TRIGGER WARNING: Victims of abuse and sensitive or wounded minds may be offended here.
Some people have already decided in their minds what they want this post to say, and so they might be doing the usual exercise of listening in order to construct a strawman based on what they think I am going to say, in order to knock it down.
So, for those who have made up their mind, you may move from this post to the next, or if you want to skip the offensive segment, then skip the following segment and move to the third segment.
Passages That Will Trigger Some
So, for a contextual overlay, let me requote a couple of passages.
Then I said, “woe is me, for I am undone.”
Isaiah 6:5
Possible way of translating this
Then I said “Holy shit! I am going to die!”
Or Ezekiel 23
“The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother. They played the whore in Egypt; they played the whore in their youth; there their breasts were pressed and their virgin bosoms handled. Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.
Ezekiel 23:1-20 ESV
“Oholah played the whore while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers the Assyrians, warriors clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. She bestowed her whoring upon them, the choicest men of Assyria all of them, and she defiled herself with all the idols of everyone after whom she lusted. She did not give up her whoring that she had begun in Egypt; for in her youth men had lain with her and handled her virgin bosom and poured out their whoring lust upon her. Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians, after whom she lusted. These uncovered her nakedness; they seized her sons and her daughters; and as for her, they killed her with the sword; and she became a byword among women, when judgment had been executed on her.
“Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. She lusted after the Assyrians, governors and commanders, warriors clothed in full armor, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men. And I saw that she was defiled; they both took the same way. But she carried her whoring further. She saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, wearing belts on their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them having the appearance of officers, a likeness of Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea. When she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoring lust. And after she was defiled by them, she turned from them in disgust. When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister. Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt and lusted after her lovers there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses.”
Verse 20, to say nothing about the profane way the rest of chapter 23 was written
Who were hung like horses and who ejaculated the same way…
And Paul, this time without the first transation
As for those who are agitating you, I wish they would cut their penises off
Galatians 5;12
And in another place
“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as shit, in order that I may gain Christ”
Philippians 3:8 ESV
And let’s not forget that Baal was in the words of Elijah might have been taking a shit (1 Kings 18 can actually read like that), among other places, and Redemptive Gift Prophets like Elijah, and Exhorters were not know for their flowery, G-rated, sarcasm-free speech).
What the Song of Solomon Is Really Saying And How It May Set the Tone For Some Marriages
To say nothing about how raw the Song of Solomon actually reads, for all you allegorical types. Dew and dripping with myrrh and liquids in the Song are references to sexual fluids. And while the types and analogies of Scripture are at play in Song of Solomon, due to Ephesians 5, that does not supecede that the Song is a picture of the heights of intimacy between husband and wife, and it is really graphic. The “mountain of myrrh” is something the woman is saying about the man, and I will leave it at that.
The Real Point of Colossians 3:8
Paul was not saying get rid of the four-letter words from your mouth.
Paul was saying get rid of speech that abuses others.
That will be different for different people.
Our job, when we connect with others, is not to inauthentically put on a front to them, but rather is to be authentic. If that means some do not speak with four-letter words, then that is fine, and no I will absolutely not entertain a debate about whether or not that can be done.
The fact is that people need to learn how to be real and honest and sincere, because this generation can point out a fake believer 35 miles away. I do not care if you can clean up your language one whit, if you are still coming home drunk off your ass, and lying about everything else, and gaslighting everyone that you live with.
The problem is not our mouths, but the problem is our mouths, and it is not “keep away from this list of words that are contraband”.
We have enough issues with Christians trying to protect their reputations by avoiding certain words while also running in the direction of deception, abuse, gaslighting, and covering up rape, mistreatment, offense, and every other foul tarpit.
Our capacity to execute in the kingdom will be proven by the fruit of what we preserve.
If my sons or daughter tell the truth and they happen to voice their frustration by occasionally using a word, not to abuse but because they are frustrated or angry or dealing with injustice, but they never stops protecting the widow and the orphan and the fatherless boy who does not have a man in his life to show him what it means to be a kingdom man, then I sure better have the balls to coach them to a better place in all things and bless them for doing the right thing.
Now, where this turns troublesome is where the language turns abusive, and me and 100% of my friends and colleagues know when the language has turned the corner from frustration to abuse.
But voicing frustration and abusing people are two different things.
Paul and the balance of Scripture were vastly more concerned with the abuse factor than they were about whether one had successfully managed to avoid every bad word on the checklist.
Gang, it is time we do the same.
If we avoid the cuss words but run headlong into telling lies, weaving webs of deceit projecting an inauthentic image, and gaslighting others, we have royally screwed up.
So, as you are working with your kids, make sure you keep the holy checklist to a minimum and coach them to a place of being a whole man or a whole woman.
We need more of those whole people running around.
And we need more authenticity.
And we need fewer legitimacy crutches of “I am legitimate because I avoided all the bad words.”
You can walk around with a hundred gold-plated crutches, but that does not make you any less of a cripple.
Just some raw and open thoughts as I work at making my speech more fathering and less abusive myself.
And for Christ’s sake, let’s lay off the sanitizing of Scripture because we are embarrased in its portrayal of all things messy.
When the Holy Spirit touches human flesh, things are bound to get messy.
Praying for you, gang.