Although I do not say cuss words (except maybe when I am driving and am alone in the car), I have to ask what makes language obscene? Is it the word or is it our hearts?
In the sixth grade I started using cuss words. Something happened during the summer between fifth and sixth grades. In fifth grade I used incredibly acceptable words like dang or shoot or sugar foot. Nobody turned their heads completely around when I would get upset and say these things. Nobody threatened to wash out my mouth with soap. But then in the sixth grade I had to prove that I was growing up and I did this with my words.
What changed that summer? Not much really. I experienced a peer pressure in middle school that was much more intense than it was in elementary school, and everybody else was cussing, so I did too. Nothing much had really changed in me though. Despite the expletives I was pretty much the same kid, for good or bad.
I became a Christian when I was fourteen years old. One of the ways that I feel I could see the change in my heart was that I stopped saying cuss words. As my lungs forced air between my vocal cords, my tongue no longer refined this sound into obscenities. I controlled my tongue extremely well. I placed not cussing on mychecklist and I did not say another cuss word for the rest of my life.
Although my vocabulary had changed, I kept saying cuss words in my mind and heart. They did not roll off my tongue, but they circled my brain.
Not only that, but if I became angry I would find ways to use acceptable words to express that same anger I had when I cussed. I would politely talk bad about other people. I would courteously belittle someone behind their back. With words that would be given a G rating I would use my words to destroy others. And then I would cuss in my head.
I am not necessarily encouraging Christians to develop potty mouths, just suggesting that we focus on the wrong problem. God is more interested in what we feel in our hearts and what our intentions are with the words than the specific word that we used.
I do not understand the concept of cuss words. Society has chosen to have words that we should not say, so then why do the words exist if we should not say them? Who decided that they should not be used? If we did not place them into this category, would anybody say them?
Maybe cussing is not the worst thing we can do with our tongues.
Do you cuss either in your heard or with your mouth?
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Luke
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Adam
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