It’s funny, though, I just don’t have an interest in many R-rated (or even a lot of PG) movies. The “bomb” word makes me kinda queasy. And I do think we have to be careful of going too far in our quest to be “real.” Some preachers and Christians I’ve come across are too free (IMHO) with profanity, just to prove they’re under grace and not the law.

Interesting post, and thoughtful conversation…with respectful disagreements. Gotta love THC!

I also think we should consider Paul’s advice to honor those who have arrived at different conclusions than we.

Fun post. Great conversation.

Anyway, I cringe at potty mouth for shock value and when Christians use it to say, “Hey, I live on the edge my pew.” I love it when the timing and setting necessitates it.

Magnolia, regardless of how you put it, was a tough one to get through. Was it 200 uses of the f-word in that movie?

We are better than that.

When I decided to get serious about writing a few years also, my first proposals were laced with some mild profanity. I was bound and determined to submit to a secular publishing house. Of course they all rejected me. I remember when my agent edited the profanity before we went to the CBA. At first I was offended and didn’t like being censored. Then, my current publisher went on to edit the heck out of my story — taking out many of the off-color moments. Again, I was offended.

Then, once we went to print, I was so thankful that someone had the sense to make it PG. Yep, my mother read it! And a host of other people who really didn’t need to know about my full indiscretions. So I continue to swing back and forth on this issue.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who read my post, and she said that she regretted dropping the f-bomb at work last week. She was feeling pretty bad about it, but then one of her co-workers came up to her and said, “You made my day, now I know you are human.”

So my friend concluded that God probably used the f-word for his good.

(Mind you, when it comes to my kids, I’m still Fundamentalist Mommy in this area.)

I was at a Christian Writing Group this morning and the woman that read a portion of my memoir to be critiqued by the group, said “mmm it” instead of reading where I used “darn it” a few times. Then during the critiques, I was advised not to use it if I didn’t want to offend.

Really??

I hadn’t realized darn it was a saying some people aren’t comfortable saying.

Thanks, but no thanks – think I’ll stick to being true to who I am – that’s how I speak at times when annoyed and darn it I want my memoir to be authentic.

Janet

The breast word is probably okay in some christian presses, but I think it is accurate to say evangelical presses in particular are nervous about breasts.

When I was a teacher years ago, I struggled with students who had potty mouths. Finally, I learned to explain it this way:

People talk to each other in different registers of intimacy. We used to have different pronouns for this. A husband might call his wife “thou.” This meant they were close. German still does this with its informal “du, dich, dir” pronouns and its more formal “Sie, Sie, Ihnen” pronouns. (Once I addressed a German Chemistry teacher as “du” when I was a foreign exchange student. Not a good idea.)

In English, we don’t have registers of intimacy much anymore. But curse words seem to function like that a little bit. Of course, they can be hateful. Even regular words can be hateful. But often my students were using curse words as a kind of informal register.

Here’s the catch, I would tell the students. If I’m not close to you, it can feel very uncomfortable to be invited into your inner circle by the language you use. After all, we aren’t buddies. But if I walk by you in the hall and hear you using “buddy language” with your close friends, suddenly I become your buddy simply because I overheard your intimate register about the “effing good time you had last night, bee-ach.”

They understand this well when I explained how uncomfortable they would feel if I started dropping f-bombs in my lessons. (In fact, my wife had a professor who did this. Totally uncool.)

Randy raises the issue of profanity. Curse words can definitely be profrane. Historically, they are certainly profrane. But sometimes I think Christians like to use these words to make it easy to define what is profrane. As long as I don’t say [choose your favorite list of prohibited words] then it isn’t profranity.

And yet, that’s not really what profanity is about. Too many Christians never curse, but profrane their faith, their family, their work, and their God with nonsensical foolishness.

(Kind of like this comment. God, forgive me.)

Do I curse? Sometimes. Am I careful where. Absolutely. Not because I’m trying to avoid appearing as a hypocrite. (That’s a given.) But because those words are powerfully loaded and only to be used amongst my closest friends who can handle my being fully authentic with them about what I’m thinking and feeling.