I want to say cuss words

I don’t play a lot of video games. I think they’re too expensive for what amounts to a day’s worth of enjoyment. But I’m fascinated by the gaming industry and gaming culture. Weirdly enough, I watch a lot of games being played on YouTube because one of my favorite podcasters streams his matches and he's just hilarious to listen to.

In war video games, there’s this concept of the “load-out.” The load-out occurs before the game begins, it’s a menu from which one selects the weapons, armor, and accessories he or she will take to the battlefield.

Will I need my high-powered rifle? my shotgun for close combat? what kind of terrain will I be fighting on? In the load-out, all of these evaluations must be made quickly, and any failure of consideration could spell a player’s doom.

I want to curse. That’s why I’m writing this today. Sometimes I want to say words that would make my mother’s skin crawl. You say, But Josh, you’re an adult man, can’t you curse any time you want? Good question. I guess I could, but just yesterday my mother sent this whole long text in the family chat about not letting corrupting speech come out of our mouths. She cited Ephesians 4:29. I don't need that kind of heat from her! I don’t want to curse all the time. I just want those words in my load-out, should I need them on the battlefield.

This has been a weird week. My week began with a long talk with someone who said he wishes we could still have slaves. I was in South Carolina on a job and I asked some guy about a beautiful old building. As we talked about early 19th century architecture, he moved from the subject of architecture to slaves laying the foundation of the building, then to the civil war.

Then the dude starts railing about how aggressive and repressive the north was and how the "damned Yankees" had to go changing our way of life They couldn’t keep their noses out of "proper southern culture." I shouldn't have gotten involved, I told the guy I couldn't have disagreed with him in stronger terms and I thought he was going to hit me. I would've been in a lot of trouble if I had let slip that I'm from Indiana.

Then through a series of wild unfolding events, I learned a deep dark secret about someone I dearly love and it broke my heart. Then Charlottesville happened and for the rest of the week we heard of the events as they unfolded, the rallying neo-Nazis and alt-right, the counter-protesters being attacked by a hateful radical, the President of the United States failing to just come right out and condemn nazism, instead denouncing violence “on many sides, on many sides.”

At the end of the week, my sister found out that her degree program was dropped by her school. She asked me to help her draft a letter expressing her disappointment in this decision by the school’s administration. She was four months from graduating, now she’ll have to transfer and won’t graduate until next year. And she'll be set back another $1,000 or so. I wanted to thread the letter with a thousand curse words. I wanted to vent all of my anger, release all of the anger I had gathered all week long. Eff you, Eff them, Eff this, Eff that. I can picture some of my church-going readers gasping as they just read that—even though I censored myself. Grow up.

I don’t think it’s fair that our enemies have the full employ of language while good men and women must remain polite. The missionaries, martyrs, ministers, medics, menders, maintainers, musicians, dutiful mayors and magistrates, men and women doing real good in the world on a daily basis. Why must we remain calm, collected, civil, saintly?

When our enemies brandish words like machine guns, why must we load out with water pistols? with kind words? with gentle and encouraging words? with humility? It isn’t fair. I want the full employ of language. I want all the words. I want to use them decisively to strike blows, to “tear down strongholds of thought” as the Apostle Paul said, to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). How am I going to tear down strongholds with polite speech? I want words that have a little poison in them.

I read somewhere, and I love this quote but can’t find who said it, that “Oppressors demand politeness.” I think our Christian culture can be a bit oppressive at times. It can be so stifling when they start telling me how to dress and how to speak, when they make up rules that aren’t found in Scripture.

One time I was told that a baseball cap was disrespectful toward God by a guy wearing a wool cap. I called him on it and he no joke told me that God would say a winter wool hat was fine to wear to church but that baseball caps are a sign of disrespect.

I worked for a church (never again) and one time my boss told me that my open-toed shoes were unacceptable in the sanctuary. Want to know the best part? The very next week, he wore flip-flops to church. I pointed and said, "Nice toes, bro." Yeah I didn't last long there. I don't roll with hypocritical Christians.

One time I was told that God won't honor interracial marriages because you don't see the little red bird mating with the little blue bird to make little purple birds. I've grown up in church. When a church is filled with kind and loving people who have actually read Jesus' words and committed to act on them, the church is a force for incredible good in the world.

But Jesus denounced religious people during his lifetime more than any other group. They can be so oppressive and so hypocritical. And it's the oppressors who wish to control your speech, who demand politeness, who have made a religion out of traditions that never came from the Bible and are so in love with their man-made religion that they neglect to even read the Bible that they're swinging around as they yell.

I’m careful to distinguish between the polite and the Good. The rules from the Right. I think to protect and advance the Good, some of us must become watchmen on the walls of popular thought—prophets—ready to employ the strongest language available to shred through any ideology that invades our Church culture threatens the Good.

I want to be one of those watchmen. Cornelius Van Til talked at length about this idea in Christian Apologetics but I don't have the book nearby to pull a quote. He says some believers are scouts, looking to expand the Kingdom, while others are watchmen defending its walls. And of course the Apostle Peter encouraged us to "always be ready to give a defense" (1 Peter 3:15 I think). If the pen is truly mightier than the sword, then I at least want the sharpest pen available with which to defend the faith.

But Josh, what about killing people with kindness? turning the other cheek? doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with your God? loving thy neighbor as thy self? what about that verse your mom quoted, the one about only speaking words that build others up? what about 1 John 4:7, “Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love"

What about 1 John 1:9, "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness”—what about all that? Well, I guess you’ve got a good point. Maybe in the end it’s more important to be a Martin Luther King, Jr., unwavering in the fight against your enemies without compromising your integrity.

Of course it's best to be like Jesus too, asking forgiveness on behalf of your murderers and oppressors. Maybe Jesus' way of peacemaking is most effective. He did, after all, radically change the world. 2000 years later we're still talking about him. In the end it’s better to be meek, humble, mild, small. In the end, kindness unites us, while a sharp tongue can only divide.

The Bible says that the tongue is a two-edged sword. Somewhere else I think it says the tongue is a man’s own worst enemy—I can’t remember where. It also says that God’s kindness leads men to repentance (Romans 2:4). Not his words, but his kindness.

I don’t think it’s fair that my enemies, the hateful, the angry, the mean, the dividers, the deceivers, and the evil get to make use of a full load-out of words against me. They can say such creatively mean-spirited things. Who really wins in the end? If Jesus' words in Matthew 5 are to be believed, I think the peacemakers will win in the end.

So I’ll keep biting my tongue, I guess.