Swearing people are verbally farting

Swearing people are verbally farting, I explain to my children, and one often gets trapped that way, playing free and easy with God’s name, edging into off-colour jokes unbecoming the tongue of a child of the king (Eph. 5:3-14), lost in a vile, scoffing sort of raping with the mouth, because one has not been faithful in undergirding, developing and norming the semantic quality of one’s communication. If one has poor grammar and no mastery of syntax, no colour to his vocabulary, then one has no control, no depth, no persuasive power to his language. So it’s very tempting to bolster one’s weak talk by pulling in dues ex machine exclamations and by violating different social and ethical norms in order to grab attention, trying to load your speech powerfully enough to gain dominating control of the communicating situation. But it is in vain, because God’s creational order forbids it. The havoc of hate takes place. Dirty and God-damning talk is terribly destructive. But that is not “strong language” any more than rape is passionate love.

-Seerveld, An Obedient Aesthetic Life, 54.