The proliferation of profanity in our day, even among believers is deeply troubling to me. Walking down the back parking lot of our church, praying over the people who would attend, I felt like a salmon swimming upstream against a sea of middle schoolers. Their parents park in our parking lot and wait for them to get out of school. This has been happening for years. As I walked, without trying, I heard the flagrant use of filthy foul language in one conversation after another. Don’t misunderstand. I love these kids. They are not the thermostat of the culture but they are a thermometer. Netflix and other streaming services have introduced a new vocabulary in homes. This has happened on our watch. It has not always been like this.
Profanity is not the only problem. If we are to give an account to God for every word we speak, we should tremble. Slander runs rampant. For some reason, we feel compelled to talk badly to and about others. No word is left unspoken. Chuck Swindoll tells about a tombstone on a windy hillside in England. The epitaph reads, “Beneath this stone, a lump of clay, lies Arabella Young, who on the 24th of May, finally held her tongue.” Only death silenced her. Could this be true of us?
What impact is the word of God having on the words we speak? James makes a clear connection between God’s word and our words. I am convicted when I read that I should be slow to speak. Whatever I have been, it has not been slow to speak. Repentance prepares the soul for us to humbly receive God’s Word implanted within us. The goal is not only to listen to God’s word but to put it into practice. Our speech reveals what we believe. Christ, the Word made flesh, will change the way we speak to and about others.
Remember the analogy of the frog in the kettle? If one turns up the heat quickly, a frog will jump out of the water. But incremental changes lull the frog to a false security. It is boiled before it realizes it needs to jump. We are the frog. The culture is the kettle. We are being boiled by a barrage of bad language. One of my fellow ministers said, “When we hear foul language, we turn off the television.” This is what Christians have done for generations. We love sinners but we do not partake of their sin. I know this may mean we don’t stream as much television into our homes. Good. This will give us more time for the word of God which will change our hearts and our words.
