Profanity: Profane Or Permissible?

What is the true Christian position on profanity?

One of the first points that must be emphasized before the analyzation proceeds is that all language is innately relative.  While all the concepts behind words exist objectively and without reference to any particular society (a tree is a tree no matter what cultural word is used for it), language itself is purely defined by individuals and culture.  This adds great relativity into assessing whether a word is even considered profanity, as time and geography will help dictate this.

The Bible condemns:


1. Blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16)
2. Misuse of God's name (Exodus 20:7)
3. Cursing humans (James 3:9)
4. Degrading speech towards other people or holy concepts (Ephesians 5:4; for principle see Deuteronomy 25:3)
5. Using words to intentionally offend people (Matthew 7:12)
6. Mocking others (Psalm 1:1-2)


It is important to note that nowhere can one find a single verse even hinting that use of certain societally-selected words to express anger, shock, or surprise is wrong, though it is good to, say, not cuss in the presence of family members or friends who have asked one not to do so.  Using only feelings to condemn something as immoral commits the logical fallacies of emotion appeal and the naturalistic fallacy, yet people usually attack profanity on exclusively emotional grounds.  So how else might people discover if profanity is wrong?  We can't turn to the Bible, because while the Bible condemns the kind of speech I mentioned above it never prohibits profanity in and of itself.  We can't turn to collective agreement, because that would commit the fallacy of appeal to popularity (Christians are often the first to condemn citing majority agreement on any issue as true, moral or otherwise, so I find myself really surprised when they make the same types of claims).  We can't say profanity actually hurts people.  Without any way to logically condemn profanity, the most we can claim is that as individuals we don't like certain words, but we can't necessarily say it is genuinely wrongful for others to use them.  At best we can say profanity offends some people in a given society, but not all people.

Cussing at a human ("you are a piece of sh-t") tramples on the fact that all people bear God's image and should not be disrespected (James 3:9), but there is a vast difference between that and saying "Hell!" if one unexpectedly slips.  In the past I inverted the truth and shunned people who said things like "sh-t" while I was willing to tell some people to "go to hell".  I had entirely mis-constructed my priorities.  I justified what amounted to verbal mistreatment of some people while viewing people who would cuss at the difficulty of a video game or frightening situation as vile.

Christians need to stop acting like using certain kinds of profanity will "hurt our witness".  People use the same argument to condemn drinking alcohol, playing any video games besides Mario, wearing bikinis, listening to metal music, dating, and so many other trivial and innocent activities.  Not only are those things entirely permissible in addition to the fact that for various reasons they can be very healthy, but if secular people already do these things and don't find anything wrong with them why would they reject Christianity because Christians do them too?  Some Christians will inevitably assert that certain words "don't honor God", but how in the world would they know if a word dishonors God just because their society or they themselves dislike it?  One can claim that almost any action "doesn't honor God" and therefore can escape with erecting all sorts of legalistic nonsense.

Even if there were objectively immoral words, since the Bible doesn't reveal them to us and our reason would be unable to condemn any of them without committing a logical fallacy, I don't see how we could know of them.  Some people consider heck just a replacement for hell that contains the spirit of the "worse" word, while some place "crap" alongside "sh-t" and "f-ck".  And since there is debate even over which words are slang and which are actual profanity, there is seemingly no way to even gauge who is correct, and that's even assuming there are right and wrong words to use.

Now, what is objectively wrong is misusing God's name, whether it takes the form of blasphemy as in Leviticus 24:16 or a more simple abuse of it as condemned in Exodus 20:7.  I find it odd that Christians so vehemently respond if they hear someone use the "f word" but they are almost comfortable with hearing people repeatedly use God's name in vain, which, while still not the same as blasphemy, is irresponsible to say the least.  It's like Christians have adopted the secular view of profanity which perceives that saying "God" as a cuss word is permissible but saying "f-ck" is taboo.  If anything, this should be reversed.  It is obscene to misuse or slander God's name but not to cuss in an expression of irritation, fright, or surprise.

So, the verdict?  Profane or permissible?  Permissible but not always beneficial for others to hear.  We should take care in not trying to intentionally offend other people by use of profanity but we can't label it objectively wrong.