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A prayer against crude humor by Meg Bucker, read by Kelly Givens.

Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking which are out of place but instead let there be

Thanksgiving. Ephesians 5. 4. A Harlequin is not a clown I explained as my daughter prepared to dance her first solo in that character.

There is a big difference between a circus clown and a muted harlequin.

My deep thinker latched onto her character in no time as we did a little homework and talked

about how it relates to life on her level. The difference between a meaningful expression of

words and obnoxiously vented banter is huge.

In Ephesians 5.4, Paul warns against filthiness in our speech, foolish talk, and crude joking.

Profanity, mockery, and ill-intended sarcasm are not the end-all, be-all of bad behavior,

nor the crown jewel of good behavior for those who refrain.

But let's be honest, there's nothing eloquent about a potty mouth, and the fact that

it's specifically addressed in scripture leads us to believe it was a specific problem at the date of authorship to.

The voice paraphrase tells us, don't make harsh jokes or clown around. This isn't

instructing us to be boring drones who never crack up about how funny life is.

It's the crude humor, the type spoken at the expense of others or in self-promotion that God is directly addressing.

Whether saying it on social media or to another person's face, we are called to choose our words wisely.

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