Does profanity and crude talk make us more relatable and effective in our engagement with

the culture around us?

The question comes in a lot in the inbox, and this time it arrives in the form of an email

from a podcast listener named Eden.

Dear Pastor John, I'm a freshman at a Bible College, and a trend is sweeping the campus.

That is profanity.

I've never been under the impression that it's okay for Christians to cuss, but many students

here justify their language as a means to engage in the world.

Is there a scripture that supports this idea?

Is it okay for a Christian to use crude language to gain the ear of non-Christians?

Pastor John, how would you respond to this trend?

Well, I have three responses.

Number one, this kind of thinking strikes me as being all of a piece with those Christians

today who are voting into office candidates who, in another generation, would have been

called lectures and perverts.

Now, here's the connection.

Issues of moral character, that is, issues of biblical uprightness, are being subordinated

to our own strategies for how to make the world a better place.

Things who put immoral people in office reveal that their strategy prioritizes political

power over the fruits of godliness as a way to make the world a better place.

They prioritize political power over the fruits of godliness, and those who use vulgar

language in order to engage the world in the hope of making it a better place, reveal that

...