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Office Hours: Another Bleeping Dialogue

I slid my car into the faculty parking space, turned off the engine, climbed out onto the sidewalk, and only then saw my danger. A cloud of gibbering cellphone users was drifting in my direction, already too close for escape. Another moment and I was enveloped. It was like being inside the old Starfield screensaver, except that the celestial bodies streaming past weren't comets or asteroids, but pale faces with glassy eyes and moving mouths. We never quite collided, but, as each in turn approached and then receded, broken wisps of conversation reached my ears.¹

... Oh my —-. I don't believe it! Oh my —-, hahaha. Tell him ...

... Yeah? Well, that ——s, you know? But what can you do? I ...

The fragments of speech waxed and waned, waxed and waned as the cloud flowed slowly around me. After a short time, the cloud seemed to thin, and I began to hope. All at once, I broke through into free space. My eyes smarted with the return of the occluded sunlight. The pale faces and moving mouths were left behind, and for a time I heard no more.

I thought I would reach my office with no further incident, but I was wrong. There came the touch of a hand on my shoulder. "Professor Theophilus! Hold on a minute."

It was my former student Blue, with a young woman I didn't know. I was glad to see him; we hadn't talked since that time at the Edge of Night.

After a bit of small talk, he said, "I'd like to introduce you to my friend Tiffany."

Tiffany held out her hand. "Hi, Prof!"

"How do you do?"

"I couldn't be any ——ing better. Blue's told me a lot about your classes. Holy ———, you should hear how he goes on about them."

"Of course he liked them," I smiled. "He did well in them."

She laughed. "It's a pleasure to meet you. No ——!"

"Tiffany, we have to go now," said Blue. "We're going to be late." He looked acutely uncomfortable.

She looked at her watch. " Oh, ——, already? I wanted to talk."

"We've, um, talked long enough." He tugged her arm. "Another time, OK? See you later, Prof." They disappeared.

That afternoon there came a quiet knock at my office door. I was surprised to see Blue again. He perched uneasily on a chair.

"I wanted to explain," he began.

"Explain what?"

"About Tiffany. I didn't want you to misunderstand about her."

"What's to misunderstand?"

"She's a really nice person. And a really serious Christian. The profanity and cursing and stuff — that's just the way she talks. She wasn't trying to offend you."

"I'm sure she wasn't."

"Well, I guess if you're not — I mean if you weren't — then I don't need to…" His voice trailed off. There was a long pause. "Prof?"

"Yes?"

"It bothers me."

"I see that."

"It isn't just Tiffany. A lot of my friends talk like that. Not just secular friends. Christians."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Do you think I'm wrong to think it's wrong to talk like that?"

I peered at him, surprised. "Do you really find that question difficult?"

He looked even more uncomfortable than before. "Well, I didn't. But after Tiffany and I said goodbye to you this morning, we quarreled."

"I see."

"I said she'd embarrassed me. She said I'm legalistic. I quoted Philippians 4:8 at her,² the part about purity. She came back at me with Titus 1:15, 'To the pure all things are pure.' Wait, I'm not finished. Then she gave me a nasty look, quoted the second part, 'but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure'³ —"

I finished the sentence. "And said you were dirty-minded."

"How did you know?"

I shrugged. "It wasn't hard to guess."

"If it hadn't been for that Titus verse," he answered, "I would have said she was changing the subject. I would have told her, 'The question isn't about my mind. It's about your mouth.' But the Titus verse brought me up short. St. Paul seems to be telling Titus that if I think someone has a dirty mouth, then I must have a dirty mind. Because if I was pure, I'd think everything was pure. Later on I ran into some friends from a Bible study group. I asked them for their opinion, and that's what they thought too. So what do you think? Am I just dirty-minded?"

"Blue, when Paul tells Titus that to the pure all 'things' are pure, he means all the good things God has made. He doesn't mean that all ways of using those good things are pure."

"I don't follow you."

"Marriage is a pure, good gift — but bigamy isn't pure. Speech is a pure, good gift — but lying isn't pure. The power to reason is a pure, good gift —"

This time he finished my sentence. "— But using your mind to defraud someone isn't pure."

