Listening to cover songs on the YouTube. I’m struck by how many ballads use the F-word like it’s just any other word. It never occurs to the writers or performers that it might not fit with the emotions a ballad is meant to conjure, or the message it’s meant to communicate.
Profanity is the language of war. But not everything in life is supposed to be war.
The commonly shared meme, “What should not be heard by little ears should not be spoken by big mouths”, while well intentioned, is poorly thought out. There are all sorts of things adults should talk about that kids shouldn’t hear. Still, it was a better time when certain things were only said in private or at best whispered when said in public. The evaporation of a reverence for God and a sense of the holiness of God from worship and culture has accompanied a loss of reverence for and holiness in God’s image bearers, by His image bearers. And the crassness that follows us everywhere is a result.
We desperately need a return to modesty. But modesty that does not start with a holy God at its center misses the point and is doomed to fail.
Regular profanity is one thing when it’s among those who have to live their lives in the harsher realities of a sinful world - those in the military or police officers, for instance. But they endure those things so they won’t follow most people into their normal daily lives, so that a culture of peace can be the regular experience of the majority living in a stable society. When profanity becomes the norm everywhere, it’s a sign that peace and stability no longer exist, either man with God, or man with man. It tells you that the battle is everywhere now, and nobody really is safe. Love or warfare - when our language of the two becomes indistinguishable, then the two themselves are indistinguishable as well.
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