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what
is "foul language" and can a
christian "curse?"
with
the seemingly over use of profanity in our lives we have
been praying over this issue and have been asked to
create a position paper concerning this issue. we
have examined this issue on three levels, scriptural,
theological and traditional. our desire was to
purely seek the scriptural base for our findings and
spend time "striping" away the blinding human
traditions. we firmly believe that a great deal of
the church is clouded by "cultural
traditions." know that this is our bias, we
strive to find a safe and comfort place in
scripture. it is after a long and studious time we
have come to the conclusion echoed in the following
quote from the merrill tenney's pictorial bible
dictionary (zondervan press, page 191):
"the
modern western concept of cussing, ie the using of
profanity in language, is never referred to in
scripture"
we
have come to the conclusion that words and words, and
meanings are assigned to them based on the minds of the
persons sending and the person receiving these words in
communications. these meanings change and morph
with each different generation. words only have
meaning as assigned by cultural definitions. as
such, they do not carry with them a "good" or
"bad" meaning - only a perceived meaning.
we
used the following to help us in our study:
profane:
profane,
comes from the middle english word "prophane"
which is derived from the latin word "profanum"
meaning "before the temple."
in
greek, the word used in the nt is "homologen"
which means "to own before" and in hebrew
"halal" which means "to
open."
these
words, and the corresponding scripture, helped us come
to the conclusion that profanity is not what you say, it
is what you do. profanity is giving to God
something less then what is expected, or giving to God
seconds. a good example is when you clean out the
food pantry in your home to "donate" the food
to the church food pantry - what you are doing is giving
to God what you do not like, want or desire - you are giving
seconds - you are acting in a profane way and that is
unacceptable to God.
cursing:
the
word "curse" comes from the middle english
word "curs" meaning "to harm"
and is used to "perform a prayer or invocation to
harm another."
in
the greek it is "katapa" which means
"to wish harm" and in the hebrew it is
"alah" or "me'erah" or "qe'lalah"
all meaning a "reversed blessing."
closing:
we
have found that when scripture calls us to "not
curse" or to "not be profane" is has
nothing to do with the language we use, but is connected
to our actions with others and our actions with
God. we have come to the conclusion that the use
of language is not as important as the reality that God
desire us to give our best - to all concerned.
we
do not believe that scripture calls us to a
"purity" of language, because it is totally
subjective to the culture and the community. we do
believe we are called to a purity of heart and a desire
to give to God everything we have with an open and
loving heart.
(c) john o'keefe
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