Faith Works 4-10-2026
Jeff Gill
What the bleep is the problem, [deleted]?
___
Profanity is in the news, and if you don’t know why there’s no point in going there.
What the bleep, man? Why do certain words carry such weight of approval or disapproval?
For religious people, the roots of the question go back to a commandment. Yep, one of the big ten (not that Big Ten). Do not “take the name of God in vain.”
There is a whole deep religion rabbit hole we could go down with the Hebrew four-lettered or “tetragrammaton” symbol of the divine name, where it comes from, what it means, and how you work around using it even while knowing it. But the point is you are not supposed to say it out loud. It has to do with respect, appreciation, and a certain amount of mystery that is beyond us, acknowledged by a faithful avoidance.
Some carry this forward, by the way, to a caution with even the word, or name, “God” and they write it “G-d.” Obviously, I don’t follow that, but I respect the usage in communications as a seminary instructor; you’ll note that while I’m not Jewish, I haven’t and won’t type out the English version of the Hebrew name. It’s a weighty issue for some.
(Then there’s the whole modern, secularist insistence on always putting the name God in lower case, which sometimes gets done to a fault, a stylebook issue I may take up some other day.)
So all of this about being courteous about the name of God, just like you don’t run your mouth and use my mother’s name, right? If you say “Rose” you better be respectful… and not associate such usage with profanity, which is our general point. What is it?
George Carlin made some money, as well as paying out a bit of it, with his "seven words you can’t say” routine in the 1970s. He was eloquent in his own way about the role hypocrisy and inconsistency played in what is profane and what isn’t, and when.
But profanity is most often used for impact; they exist legally in a grey area next to “fighting words,” speech used to provoke. I should note during my brief sojourn in the Marine Corps, profanity was not forbidden to sergeant instructors, but God bless them, they didn’t need it. I heard less profanity in the Marines than I did in [insert almost any institution here]. Now, we heard about maggots, worms, babies, infants, pathetic hopeless cretins, ignorant basket cases, and worthless wastes of space, but very little cursing.
Good sergeants probably knew Mrs. Froberg. One of the great American middle school English teachers, she effectively made the point to her room full of hormone addled teenagers that profanity, in a word, was lazy. Profanity was the sign of a lazy mind. And friends? When Mrs. Froberg said the word “lazy”? It had the impact of a sergeant saying “maggot” at the top of his lungs. You could tell having a lazy mind was close to the lowest form of life imaginable.
Mrs. Froberg was right. (Carve that sentence in granite.) Profanity leaves you nowhere to go. Once you’ve cursed at someone, what do you say next? You can pile up Carlin’s whole list, and then what?
There is always a better way to express yourself, and with that insight, I would say as a minister the problem with profanity, however defined, is one of stewardship. It’s like gambling: you can’t really find a specific argument against it, Biblically, but it is a profound failure of good stewardship, of appreciation and best use of the blessings you’ve been given.
In the same way, swearing is inadequate stewardship of the gift of speech, of reason, of relationship. It’s a short cut that goes nowhere. You should avoid profanity, gosh darn it. It’s a small thing, except when it is not.
Mrs. Froberg says so.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has had many good teachers, of which Mrs. Froberg was one of the finest. Tell him about your memorable teachers at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
What the bleep is the problem, [deleted]?
___
Profanity is in the news, and if you don’t know why there’s no point in going there.
What the bleep, man? Why do certain words carry such weight of approval or disapproval?
For religious people, the roots of the question go back to a commandment. Yep, one of the big ten (not that Big Ten). Do not “take the name of God in vain.”
There is a whole deep religion rabbit hole we could go down with the Hebrew four-lettered or “tetragrammaton” symbol of the divine name, where it comes from, what it means, and how you work around using it even while knowing it. But the point is you are not supposed to say it out loud. It has to do with respect, appreciation, and a certain amount of mystery that is beyond us, acknowledged by a faithful avoidance.
Some carry this forward, by the way, to a caution with even the word, or name, “God” and they write it “G-d.” Obviously, I don’t follow that, but I respect the usage in communications as a seminary instructor; you’ll note that while I’m not Jewish, I haven’t and won’t type out the English version of the Hebrew name. It’s a weighty issue for some.
(Then there’s the whole modern, secularist insistence on always putting the name God in lower case, which sometimes gets done to a fault, a stylebook issue I may take up some other day.)
So all of this about being courteous about the name of God, just like you don’t run your mouth and use my mother’s name, right? If you say “Rose” you better be respectful… and not associate such usage with profanity, which is our general point. What is it?
George Carlin made some money, as well as paying out a bit of it, with his "seven words you can’t say” routine in the 1970s. He was eloquent in his own way about the role hypocrisy and inconsistency played in what is profane and what isn’t, and when.
But profanity is most often used for impact; they exist legally in a grey area next to “fighting words,” speech used to provoke. I should note during my brief sojourn in the Marine Corps, profanity was not forbidden to sergeant instructors, but God bless them, they didn’t need it. I heard less profanity in the Marines than I did in [insert almost any institution here]. Now, we heard about maggots, worms, babies, infants, pathetic hopeless cretins, ignorant basket cases, and worthless wastes of space, but very little cursing.
Good sergeants probably knew Mrs. Froberg. One of the great American middle school English teachers, she effectively made the point to her room full of hormone addled teenagers that profanity, in a word, was lazy. Profanity was the sign of a lazy mind. And friends? When Mrs. Froberg said the word “lazy”? It had the impact of a sergeant saying “maggot” at the top of his lungs. You could tell having a lazy mind was close to the lowest form of life imaginable.
Mrs. Froberg was right. (Carve that sentence in granite.) Profanity leaves you nowhere to go. Once you’ve cursed at someone, what do you say next? You can pile up Carlin’s whole list, and then what?
There is always a better way to express yourself, and with that insight, I would say as a minister the problem with profanity, however defined, is one of stewardship. It’s like gambling: you can’t really find a specific argument against it, Biblically, but it is a profound failure of good stewardship, of appreciation and best use of the blessings you’ve been given.
In the same way, swearing is inadequate stewardship of the gift of speech, of reason, of relationship. It’s a short cut that goes nowhere. You should avoid profanity, gosh darn it. It’s a small thing, except when it is not.
Mrs. Froberg says so.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has had many good teachers, of which Mrs. Froberg was one of the finest. Tell him about your memorable teachers at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
