Cuss Words

A couple of months ago I sat in the bleachers at Isaiah’s, my eight year old, basketball game. It was before the game and I noticed that he was standing in the middle of the court with another boy from his team and the two were laughing. This was particularly interesting because this boy had been somewhat of a bully to Isaiah all basketball season. Isaiah had actually not enjoyed playing on this team, even though the coaches were wonderful, because this boy had been so unpleasant to him. The night before this game, however, Isaiah had stood up to this bully and now, here the two of them stood in the middle of the court laughing.

After the game my curiosity got the best of me and I finally asked Isaiah what he and this other boy had been laughing about. “I just told him something that I saw today on the slide on the playground,” he casually responded. This just served to spark my curiosity and I pried more to find out what this hilarious piece of playground information actually was. “I just told him that when I was sliding down the slide I saw that someone had written the ‘F’ word in the tunnel.” He then attempted to return to his movie he was watching.

I, being the progressive dad that I am, sought to use this as a teaching moment…..I also could not resist finding out why this was so funny. Later, Andrea reminded me that a cuss word is as funny to an eight year old as it is to an adult at the comedy club, the only difference is that the adults have to actually hear the word and don’t understand if you just refer to the first letter of the word. I asked Isaiah if he knew that it was an inappropriate word, he did. I also asked if he knew what it meant, he did. I then asked why he thought to share this with the boy. “I just did,” he said.

That was the end of my progressive daddyness and the end of our conversation.

It was an interesting close to an interesting day. That morning I had started at the Hospital Emergency Room visiting a church member who had been rushed there. As I approached the door I dodged a car speeding to get to the handicapped parking space near the door. At the same time I saw a pick up truck that was honking its horn with an obviously mad driver. I later realized that the first car had cut off the second car to steal the coveted parking space. The pickup was dropping off an elderly gentleman who was obviously needing to get into the ER. As I watched the scene unfold I found that both vehicles were driven by very overweight, very elderly white haired women. As the lady began to get out of the parked car, the lady in the pickup yelled to her, “You know, you really are a B…..”, (It rhymes with witch but I am choosing not to use the words because I am not ten...and I also am not in a comedy club, or at the store, or at the hospital). The large, white haired lady getting out of the car casually raised her arm into the air and gave the pickup driver the finger.

I had approached the desk by this time and suggested that they might want to call security because a riot was about to break out and I was not going to get in the middle of it. I was scared of both women (I am actually scared of most women, my wife and daughters..and most women in my life, have instilled this in me).

Before the people at the desk could pick up the phone, the finger saluting woman walked past me heading for the inner parts of the hospital. The pickup woman gently approached the desk to check in her husband. The fight was apparently over, words were said, a salute was given, and life went on.

That afternoon I heard another conversation involving a gentleman who is a member and leader of another church in town. He was mad. He was very spiritual and proper in his speech, liberally sprinkling another ‘B’ word (rhymes with mother but starts with 'br' instead of the 'm') throughout his tirade. It soon became obvious that he was giving a spiritual finger salute. It was a very disturbing and troubling conversation in more ways than the simple word and finger discourse that I had witnessed at the hospital.

As the day ended, all cuss words had been said and fingers had been raised, I realized that the worst thing I had heard all day was the second 'B' word. It is a unifying word, not a word meant to assault, yet somehow, in that situation, it had achieved that destructive status.

I also remembered the many times I have used good words to abuse and attack. Times that I have attempted to control through the manipulative use of words that were never meant to be tools of manipulation. Times that my heart has revealed what my words attempted to disguise.

For it is the heart that makes something dirty. It is the heart that makes us dirty. It is the heart that makes our actions and words either dirty or clean.

In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul addressed this when he said, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."

Then, when he was speaking to the church at Galatia, he said that "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit......The fruit (outflow) of the walking by the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law."

It is what is inside that impacts the message and flow of what is seen on the outside.

Here I Dwell,
Rick