: cursing = belittling someone. And of course, the discussion is incomplete unless you look at James, especially 4:11 and 5:9. Again, this supports the supposition. (By the way, here is a decent write-up on "Raca" though several of the comments are obviously there to pacify the morays of our culture at large.)
However, the POST really is more critical of how our society views cursing, and not how even the nominal Christian parent views cursing. Many parents will immediately crack down on their children for calling other people names, including stupid (the "s" word in our house), poopy head, idiot, dummy, or whatever derogatory term you come up with. Most kids will quickly remember that mom or dad are soon to follow with appropriate correction.
But the complaint really seems to be on how our culture ranks name-calling. Should this really surprise us? Don't confuse Christian morals with what actually gets "enforced" by the SEC. However, is consistency within culture at large so important as to relinquish the ground held forbidding 4LWs from entering every secular sector of society? (That's not intended to be a rhetorical question.)
Isn't this really questioning the spirit in which something is said? Words honestly mean nothing compared to the message behind it.
On the flipside, before all of us start littering our speech with f-bombs, there are a lot of people who would simply take offense at the use of it. Which brings us to another important lesson that we as Christians need to be mindful of others! Paul said that if you eating meat causes someone to stumble for the sake of the person don't. You can say that people are being petty but there needs to be care taken to not cause others to stumble.
Good points, everyone. I guess my question really is what exactly does our society consider as cursing? I actually cringe when I hear every single 4LW from the very minor (i.e. "d***") to the most provocative ("f***"), but I know some of the words that I don't take offense at still offend other people (I just don't know which people). So I guess overall, I'll just have to come up with my own expression that avoids offending anyone. From the suggestion of my mother, I'll just have to say "hotdog" for every time I forget my cellphone.
Kirsten, do you mean the christian society or the society at large?
I think society at large knows when to take offense at words spoken in anger and laugh at "cusswords" spoken as bad vocabulary. I even catch myself laughing -specifically when a professor cusses in lecture. I do not laugh because I think it's funny or because I am ok with hearing it. I laugh at the circumsntaces which brought him to use such words in public speech.
Quiet honestly, I am not at all ok with hearing cusswords. I've even asked some friends to quit cussing in front of me because inevitably, after hearing the cusswords many times, they automatically start popping up in my head. And since I do not wish to have a bad vocabulary, nor an offensive one, I do not want to hear it.
Now, I doubt ALL of society can differentiate. I think some people are brainwashed to be offended at certain words, just because they were taught so. And that's why a cussword filled vocab is an offensive one - because you never know who are the conditioned and who are living in freedom from word choices.
Also, I would speculate that a greater percentage of those who were raised in religious upbringing are conditioned to be offended at the cusswords.
Christianity is a gift (free to us, costly to Jesus who had to die in that manner), but, in my opinion, a hard gift to accept. Especially in a society where everyone must prove him/herself and his/her value. We must work for what we have - earn it. Nothing is free. There is no free good. And here you have eternal life, the greatest, highest value commodity (can it be termed that?) and you do not need to do anything to earn it.
As humans, we want to think of ourselves as worthy of this gift. So I think it is easy to start building rules and regulations as guidelines. Measurement techniques to determine who is holyier, who is worthy, who is real. It's terrible we do that, but we do. And when we start trying NOT to do that, we end up at risk of feeling holy because we have succeeded at not being judgemental....
Sooo - living in the freedom Christ gives us - it's hard. At least I think so. Why? Maybe I was conditioned to legalism, maybe it's just human nature, or maybe the capitalistic culture. The problem is - now I am shifting blame. Also a common concept learned at an early age. So, it takes admitting that we are not perfect, not worthy, not good enough - before we can began to accept 4 letter words with no offense behind them as ok. Admitting all of that though is something I think is hard to do and will likely, at least for me, be an everday process of surrender.
ok, I've spoken too long again!
How interesting the argument on Raca -- thanks Craig!
Interesting thoughts. I always find it interesting what people use curse words, if they are Christian or not, and under what circumstances.
First, the comment about the professor using curse words reminded me of something. I remember the first day of a big history class at A&M, the old professor got up and used a bunch of profanity all throughout his introduction. Each time he said one, everyone would just crack up, and I could just see the look in their faces like "Wow this guy is SO COOL! He cusses!" For me on the other hand, it felt like he was just using them to look cool in front of all the students, like he was trying to gain their respect by acting crude. It really LOWERED my opinion of him a lot, and it seemed like he was just sinking down to everyone elses level instead of raising the level of professionalism, or whatever.
Anyway, living in Thailand and learning the language has made me question swearing. I learn swear words, but they are just that -- words. They have no intrinsic meaning to me, no impact when I hear or say it. And then I realize to me it's just a bunch of syllables connected, because I don't feel the meaning, or more importantly, know the connotations.
Bad words aren't bad because of their literal meaning (I can say poo-poo all day long without offending anyone), but because of the feelings attached to them. In English, our bad words are mainly about body parts/functions/excrements. But in Thai, they have bad words for things like "eat" and "I" and "you" and other weird things. They all tell me they are "bad words" but that its ok to use them with friends. But I cant figure out if its the same in English, when friends use those words with each other just for fun.
Yes this is sort of rambling. But the question is whether using these words for fun, and not with malicious intent, is ok. If your friends commonly use these when joking around, can we, as Christians? We were probably all brought up being taught "no," but maybe its actually ok. According for Eph. 4:17, telling a friend he needs to "get his sh*t together, man" might be a word of encouragement, right?
I hope we can discuss this more. If it turns out its ok I want to start using them immediately.
haha
Jeff, does the name Dr. Livesay ring a bell? I am just positive you are referring to him!
I am in one of his upper level classes but before I decided to do that, I went to his hist 207 class and was indeed quiet shocked at the amount of cursing. He doesn't cuss nearly as much, or at all really, in the upper level. But yeah, it did lower my opinion of him too.
Yah! That does sound familiar. Im sure it was him. That shows it even more that he only curses in undergrad classes to try and impress the kids. I dont like that at all.
I recently brought this issue up with my friends here in Thailand. After lots of discussion, we found Ep 5:4
"Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving."
So even in jest, we shouldn't use obscenity. Too bad, I was looking forward to it!
Post a Comment