Coarse and crude language must have been in vogue in the Apostle Paul’s day for him to address Christians in two different locations not to resort to such language or speech, as was common to the pagans. We may never allow such words to depart from our lips, but let’s not let such words depart from our clicks on social media or anywhere else either.  God’s standard of holiness is the same for both oral and written language.

Who is not aware of the increasing coarseness of language today?  Words once considered the most obscene or even blasphemous were censored from newspapers, magazines, articles, movies, and TV programs. Today, such words have become prolific not only in everyday speech, but also in the media.
Recently, an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “Curses! Why All the Crude Talk?” It was written by Peter Funt, the son of Allen Funt of the original Candid Camera TV program.  In it he makes some amazing and striking statements.  Bear in mind the article is not religious in nature.
Here are some of those statements: “When friends or colleagues use the F-word as matter-of-factly as my parents said ‘gosh’ or ‘golly,’ it makes me cringe—but I seem to be part of a bleeping minority.”  Here is another: “Science has actually given a name to the benefits of swearing: lalochezia. It refers to the emotional relief gained from using profane speech. As far as I know, however, there is no term for the discomfort that many of us suffer when friends and colleagues pepper conversation with words that seem to relate more to their quest for social liberation than to communication.”
He even mentions national leaders openly using such language: “As vice president, Joe Biden famously used the F-word when congratulating President Obama on completing the 2010 healthcare legislation. Mr. Obama’s 2016 appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner included a video in which he jokingly says ‘F— you!’ to NBC’s Chuck Todd. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Mr. Obama conceded, ‘I curse more than I should, and I find myself cursing more in this office than I had in my previous life.’  Politico has reported that President Biden swears frequently in staff meetings, favoring the F-word.”
I am in a book club where the women are all Christians.  We read one book where on one page and in the same chapter that infamous word noted above was profusely mentioned more times than was needed.  It turned many of us off to be confronted with such obscene or profane language profusely.
As this is written to Christians in particular, am I implying I also hear Christians using such language?  Thankfully, no, I don’t.  But that doesn’t mean such language escapes us in a more subtle manner.  Most of us are involved in social media in some form.  Perhaps it’s Facebook or Twitter.  Those are the two I am most familiar with although I am on Facebook solely.  And that is where I have observed something that perhaps few have addressed.
This is what I am finding more often than I wish to see.  People post memes, that is, “an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.”  Some aren’t humorous, but rather wise or thoughtful sayings.  That in itself is fine, but more and more they may include an introduction with the F-word or some other thoughtless or coarse language.
What is sad to me is that Christians are posting such memes, apparently not aware of the language or oblivious to it.  I have decided to never post or repost anything that contains such language.  My decision is based on two biblical passages addressed to Christians in the epistles.  One is “. . . and there must be no filthiness or foolish talk, or vulgar joking, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks”  (Ephesians 5: 4). The other is “But now you also, rid yourselves of all of them: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene speech from your mouth”  (Colossians 3: 8).
Coarse and crude language must have been in vogue in the Apostle Paul’s day for him to address Christians in two different locations not to resort to such language or speech, as was common to the pagans.
We may never allow such words to depart from our lips, but let’s not let such words depart from our clicks on social media or anywhere else either.  God’s standard of holiness is the same for both oral and written language.  We certainly do not wish to offend our God, do we?  Nor should we wish to offend and cause discomfort, as Mr. Funt noted, to those who read what we send.
It may help us to always remember these words: “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart always be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer”  (Psalm 19: 14).
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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If there is no one to endow human rights, how can everyone be expected to honor them? There remains widespread agreement that genocide, terrorism, and slavery are wrong, but by what authority will we continue to agree? Glenn Scrivener offered the best answer to these questions. “Rights indeed belong to all,” he says, “—that’s the nature of them. But they’ve also come from somewhere particular.” The source is not just any God, but the God Who specifically became man in Jesus Christ, forever ennobling human nature and sparking the Christian revolution that would shape the West and inspire this declaration, that all are “created equal.” 

