On Profanity

One of the drastic social changes I've noticed over the course of my life--and I suspect this is even more evident to those a generation above me--is the prevalence of profanity as accepted everyday speech. Even further: as expected everyday speech, to the point where lack of profanity is sometimes more noticeable than its presence. It has crept into countless texting abbreviations and communication shorthand on social media, becoming the commonplace backdrop of online interaction. If you're not swearing, it is now rather more difficult than it used to be to convey, in informal writing, that you feel emotionally invested in a topic. Words that a generation or two still functioned as vehicles of shock and offense have now become mere markers of emotional authenticity. There's a certain irony to this, of course: profanity's main linguistic role lies in its shock value, so I have a prophetic suspicion that there may be some new swear words coming in the future, since the old ones have now become so humdrum.

But it's worth backing up a step and asking what it says about us, as a culture, that profanity has become so prevalent. It sometimes seems that one can't click on a single "reel" or "short" without seeing people swearing on the sidewalk at each other. Profanity has become, quite frankly, boring and pedestrian. Even more: it is yet another sign that we're far more inept at using our own native language than most of the generations that preceded us. I recall reading a C. S. Lewis extract that said that the use of italics (as a way of implying a stress) was the sign of a poor writer; a good writer should be able to evoke the feeling he intends without recourse to such devices. In a way, profanity has become the italics of our culture; it's now just a sign that people are failures at communication. We've been blessed with a language that has the most robust and vibrant vocabulary of any language ever, and yet many people can't seem to convey the emotional tenor of their speech without drawing on the lazy man's arsenal of swear words. They could at least, one might hope, do as Shakespeare did, and create elegantly foul-mouthed insults that show some spark of creativity and reason. 

But that objection is a mere trifle. I can't expect every sidewalk barbarian to insult me like the Bard. There's something deeper in the issue of profanity, which I'd like to probe for a moment. If I were to imagine what my profane fellow citizens thought of my reaction--how I felt when I heard them swear--I think they'd probably guess that I felt shocked or offended. Because I'm a pastor, sometimes people who know that try to curb their speech, and it's clear they do it because they don't want to offend me. Some, of course, may find some casual pleasure in the idea of shocking a devout person by lobbing a few f-bombs here and there. But I don't think any of them would actually guess what I really feel. It's not offense.

I feel pity. I feel sorry for them. And that's honest, sincere sorrow--I'm not saying that in a judgmental sense. I'm not looking down my nose at them, nor am I shocked or offended. Rather, I grieve for them. Yes, I think perhaps that's the right word--I grieve for them, and for what they're missing. They are blind to wonders that they don't even know are there. And so it saddens me--not for my sake, but for theirs.

Where does that grief come from? It arises from seeing what profanity really is, and it's right there in the name itself. Profanity is a reference to that which is profane--i.e., the opposite of holy, the antonym of sacred. Sometimes swear words are references to things that are coarse or dirty by definition, but many times they are coarse references to holy things. I would honestly feel better about our culture if profanity was still shocking and offensive, because it should be. Anything that blasphemes the sacred should be utterly shocking. And that's what our swear words were meant to do: in English, swearing is often a direct reference to theological truths, to sex, or to the dignity of our fellow human beings: all among the highest and holiest things our God has seen fit to give us. So why do these terms no longer shock and offend? Because our culture, by and large, has decided that these things are not sacred. The awe-inducing, soul-satisfying weight of holiness is now a complete unknown. Our culture has no point of reference anymore for how to encounter that which is truly sacred, and so even the highest and holiest things are simply accepted as trivial, or trash, or targets for mockery.

Only those things that are held as inviolably precious still have the power to shock and offend. There are only a few English words for which that's still the case, and it shows what is seen as sacred in this culture: namely, markers of personal identity. If you use a coarse word to identify someone else's race, gender, or orientation, then you have stepped over one of the last inviolable lines in our culture, and society will hold you accountable. But they're the only ones--none of the old unspeakable words, that spoke coarsely of theological mysteries or sexual union, retain their power now. Such words are now so devoid of power that they run off the tongue like mere space-fillers. 

One can only get to that place--where holy things are spoken of as worthless--if one has not experienced the weight of holiness, has never understood the unimaginable splendor of the sacred. And it's not just Christianity that used to understand such things--it was the common experience of humanity at large to pause in awe before the sacred and the numinous, and to cut short one's words in the presence of holy things. So those who no longer have that capacity are not just missing the glories of the gospel, as eternally tragic as that is--they are also missing a profound and deep aspect of what it is to be truly human. They are like people who have plucked out their eyes to make themselves intentionally blind, or burned off their hands so they cannot feel the exquisite textures of the world around them. Their spiritual senses have become so dulled by the mockery and cynicism of profane things that they have lost a fundamental human capacity. It's not simply that nothing is holy to them anymore; it's that nothing can ever be holy to them in that condition.

Profanity may feel like a small and casual vice, but on a societal level, it points to something far more worrying: a creeping darkness that has cut off our ability to perceive the wonder and glory of the most precious things in life. In the face of such a darkness, let us pray for the light to dawn anew, and in the meantime, we shall grieve what we have lost.