Gosh darn it!

(This week, we're featuring a "guest blogger"--a friend who has been both that and a brother in the Lord for 40 years.  Yes, 40.)

That's not the original title.  It was euphemized for "Christian" acceptance.  But, isn't that just what we do--change the verbage (but not the meaning) to meet the current ethic of the situation?  

We know and sing David's plea in Psalm 19:14, "Let the Words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer."  Do we forget that's an exhortation to us, too?  

In Philippians 2:14-15, we're told to "Do all things without grumbling or disputing; that you may prove yourselves to be children of God in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights of the world.."  That certainly encompasses "cussing." 

Whether you use good old Anglo-Saxon expletives or choose some more acceptable toned-down alternative, the intent and purpose remain the same.  "Oh Fudge!"  "Don't be such a poop(head)," and the ubiquitous "Get your freakin' hands out of there!" are a few that come to mind.  

Exchanging dictionary and medical terms as well as translating to another language are no more than poor end-run attempts to finesse that "blameless" thing.  We may feel cute and intellectually superior to substitute "fornicate" in front of a pronoun like it or you, but everyone knows what was meant.  So does God.  Like my friend and brother in Christ, Whitt McKinney, says, "God never guesses. He only knows!"  If it was meant as a curse, that's what it is.  ("I'm pooped" is a  different story.)

God made speech a creative force.  He said "Let there be light", and it became!  

We are told we are made in His image, and, as born-again Christians under the power of the infinite Creator, whatever we ask of Him, He will do!  With faith as minute as a mustard seed, Jesus said we could command mountains to move and they would go bouncing off to the sea.  By His grace and Holy Spirit our words can command demons and heal the sick.  You know,  just like Jesus did because He is now in us and gave us His creative power?  Why then do we go around asking Him to vaporize or plague just about everything and anyone annoying us?  

Dang it!  Are we out of our Philippian minds?

Like Paul confessed, I am chief among the sinners here, but probably not alone.  Imagine what would happen if God honored that offhand request, no matter how much we "didn't really mean it"?  For prime examples of what happens when He does damn something or someone, look no further than Genesis 7-12 at the plagues God visited upon Egypt, or, my favorite, what He did in Genesis 19:1-26 to Sodom and Gomorrah (and Lot's wife -- we are told to remember her).  Salt anyone? (Better put some light with it!)

There's much more to come as foretold in John's Revelation.  Knowing He desires to spare all who will come to Him all that hellfire, pain, and misery--that not one would perish--is it too much to expect us to watch what we're saying, considering the power of it?

Yes, the tongue is the most unruly member of the body, but we must tame it!  Not just for our witness to the world, but for own walk.  By cursing or damning something while not expecting biblical results, might we be getting dangerously close to Mark 3:29, blaspheming the Holy Spirit?  God forbid!  

In James 3:5-6, we're told ; "So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things.  Behold, how great a forest fire is set aflame by such a small fire!  And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our entire life, and is set on fire by hell."

Oh, that Dave, he's so goofy and light-hearted!  Thanks for sharing, brother.

Here's another point of view, from our young friends at Blimey Cow: