Swearing and Church
Someone left me a comment on myspace about my views on swearing and church. Since myspace sucks and is trying to monopolize all content on the internet by looping all links posted on myspace back to the myspace home page, I stopped using myspace, so hopefully that person will see my response here. The comment they sent me is the following paragraph that is in quotes:
"Swearing makes you look stupid. Who do you see swearing most these days? Dropouts, druggies and little kids. If you want to but your Christianity as a basis for looking like an idiot then you have some problems. If anything society today encourages bad language by putting it on nearly everywhere and everything we can. There's good and bad of everything and that includes our speech. And the fact that you don't go to Church doesn't bother me, it's the fact that you seem to disreguard it as fellowship that does"
The following is my reply to the previous paragraph:
Your position against swearing is that swearing makes me look stupid? Ok, you keep your position, I have no problem with that but forgive me if I don't see "looking stupid" to some people to be a good reason to hinder my right to communicate. If you are willing to block off certain things in life because you are putting yourself under the law, especially under one that has no scriptural support, I would probably take a step back and consider who you're being more like; the pharisees or Jesus. What do you think Jesus "butted" as his basis for looking like an idiot to the people in his day? Jesus, Paul, Peter, Noah, Abraham... anyone who ever stood strong for God was considered to be an idiot. What did they use as their basis? God. I do precisely the same and I stand in the same shoes they did. I must say I'm not surprised nor do I find any discontent in these shoes.
Jesus didn't have much of a problem relating to the "dropouts, druggies and little kids" of his day. Jesus lacked the legalistic spirit that the pharisees had. He was not a big far of teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. (Matt. 15:1-9) It was that very spirit that kept the pharisees throwing the first stones. Saul of tarsus, residing over the stoning of stephen, was "as touching the law, a pharisee" (Php 3:5) and it was that very legalistic mindset that kept his killing those who loved God.
There's a good and bad of everything, indeed. Including our speech, correct again. We are to be edifying in our speech. Many of us are taught things today that are said to have scriptural support, but when we actually open our minds and search the scriptures for these things, we find nothing, and sometimes we are humbled by finding the very opposite belief to be true. In this situation, we find the word "piss" in 2 Kings 18:27 and Isaiah 36:12. We find 6 other occurances of the present tense verb "pisseth". We find 27 occurances of the word "dung" in the Bible, which is the very equivalent of "shit". As we search even more, we will find numerous different words for genatalia. Even the subject of circumcision, if we weren't so familiar with it, we would find to be innapproproate as well. So, why am I completely out of line when I use the words shit or piss? What makes these words so bad? Why do people take such offense as to act like I am personally attacking THEM by speaking these words? Should I feel sinful by reading passages of scripture that talks about "inappropriate" subjects? Was God sinning by talking about these things, or are these things just as much a part of His beautiful creation as "appropriate" things are? We should be very careful to make sure we are not teaching for doctrine the commandments of men, because, if "do not talk about poop" was a commandment of God, then God must be a sinner.
You are also correct about the fact that I do not see "going to church" as fellowship. Do you know why? Well, it has a lot to do with the meaning of church in scripture and the difference between that and the idea of church that we have today. The word ekklesia was twisted (not translated) into the word church in the translating of the KJV. When something like this happens, we tend to loose a lot of meaning behind the original word. Could you tell me the reason that church is what it is today? From where did it originate? Why are we all so gregarious on sunday mornings? Why do we allow one man to speak while we stay silent? Why are we so content with the non-scriptural caste system of the saints today? (the prominent service class= the clergy, and the quiet receiving class= the laity) Perhaps we should ask ourselves who is the mediator between man and God? Is it the "pastor"? In the "church" of today, we sit next to our brothers in silence as we revere the pastor as our sheperd. (The word pastor is latin for sheperd) If we are honest with ourselves and with God, we will find that there is nothing scriptural about our weekly pilgrimage to the brick and mortar "temple of God" (which was destroyed by Christ, himself)
So, what is the scriptural ekklesia? Well, first of all, it is not a brick and mortar building. It is not man-made. We are the temple of the living God, the ekklesia, the "church" if you insist (2 Cor. 6:16) and it is a terrible thing to attempt to surrender our position to a pile of rocks. We can see in Rom. 16:5 and I Cor. 16:19 that the ekklesia met in homes. What did they do in those homes? Well, if they were following scripture, I imagine they practiced the effectual working of EVERY member of the body, teaching and admonishing one-another, not receiving only the preacher's words. (Eph. 4:16, Eph. 5:18-19, Col. 3:16).
So, as for me, I will follow the Lord. You can find me fellowshipping with my brothers in homes, where we teach and admonish eachother, because fellowship is about more than just the preacher.