I remember when I dropped my first swear words. It was at Azusa Pacific University, during my freshman (and only) year.
Ever the precocious child, my friends were all juniors and seniors, mostly those in the poetry-writing collective. We were our own bunch, enjoying only a little cross-pollination with the campus theatre majors. Our activities consisted of drinking tea and Guinness at our ringleader’s apartment, trading commendations on each other’s work, and swearing. Lots of swearing.
To me, anyway, it seemed like a lot. To me, raised by California Baptists-turned-midwestern Presbyterians, swearing was grounds for walking out of a movie. Or at least heavily discouraging others to see it. (“They did not need to put that in!”) Swearing was what “bad” kids did behind the chapel building, probably whilst they were planning how to get hold of some cigarettes. Swearing got your mouth washed out with soap. Swearing got basketball players suspended from the game. Swearing was something you tried out in whispers, to see if God would punish you for it.
In my pre-college paradigm, swear words were expensive words. You only chose to use them if you were ready to bear some severe consequences. I didn’t hear them often, so it never occurred to me that they could just fly out of someone’s mouth unbidden.
In high school, of course, people cussed all the time. But to me, that was different. Those people weren’t saved. They didn’t have to play by the rules because they weren’t in the game. Maybe I ought to have been disturbed by profanity out of the mouth of Christian college students. But I wasn’t–I liked it. It was a surprise and a delight to learn that people could swear so good-naturedly. That four-letter words could issue in helpless laughter or a wry roll of the eyes.
It was like one of those circus bears with the tutu and the little bike. Something that used to be big and deadly suddenly turned silly and innocuous.
Mostly, I liked their language because I liked them, my adored upperclassman friends, who let a lowly freshman pal around with them. They weren’t perfect Christians, but they were writers, thinkers, and strugglers. I respected them. And then, one day, one of them wrote a poem about me. And she let me read it. (Which is probably always a mistake.)
I remember two things about that poem. One is how excited I was when I took it out of her hands. The other is one line that read, in parentheses to another line, (She is still so sensitive to profanity.)
That was the beginning of a new f*ing era.
I had a lot more conversations that year about profanity. Mostly with another upperclassman friend who listened to a lot of Tupac. And when I transferred to a different college, on the other side of the country and of the religious spectrum, I had plenty of time to form my new opinions about profanity through practice. Moving to New York City inured my ear to the F–word in all its grammatical permutations. Much as a guitarist loses feeling in his fingertips, I can hardly hear these words when people say them.
Unless those people are pastors. Or singers who record under Christian labels. When I hear my words coming from those mouths, I consider reconsidering my position. On one hand, I’m glad we’re not afraid to say what we mean. To use “expensive” words when we think it’s called for. On the other hand, these days I’m less okay with being just okay (sorry, Jon Foreman) in my behavioral choices.
While I’m settled that I don’t have a problem with swearing, maybe God does?
Flickr photo (cc) by HangtownGal
