What the?

Once when I was teaching I happened to overhear a girl at the back of the room talking about her ex-boyfriend. This jilted lover was expressing her bitterness over the cause of the jilting, and then drew a somewhat crass parallel between her anger and sexual intercourse, using an expletive that started with the 6th letter of the alphabet.

In short: she dropped the "f-bomb." And then she likened her ex to an unmentionable part of the human body.

Of course, a teacher's ears are finely tuned to this kind of "inappropriate verbiage," and I called her on it. But rather than eating her words, as most students would have done, she stood by her work: "What's the big deal, anyways?" she demanded. "It's just a word."

I didn't really have an answer for her, except to appeal to rules made by higher authorities that I knew she wouldn't have acknowledged anyways (the school board, society, a dusty old book with gilt lettering on its cover). So instead I tried to explain that using taboo words like these were actually an indication of ignorance-- a sign that the speaker is either too lazy or too stupid to find more accurate, more witty, more creative ways to express himself. And then I added (for good measure) that because I knew she was neither lazy nor stupid, it was unbecoming of her to leave others with the impression that she was.

That answer got me through to the bell. But I've thought about that question off and on ever since: What is the big deal about these shocking words?

Even appeals to the highest authority will only get you so far. To be sure, in Ephesians 5:4 the Good Book warns us not to let "obscenity" sully our lips. But then, back in Ezekiel 23, God's own prophet likens Israel's political aliance with Egypt to "adultery"-- and then describes her Egyptian "lovers" in terms that I might blush to repeat in a locker-room, let alone behind the pulpit.

So the question lingers: what is the big deal?

If my student were to ask me that same question today-- why does it matter if I swear?-- I think I'd take a different tack. "It's because you're created in the Image of God," I'd say.

And when she looked at me sideways, I'd explain: there's this ancient story from the cradle of humanity that says when the Creator made the world, he made it by speaking. He spoke things into existence. And then when he made humans, he said: "I'm going to make you in my 'Image,'" which basically means we're given a special role by the Creator to carry on (in small ways) the work that he began.

And then I'd point out that, if God creates the World by speaking, and we are made in his image; then it sort of follows that, to a lesser degree, humans "create worlds" by speaking, too. And it's true: human speech is always "world-creating" because our words create the realities we inhabit.

So when we take a word, for instance, that literally describes sexual intercourse, and use it in ways that are shocking, violent, degrading or empty; then, like it or not, in that spoken word we're actually creating a world where sex itself is shocking, violent, degrading, and empty for us. At the same time, we're destroying that world the Creator is after, where sexuality is affirming and tender and life-giving.

So the question is not: "did you utter any of the phonemes found on this arbitrary list of taboo words?" The question really is: are you using speech to create, or to destroy? Are you Imaging God in your talk?

That's a better answer, I think. And when we ask the question like that, interestingly, we find that there may actually be times when using words that are shocking, even taboo, can actually be a creative act, a step towards answering our calling as creatures made in the image of the creator.

Ezekiel, I think, got this.

So did the author of the Hebrews. In one place he's talking to people who are experiencing God's "discipline" and asking why, and he says (according to the NIV): "If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons." But the word translated "illegitimate children" there is actually a rather shocking term in the Greek, a word not necessarily suited to polite society (it's not for nothing the KJV renders it: "If ye be without chastisement ... then ye are bastards and not sons"). Because perhaps it's only in the shock of this scandalous speech that we actually feel the scandal of wanting to enjoy the Christian life without without the sometimes difficult but always loving discipline of God.

Even the author of Ephesians 5:4, I think, understood this power of speech. In Philippians 3:8, after listing all the religious accolades and spiritual accomplishments he's accrued in life, he says: but I consider all that "rubbish" compared to the goal of winning Christ. That's how the NIV renders the verse, but "rubbish," it turns out, is not near earthy enough. The word in Greek--skubala-- though not quite an "s-word" itself--certainly would have raised more eyebrows in the Philippian church than mere "rubbish" does today. The KJV renders it "dung," but for dynamic equivalence, I've heard that "crap" (or its scatological synonyms) might not be too far off.


And if we could hear that shocking skubala with the ears of the Philippian Christians Paul's writing to here, we might actually discover ourselves standing in a fresh-made world where there really is no crown in heaven or on earth that looks gold, compared to the all-surpassing riches of Christ.

And that's a big deal. It's never "just a word."