The Potty-Mouth Pastor tagged: ,

The Potty-Mouth Pastor

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I grew up in an auto body shop. My dad made his living working on cars, a craft he had honed at his father’s side, and I desired to do the same. However, dad would not let me, wanting me to “do better than he did.” He did allow me to do odd jobs around the shop and a natural love for cars emerged. I have a shade-tree mechanic’s knowledge and a love for the muscle car generation, characteristic of the late sixties and early seventies. I can tell the difference between a ’67 and a ’69 Mustang Fastback from a mile away. That education I attribute to my old man.

There was a different education that I can attribute more so to the environment than my old man, though he nonetheless was a contributor. A body shop does not lend itself to hanging out with the most savory of men. The language tended to get pretty foul, like a group of young men in basic training developing the camaraderie that young men do. My dad was skilled in the art of profanity. Like a master craftsman, he could weave a tapestry of obscenity that to my knowledge, still hangs in the troposphere above Spartanburg, SC.

By the time I was in sixth grade, I could swear with the best of them. Even at the tender age of twelve, I could make a sailor blush. My ability to swear was unrivaled. I say all that to say this: I know profanity when I hear it. I also know this: profanity has no place soiling the lips of a born-again Christian; especially pastors. One of the first things to go when I became a Christian was my long hair. The second thing was to scour the mouth clean. The hair was easy; one snip of the scissors and my pony tail lay at my feet like some viper having uncoiled itself from my neck.

The mouth was considerably more difficult. I discovered that I could not express myself without the use of profanity. It was easy to dispense with the use of the multi-syllabic type. It was clear that those words were horrible and potentially unbiblical expression. However, those one-syllable, easily utterable ones were a bane. Even when I discovered God’s call to go into the ministry, I would find myself upon becoming annoyed that the use of a choice word here or there placated my sore and bruised ego.

Having begun seminary and a new job, a young lady, unsaved and non-religious to the core, was training me. I had bungled a particular task that had some serious consequences and realizing my mistake, it happened. (No, it wasn’t the queen mother of dirty words, but horrible nonetheless.) I dropped one. Out loud. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Profound grief. Sorrow. “I thought you were training to be a pastor.”

Any credibility as a Christian witness I had amassed with this young lady was trashed in one moment of unbridled, fleshly, self-satisfaction. My heart broken, ego wounded (which it needed to be), and spirit crushed, I slinked home that evening like the dirty dog I was. It had never really settled on me how important the use of words is. Of late it has been said that profanity is becoming more and more vogue among younger ministers of the Gospel. This trend is fascinating to me. Must we use words that are by and large unacceptable, words that cause a generally wholesome movie to leap from a G rating to PG-13 with only the addition of a few syllables? Can we not express ourselves intelligently enough without resorting to some crude obscenity to make a point?

I was shocked—SHOCKED—when in a pastors’ meeting and the swear words of the monosyllabic type were flying as regularly as the name of the Savior whom we worship. As I was departing the meeting with one of my brother pastors, he remarked simply and unequivocally, “Man, we need to be able to get together once in a while and say ______ when we need to.” In my estimation we are caught in a trap between two lies.

  1. We can entertain the sin and pretend that it will not consume us from within.
  2. We can hold the sin at bay and determine that we will never deal with it.

There are far too many Christians, not just pastors, making excuses for the sins they justify in their own lives. So we need to dumb down the Christian message, chuck in a choice profane element to dress up the point, and justify it in the name of “meeting the sinners where they are”? Come up with clever renderings of Scripture to cover the shame of resorting to that heartless and senseless vocabulary, but in the end the shame is only multiplied.

Neither option is acceptable. Both belie the nature of the heart within. Flip-flopping between the two extremes, we are dropping all of our hard rock albums off at Goodwill because they are evil and the next moment we are buying them back off of eBay because to the pure, all things are pure. Hal Lane, writing in a recent ERLC column, said:

Christians are called upon to live differently and to act differently than the world of unbelievers. I do not need to speak profanity to win a cursing unbeliever anymore than I need to drink alcohol to win an alcoholic. The words of Scripture have all the potency and power we need to reach the heart of the lost.

The world and the devil hurl many obstacles in the paths of unwary Christians. However, the reason we cannot reach the goal line of the Great Commission is because we are tripping over our own players. As those who have been entrusted to carry the bread of life to a world that is begging for food, why, oh why would we attempt to deliver it to them in dirty containers?