Why Argue?

I've been engaging in some conversation with the good people over at Sarah Angeline's blog about the topic of using swear words. I found Sarah's blog after clicking the link from a comment she left at the Real Live Preacher's website. She wasn't happy about the fact that some Christians cuss (and, given her responses to my comments, that some defend those who choose to).

Now I've started to wonder why it is that I engage in dialogues like this.

I must admit that part of it is just my penchant for debate. I like it. I find it invigorating, and gets my mental juices flowing. But I still wonder if anything of real value comes out of it.

I would like to see Christians focus less on the "nine nasties", most of which I don't believe to be nasty; we've simply made them such. If we all, as a society, decided that swearing was not "inappropriate" tomorrow, would there be any reason to believe that such actions would have eternal consequences? Some things are absolute, I agree. Murder is wrong whether we say it is or not. I simply have trouble putting "swearing" into the same category.

Anyhow, back to the real issue. I would like to see the church focus more on those things that are of eternal consequence. Recently, the news has reported a dramatic increase in the number of innocent people who have been found guilty of crimes they didn't commit, some who were on death row. These people have been forced to give up years, sometimes decades, of their lives, and they didn't deserve to. Anyone who can think logically can also deduce that we have probably executed numbers of people who were innocent.

Where is the church in this issue? Where are we volunteering to be an advocate for these people? Where are we giving up our resources to make sure that those people, who are released from prison after 15 years with little more than bus fare, don't fall through the cracks of a system that really let them down? Instead, we are wasting time condemning brothers and sisters who use language that we don't like.

So I would like to see us focus on those things... those things that people lie awake at night worrying about. No one lies awake at night and says, "Man, I used a swear word today." Yet countless people wonder how they will feed their kids, or what their reason for existing is, or how they'll beat a system that seems set on taking the joy out of life.

So is there value in having these dialogues? If the point is just to legitimize the act of swearing, then no. There is no eternal value in using swear words, just as there are no eternal consequences. But if the dialogue serves to refocus the attention of the church onto those things that we should be about, like loosening the bonds of injustice, setting the captive free, and healing the sick, then there might be some value.

Or maybe I'm just trying to justify my having a little bit of intellectual ping-pong.
posted by Stephen at 4:32 PM | |