In a TEDX talk years ago, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari made the startling claim that human rights do not exist.  
[H]uman rights are just like heaven and like God: It’s just a fictional story that we’ve invented and spread around. … It is not a biological reality, just as jellyfish and woodpeckers and ostriches have no rights, Homo sapiens have no rights. … Take a human, cut him open, look inside—you find their blood, and you find the heart and lungs and kidneys, but you don’t find there any rights. The only place you find rights is in the fictional stories that humans have invented and spread around. 
Last week, Harari’s talk resurfaced on the site formerly known as Twitter and sparked a lively debate among Tom Holland, author of Dominion; Glen Scrivener, an Anglican priest and author of The Air We Breathe; and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who wrote 12 Rules for Life.  Scrivener took issue with Harari’s materialism and called his remarks about human rights “nonsense.” Rights are indeed faith-based, he said, but that doesn’t make them any less real.  
Tom Holland, who is not a Christian, responded that while he believes in human rights, they are not self-evident. Rather, they require an act of subjective belief. “Human rights have no more objective reality than, say, the Trinity,” wrote Holland. “Both derive from the workings of Christian theology; and both, if they are to be believed in, require people to make a leap of faith.”   
Jordan Peterson disagreed, and responded in somewhat jumbled psychological lingo that rights are somehow “built into the structure of human being[s]” and are therefore “[n]ot arbitrary at all.” Holland shot back that if rights really are somehow “built into” reality, it’s awfully strange that the concept of human rights only emerged around the twelfth century in a specifically Christian and Western political context. 
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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
When the church is paganized there is no need for walls or gates in the city of God. Then the church doesn’t need to worry about singing the Lord’s song—it can sing the songs of the pagan culture because there is no longer a strange and foreign land.

In exile the people of Israel faced the question: “How do you sing the Lord’s song in a strange and foreign land?” The question is similar to that faced by contemporary American Christians. Ours is a spiritual exile as we confront a culture and government increasingly hostile to Christianity.
We look to Nehemiah for clues to guide our own pilgrimage in difficult times. Nehemiah was grief-stricken by the news of the condition of Jerusalem. The walls were broken down and its gates burned with fire. His first emotion over the sad loss of his heritage was grief. It was not bitterness or anger. Nehemiah wept and mourned as Jesus would later weep over the same city.
In his grief, Nehemiah moved to the next step, prayer and fasting. His prayer was first of all a prayer of adoration for the majestic awe of God and for His faithfulness to His people: “O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments.”
Even in exile, Nehemiah praised God for His covenant faithfulness. Then the focus of his prayer turned to repentance, pleading with God to forgive the sins of his own people, acknowledging that they had brought exile upon themselves.
Nehemiah was a cup-bearer to the king. He served in a pagan government as a believer in God. His vocation was that of a servant. He was humble and respectful to the king, but proper fear of his king did not stop him from acting to save his people. He prayed to God and made a request of the king, asking for permission to go to Jerusalem to rebuild it. He also asked for letters that he might present to lesser governors for safe conduct and even a grant for building materials.
Not all the pagan governors were sanguine toward Nehemiah and his plans. Indeed, some were fiercely resistant to them. When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard of it, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel (Neh. 2:10). But there is nothing unusual about this as it is a common pagan reaction to the mission of the church in any age.
When Nehemiah set about the task of rebuilding his enemies laughed at him and despised him. Nehemiah, though, did not let his critics determine his agenda. He was polite but firm in his response to them.
When Nehemiah’s pagan enemies received word that he had rebuilt the walls (but the doors were not yet hung on the gates), they invited him to meet with them in a special “audience.” Nehemiah had no time for this sort of thing, knowing the plans of the enemy were evil. He replied to Sanballat and his cronies, “Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?” Sanballat then sent an open letter accusing Nehemiah of a seditious attempt to become a king and other false charges. Nehemiah sent back a message denying the allegations, noting that the charges were but a thinly veiled form of intimidation.
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