talking sh*t

"Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, first hand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant - dog dung."

Paul the Apostle - Philippians 3: 8 

I attended a day long conference today where some very well credentialed speakers set out a few interesting topics for our consideration. The final topic was on how we use language in the context of church life. The speaker used Paul's quote from Philippians as an example of how we can change language to express ideas in a more comfortable way within our churches. His presentation was compelling and sadly I had to leave half way through... but it hooked me and has been germinating ever since...

I find it fascinating just how much we have managed to manicure some very roughly hewn expressions over the centuries. What began as evocative, provocative and sometimes even invective text, has become such well polished prose that it couldn't offend an aged knitting circle of sheltered spinsters!

The writers of our sacred text were people of passion, persistence and painful personal narrative. They lived through tumultuous times, occasionally bearing witness to some of the greatest inhumanities humanity has had perpetrated upon itself. But we have made ourselves so comfortable with this tumultuous and disturbing text, that we can blissfully tell our swaddling infants "children's stories" about the genocidal destruction that followed the walls of Jericho tumbling down. The extinction of an entire planet, safe for one extended family and a ship load of essential genetic breeding stock, is the stuff of kindergarten tales. And the agonizing death of Billions is explained and celebrated as the long sought after return of our God who will then punish the condemned multitudes of fallen humanity and safe the remnant who make up the ranks of the Faithful.

Yet even as the pastor today admitted the irony of the fact that in his congregation he couldn't use the word Paul actually used in his letter to the Philippians as it isn't a "good" word to say out loud in places where children are present, the fact was that what he said was so reasonable and normal that none of his audience disputed his point and accepted the normalcy of this paradox should be mind boggling to me.

We can't say sh*t in church, but we can talk about global genocide and the demonic deflowering of humanity without fear of upsetting even the babes in our midst.

Perhaps our aversion to anything approaching reality may have more to do with this reticence than any sense of verbal propriety?

I remember back home how angst the preachers would get when they had to read aloud the word "basta*d" in The King James Version of Hebrews 8: 12.... The conundrums and questions that arise from the idea of a God of limitless power and alien perspective punishing humanity as a parent would their wayward child, can roll of their tongues with ease, but the more blunt term for illegitimate causes such crippling consternation. I'm surprised some phycologist hasn't done a study on the pathology that must be present among us to cause such paradoxical behavior.

I think the sooner we get comfortable saying our sh*t out loud, the sooner we may stop being accused of talking sh*t by a world outside of Christianity that watches us with growing sense of disbelief.

Just a thought as the day wains and my mind wanders....

In case you wonder about the Asterix in place of the missing letter: The internet audience also has some very unsettling ideas about what is proper.... I can damn an entire community to eternal oblivion but we can't and shan't use four letter words to do so....

Oh! Except of course.... the word: "Hell!" :(