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In the year 1965, when I was 13, I came back to the changing room after sport one day to discover that someone had been in my locker!

I obviously thought this was a deliberate, targeted attack, so I let out an exclamation, ‘Oh hell!’ in the hearing of my classmates who were coming through the door.

However, a school prefect was walking by outside at that very moment and heard my expletive. That four-letter word was considered, quite rightly in my view, to be swearing. I don’t recall using it ever again, and I had not used it before this incident either. It was my first offence!

I was sent to the prefect’s room where the Year 11 and 12s congregated for break and lunch. I was positioned at one corner of the room, head to the corner, hands on knees. The prefect who heard my expletive, took his stand at the opposite corner of the room. Armed with a gym shoe, he then ran up to me and delivered a resounding blow to my backside.

It was just the one stroke; I believe that was the maximum penalty they were allowed to deliver without teacher supervision. More serious infringements were reported to staff, who could give more severe penalties, ensuring that the punishment fit the crime.

Attitudes to profanities, expletives and taking the Lord’s name in vain

How the world has changed in 60 years! I don’t know anyone today who has a fully positive attitude towards corporal punishment. Some may still use it, in private, but society makes even them feel guilty. They are made to feel that they can no longer make the responsible call, between loving correction and child abuse.

As time has gone by, more and more expletives are now accepted. Now, there seems to be only one four-letter word, beeped out, visually and audibly. But this word is on the everyday lips of children in public and on the lips of our leaders everywhere.

We rationalise. It’s only words; at least they are letting out their frustration without hurting anyone. We can’t imagine what stress they are under. We would not like to live in their shoes.

Today, the expletive (a word or phrase used to fill out a sentence or a line of verse without adding to the sense) that concerns me the most is the one abbreviated to ‘OMG!’

Often, it is on the lips of non-Christians, which is so ironic! Imagine the same demographic calling out, ‘OMA!’ It’s almost an acknowledgement that ‘our God’ is the only one that’s still alive!

But what challenges me is the Christians’ use of ‘OMG’, or its so-called sanitised version.

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth,
but that which is good to the use of edifying,
that it may minister grace unto the hearers. (Ephesians 4:29)

The Tide has Gone Out

You will come back at me and say — don’t be so prudish, it’s only words, don’t be so intolerant, so critical, and so judgmental.

Yes, it is only words, but let’s take a long view of society.

Back in the 1960s, in the Western world, the Judeo-Christian worldview was the bedrock of society. Everyone knew right from wrong based on that measure. Family values were built on those values. Respect and tolerance were expected and demonstrated everywhere.

Gradually, so gradually, those values were let go. The judgemental face of Christianity, quite rightly, drew the wroth of progressive, open-minded souls. They missed ‘grace’. They only saw ‘works’ and their inability to be ‘good enough’ for God. So, Christianity became seen as evil, and had to go. The tide started to go out for Christianity and has not stopped.

We now have a society underpinned by the Woke religion.

For hundreds of years, the word remained unwaveringly related to the verb ‘awake’. But in the 1960s, that shifted when woke evolved into an adjective — mostly used in African American English, according to Merriam-Webster—to mean “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues — especially issues of racial and social justice.” (When did woke become a four-letter word? 2024)

I find it insulting to suggest that Judeo-Christian values did not seek to address ‘issues of racial and social justice’. Think of all the schooling systems started by Christians and all the free healthcare delivered by Christians.

Back to three-or four-letter words. Since the Judeo-Christian tide has retreated, we have all had to be come ‘tolerant’ of ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’. Even when the diversity or difference is simply ‘wrong’. With the tide gone out, we are no longer ‘comfortable’ in taking a stand for what is right and what is wrong.

What Can We Do?

So far, I have been rather depressing! Sorry. I have been fortunate enough to live long enough to have seen the changes and to watch the tide retreat. Society today largely does not have this perspective.

But let me finish with a positive. Let’s not throw up our hands in despair and exclaim – ‘it is what it is!’

I will finish with another story.

Early in my teaching career, I was a house tutor in a boarding house in a boarding school. I was under the authority of the house master, responsible for the students when he was not present.

Well, my housemaster became a born-again Christian during this time. But he was not aware of the derivation of the expletive ‘b—–!’, namely ‘by the blood of the Lamb!’

With much trepidation, I approached him and pointed this out. He thanked me most sincerely and, from then on, began to watch his mouth, and not just when I was around.

A few years later, he resigned from his teaching career, followed his calling, and became the pastor of my church!

I am not claiming my intervention had anything to do with his calling, far from it. I am simply saying that taking a stand can change someone’s life for good. Each of us can hold back the tide for someone.

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

A challenging scripture from Jesus, with most of us getting stuck on the first sentence — Do not judge, or you too will be judged! But look at what Jesus went on to say — then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye!

I am convinced that, in the body of Christ, Jesus most assuredly wants us to function as family. He wants us to have an honest assessment of ourselves, yes, but then to lovingly correct our brother and sister when the opportunity arises. Mutual accountability, discipleship and various other descriptors of the activity of a healthy, God-fearing community.

Let’s recognise that the pillars of society have fallen and been thoroughly demolished, but let’s build them up again in our own churches, communities and families.

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Image courtesy of Adobe.