Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Naughty words

In the Christian communities that I've been in there are always people struggling to control their tongue (Christian speak for not saying bad words). Scripture teaches us to keep your tongue from evil, that the tongue can corrupt the whole person and a whole lot of other things about the tongue's ability to reveal who you really are in your heart (note how the heart an tongue are tied together). I can't speak for you, but this is TRUTH to me. I only ever cuss when I'm angry, proud, or being a people pleaser (which thankfully for the grace of God isn't often anymore!).

So that's all interesting, here's an even more interesting thought. Take a word like the "F" word. I'm betting that you could go back to Jesus' day and walk up to a devout follower of Christ and say "F***!" and they wouldn't even flinch. They might look at you funny, because they wouldn't know your language so you might as well be saying "bacon!" The point is that I think we can sometimes reduce scriptures teaching about the tongue to a "blacklist" of words. But really, there isn't anything in scripture that teaches about which words are unacceptable to say. Scripture teaches about the connection between the heart and the tongue and we need to focus on that. If you're running around filled with anger in your heart against your fellow man shouting "bacon!" at him then you too have a tongue problem.

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