Blogotional: Cussin' and Fightin' and Carryin' On

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Cussin' and Fightin' and Carryin' On

A while back, Jollyblogger put up a great post on the now ancient history John Piper/cussword dust-up. Key quote:

But I do think there are bigger fish to fry here. In fact, I don't even know what Piper preached on at Passion07 and that's a shame. It's my own fault for not looking deeper to find out what he preached on, but I bet the content of the message as a whole would be a better topic of discussion than the one word that offended some.

I am reminded of a speech I heard Mike Yaconelli give years and years ago. Mike told a story about a young, never-been-to-church-before woman that came to worship one Sunday in desperate need. When it came time for the congregation to share their prayer concerns, the young women stood up and said, near tears, "I appreciate your caring about me - I had a really shitty week."

Anybody with any common sense knows what happened next...and no, it wasn't that someone reached out and comforted this poor desperate soul. Needless to say she was ostracized for daring to use such a word in a church service. Anybody besides me feel the need to turn over a few moneychangers tables about now?

One of my mentors in Young Life contended that in some settings the absence of cursing created a cultural barrier that inhibited the transmission of the gospel message. Now. of course, the Lord's name was never misused and sexual reference was avoided, but words that were merely impolite, words that he argued had, in those cultural contexts, been robbed of heat and overused to the point of being punctuation, were fair game.

Legalism is an ugly, ugly thing. Wasn't that the very heart and soul of Christ's ministry? Some, like Judas, expressed regret that Christ did not come to overturn Rome. That's because He did come to overturn the ridiculous legalism that had grown up within the ecclesiastical confines of His chosen race.

Jesus hung with prostitutes, and I am willing to bet you when one of them told Him about their shitty weeks, He did not banish them from His presence. I'll even bet you He was willing to respond with words like, "How shitty was it?"

My heart hurts when I see us stand in the way of God's good work with our own pettiness. David is pretty polite about it when he says

I also think this sends a bad message to anyone who stumbles on discussions like this who are considering the Christian faith. I can imagine someone seeing this stuff and thinking, "my goodness, if I ever embrace the Christian faith and have a little slip of the tongue I'll probably get hammered for it - no thanks!" I doubt they would be impressed with our convictions and our spirituality, nor do I think this would entice them toward the faith.