Swearing: it’s all in the timing

When I was growing up, my family attended a rather conservative church (I fondly refer to it as The Chinese Republican Church), and we were taught it’s un-Christian to swear (i.e., cuss or curse). Of course, there’s no biblical support for such a teaching. The closest anyone can come up with is a passage in Matthew 5:33-37 referring to “swearing” as in oaths, not curses:

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

which basically means it’s unbiblical to swear on the Bible to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.” And I always swore to myself that if I had to testify in court that I wouldn’t swear on the Bible as instructed, but I would open the Bible to be sworn upon and point to Matthew 5:33 as my reason for not swearing. Oh, wait… I guess I didn’t swear to myself… I just decided and then said “yes” to myself.

Then, of course, there are some portions of Paul’s epistles in which he talks about being considerate of others and their cultural values, and I think that jives more with my experience with swearing—it’s about what’s appropriate or inappropriate, not what is sinful. I probably swore once in all four years of high school. I’m not kidding. I was disciplined then. I did what good Christians were supposed to do at the Chinese Republican Church. I did my quiet time. I didn’t engage in sexual… anything, really. I didn’t swear. I went to church regularly. Well, all that did was basically prove to myself that I can be disciplined. In fact, during that time, I didn’t even watch any TV. I recommend that to anyone—be disciplined, give up some things—try it. It’s fun. It teaches you about how strong and weak you can be. It is not, however, a permanent state of morality or immorality. It’s an exercise, albeit a long one.

Now, I swear and have no qualms about it. I don’t swear while I’m at my job. I don’t swear in church. I don’t swear at formal events. I swear with my friends. I swear in informal writing. There are good times to say fuck and shit and bad times to say them. As David Ives would say, “It’s all in the timing.”

5 comments

  1. I sort of gave up swearing. It’s not that I gave it up so much as I decided that I would reserve swearing for moments when I REALLY mean it. Swearing seems to be used so much that it has really lost its power. It doesn’t have any meaning any more because you hear it so much. The few times that I do swear, the people around me that hear know I mean it because I never swear. It usually surprises them when they hear it coming from me and that’s exactly what I want.

  2. I think it’s also a matter of habit. You should be really careful about the words you use, because they have the tendency to come out at the wrong time almost unintentionally.

    Even relatively milder swear words like “shit” and “damn” can be embarrassing in the wrong crowd.

    It gives old all the wrong signals. Generally best not to swear at all, but that’s utopian. Swearing under extreme provocation is probably a justified reaction.

  3. I find it funny that I cannot swear at all because of my moral, but I go ‘WTF?’ in the forums. I am thinking to myself that it really isn’t a word.

    Then again, I don’t do that often as well…

  4. Interesting post. I swear all the time. lol

    I just read about a study some researcher did and he believes swearing predates language. For instance, when you step on a cat’s tail, it shrieks. In humans, it’s the same response within the brain. It’s just that when we learned language, our primitive shrieks and howls turned into fuck’s and shit’s.

    I tried to dig up the article, but I can’t find it at the moment. :( It’s an interesting theory. Maybe even right, who knows? It makes a good deal of sense.

  5. I’m surprised that you don’t recall James 3:10:
    Out of the same mouth goes forth blessing and cursing. It is not right, my brethren, that these things should be thus.

    Simply speaking, you wouldn’t eat out of a toilet. There’s definitely something inherently wrong about being able to praise God and to curse (people?) from the same mouth.

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