"That's right. Paul wasn't telling Titus that to the pure, 'things' like bigamy, lying and fraud are pure. He was telling him that to the pure, 'things' like marriage, speech and reason are pure."

"So I don't necessarily have a dirty mind just because I think that Tiffany and some of my other friends have dirty mouths."

"No," I said. "The question is which ways of speaking count as abuses of the gift of speech."

"You mentioned one way. Lying. I can think of another. Taking God's name in vain. My friends don't lie, but they do take God's name in vain." He hesitated. "At least I think they do."

"You think? You don't know?"

"This may sound stupid, Prof, but I've never been very clear about that Commandment. When I was a kid, I memorized the words of the old King James Version, 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,' but I never understood them. When I got older, I looked up the verse in the New International Version. There, the translation was 'You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. But if I'm trying to figure out what counts as misusing His name, that doesn't help me."

"I see your problem. But 'You shall not misuse' is a paraphrase rather than a translation, and it's a pretty loose one. What the Hebrew actually forbids is the empty use of God's name. We shouldn't refer to God in ways that are dishonest, contemptuous, hypocritical, blasphemous, light, loose or careless."

"You aren't saying that my friends' 'Holy ———s' and 'Oh my —-s' are all of those things you just said, are you?"

"I wouldn't say that they're all those things — but wouldn't you say they're light, loose and careless?"

"Those things, sure."

"That's my point. The way we speak ought to reflect the way things are. God isn't a light matter, but greater than all we conceive. He isn't to be held loosely, but held onto for dear life. To speak of Him carelessly is to train ourselves to think of Him carelessly. Why should anyone want to train himself like that?"

"When you put it that way," Blue answered, "it does sound pretty stupid. OK, that helps. But look. It only explains part of what bothers me. When I said that my friends have dirty mouths, I wasn't thinking about how they use God's name."

"I know. You were thinking about the incessant repetition of words for sex and for human wastes."

"Right. Tiffany would say that if it bothers me, that's just my middle-class hangup, and I don't see how to answer. After all, the Bible says 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,' but it doesn't say 'Thou shalt not take the words for sex and human wastes in vain.' God is a holy reality. Those things aren't. So what difference does it make how we talk about them?"

"This isn't hard to reason out, Blue, and it's not just a middle-class hangup either. We need to consider the potty profanities and the sexual profanities separately."

"Start with the potty profanities, then."

"Very well. Your friends wouldn't want to smear their bodies with human wastes, would they?

"Of course not. What a repulsive thought."

"If it would be so repulsive to smear their bodies with the stuff, then why isn't it equally repulsive to smear their speech with references to it? Ask them."

"Did you say ask them?"

"Sure. What have you got to lose?"

Blue chose to leave that question unanswered. "What about the other case," he said, "the sexual profanities? Your argument only works for the other kind. After all, sex isn't repulsive!"

"No, it isn't. The problem with incessant sexual profanity isn't that it rubs our noses in something disgusting, but that it demeans something beautiful and lofty. You said a few sentences ago that God is a holy reality, and 'those things' aren't. But holy realities are connected with the sexual union of husband and wife. Paul says "This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church."⁴

"Yeah, I know that passage."

"If we shouldn't engage in 'empty' talk about God Himself, then what makes it right to engage in 'empty' talk about His gifts and graces?"

"I get it now. You're saying that the gift of language shouldn't be used to drag down the gift of marital love. Or, I guess, any gift! Right?"

"Right. Lots of animals make sounds and signs to communicate, but we don't just whimper in pain; we ask about the meaning of suffering. We don't just yowl for a mate; we take vows. We don't just scream in rage; we discuss justice. We don't just greet each other; we wish each other joy. We don't just murmur with pleasure; we laugh and joke about the funny side of life. No other bodily creature has true language. What a privilege! How can we want to pervert it?"

C O F F E E  S H O P

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What do you think of cussing? Is it sometimes OK or not at all?

Join the discussion!

Blue rose to go. "This conversation has helped me, Prof. Thanks."

"You're welcome. I hope you enjoy your courses this semester."

At the door, he turned. "Hey, are you going to write up this conversation for True Glue?

"I don't know," I grinned. "Do you think my editor would call me dirty-minded?"