5. It's Big And It's Clever

Is swearing big and clever?

  My uncle Richard, slightly tipsy at a New Year party at his house in Coventry once, was waving us off from the festivities, when I think I tripped over the milk bottle on his doorstep, sending it rolling down the drive with that milk bottle sound.  Hanging onto the door-frame, he shouted, "Mind my bloody milk bottles, I haven't got any spares!"  I think it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.  Mind you, I was about nine.



Tipsy Uncle Richard's milk bottle, yesterday.

Swearing makes for funny stories: when I was in Halifax once, working with a church there, a small boy let slip a loud F-word in the street as we were passing.  His mother was eager to apologise for this lapse in front of church people.  She administered a mild rebuke to the boy and said, "I'm sorry about my son swearing, vicar.  I don't know where the f*** he gets it from."



And no doubt swearing - made up of blunt words about sex and out-of-context words about God - is mightily offensive in the wrong company.  I've no problem with it in company that's used to it, but when it's let loose indiscriminately around people who find it hard to stomach, it's thoughtless.  That's exemplified by those French Connection UK abbreviation t-shirts, and by t-shirts which simply have rude messages on them, which should be liable for public order offences.  Maybe we should give people stop-and-seize powers whenever they see a deliberately or thoughtlessly offensive t-shirt?  Ok, just seen where that ends, so maybe not.



Someone very wound up about Christmas* swearing this week was a profanity-checking system, scanning the TV listings for bad language.  Once it had performed its overzealous censoring duties, highlights for the week's viewing included:

• Will Smith in the superhero film Hanc**k
• Never Mind The Buzzc**ks
• A period drama from a book by Charles D**ckens
• A radio show presented by Pulp frontman Jarvis C**ker
• and a football match involving A***nal (although we already knew that was a dirty word)

Jarvis C***er: see how all these blogs are connected?

How brilliant is that?  It's like way back, when AOL banned some people from registering online because they lived in rude-sounding places.  That was not a good time to live in Penistone, Lightwater, Sussex or Essex (or indeed a certain Lincolnshire coastal resort).

A certain Lincolnshire coastal resort, yesterday.




Should we laugh or should we cry?



Christians get very wound up about swearing, as if it were the unforgivable sin, and it proves to be one of those gnats that we strain out, while unknowingly swallowing the camel of buying clothes made in sweat shops and shoring up systems of economy and government that keep on kicking the poor in the teeth.  If smoking, swearing, drinking and chewing gum were the four cardinal sins, we'd be well off. 

Even John Newton, the hymn-writer behind Amazing Grace, penned in his journal that he was a terrible Christian because he couldn't stop swearing.  Trouble was, at that point he was still trading in slaves... and he thought his hippity-hop tongue was his biggest problem!



Spot the Bible verse… go on...

What shall we do?  How do we get to the heart of our real problems of oppressing others, when we're so good at projecting our righteous anger at smaller things?  Have a think and let me know…





*you see, it is a Christmas sermon...