“I recognize your accent”

“I don’t have an accent, I’m from Philadelphia!” I had to laugh when I heard this from a young man loudly arguing with another in a dormitory “quadrangle” at Penn State. He sounded just like my cousins from across the river in Jersey. As a Pittsburger, I never thought of myself as having an accent. My parents had accents, much to the amusement of my friends. They were from North Carolina. Every fall, after spending my summers on Roanoke Island and picking up the accent there, I would go back north saying things like “hoi toid” & “doim” (“high tide”, “dime”). -- Even got detention once from my High School Chemistry teacher who thought I was being a wise guy. It eventually wore off until next year. I never thought of myself or other Pittsburgers as having accents until much later, when I learned that “Picksburgers” have their own distinctive vocabulary and accent also. Like most folks, like the guy at Penn State, I guess we all think of our native vocabularies and pronunciations as normal and the speech of “foreigners” as strange and amusing, or interesting and delightful, but at any rate, we are distinguished by our speech. Our vocabularies and pronunciations, our accents, reveal where we come from, even different places we have lived along the way.

It was that way back in Bible times. There is a story of how the Israelites once exposed the true identities of their enemies by a test of accent, asking them to say the word “shibboleth.” The enemies could only say “sibboleth,” and were thus identified. Later, when Peter, the fearful disciple of Jesus, sought to hide himself among a group, a servant girl heard his accent, and correctly identified him as one of Jesus’ disciples from up north, a Galilean, saying “your speech betrays you.” My point: people are recognized by their speech.

I bring this up not only because I love the kingdom of God, with its peculiar accent, but because I love a group of persons who tell me they are citizens of that kingdom also, but whose accents belong to a different kingdom altogether. They are dear friends, who talk about being Christians, but they often talk like non-Christians. Maybe it is because they were used to doing so when they moved to Christ’s kingdom from the kingdom of “the world.” Maybe, they are not aware of how un-Christian they sound. Perhaps, it is because they want to fit in, like I did when I came south from Pittsburgh for summer vacation. I would start out intentionally talking like a Wancheser and by the time I went north it was quite natural for me. My imitation was quite harmless, but the speech of a Christian in the world is very serious, especially when they do it in imitation until it becomes normal. I write these things not only to express my grief at the condition of my young friends, but to give reasons to them to repent of something which is truly contradictory to their Christian testimony.

While its general tone is described as “blessing and not cursing,” “upbuilding,” “truthful,” i.e., the speech that brings glory to God and benefit to man, and while there is considerable latitude in “Christian” speech, there are some words which, without debate, without doubt, are simply inappropriate for the lips of Christian people. Tastes vary, but there are some things which you would absolutely not put into your mouth. You would feel like throwing up rather than doing so. (I could give graphic examples here, but I think the reader can think of his own.) Jesus, on the other hand, told his followers that it is not what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out of him, i.e., his deeds and words. The plain biblical teaching is that what comes out of a man’s mouth is the expression of what is uppermost in his heart. Your words matter because your words are – you – revealed to the world. (Note: the outcome of your words, whether “harmless joke” or life destroying slander, matters, but is not the issue; the issue is what they reveal of about the character of their source.) Now, like all questions of Christian ethics, there is more to being good than not being bad. I mean, a “Christian accent” is a whole lot more than the absence of a few “dirty” words, or even words of falsehood and malice and the expressions of a lost temper. It is more than simply avoiding the forbidden insult “You worthless idiot,” and includes the profuse application of expressions of praise, gratitude, and positive affirmation. Still, when God wants to teach His people to love, He starts with “Thou shalt not kill,” and ends up with, “bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you, do good to them that hate you.” So, beginning with the negative – THERE ARE SOME WORDS YOU DON’T USE IF YOU CARE TO SOUND LIKE A CHRISTIAN.

First, God tells us “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Now, without going into the full biblical exposition of this phrase, I will tell you what it means: “You will reverence God in your heart and never speak of Him in ways that suggest otherwise.” “In vain,” means “without value,” “without meaning.” Most simply, most basically, then, it means that you will not use expressions for your Awesome and Holy Creator and Redeemer like you use words for other “common” worldly things. (Like Mark Twain’s pauper-turned-prince, you will not take and use the “Great Seal of England” to crack open walnuts.) You will not take God’s way of expressing His essence (which is what a name is designed to do), and use it casually. This is the true definition of “profanity” – to thus treat something sacred and special as something common and ordinary. This means that you do not merely not say, “God damn it,” you also do not say “God!” OMG, “Jesus!” “Lord!” (including “My Lord!, Lordy!, etc.) as expressions. Ask yourself, “Am I genuinely praying, praising God from my heart, reverently speaking of God in discourse?” Okay. Fine. That is to take the name of the Lord appropriately. But if you find that you want to defend your usage with, “But I didn’t mean anything by it,” you are doing exactly what the commandment forbids. You must not speak of God in any form of His self-expression except that you do mean a great deal by it. God intends His name to communicate the greatest, most essential, most glorious, most important truth there is, and to use it casually is to rob God, to “diss” God. Furthermore, it creates in your and your hearers mind an idol of God, a false image of a God who does not see, or know, or care that you walk on his name like dirt.

A second class or words you must not carelessly use are “hell” and “damn.” No, these are not as bad as the former, but are inappropriate for similar and related reasons: they treat as mere empty expressions things of the must ultimate seriousness, so to use them un-seriously is to be false. Being a Christian is about being real. It is about 1) facing up to the real, true, God as real, true, truly guilty persons, 2) realizing the reality of His righteous wrath, 3) gazing in wondering love before the cross, where that righteous wrath was borne by a real flesh and blood and eternally divine Savior, and then 4) trusting in, and living genuine lives in a real world for the glory of, that Redeemer. (BTW, the Old Testament word “glory” also emphasizes the heavy reality and seriousness of God.) “Damnation” is God’s perfect, infinite, righteous judgment against sin, either on the cross of His infinite Son, Christ, or for eternity in a condition of non-able-to-be-exaggerated misery in hell for those not believing on and receiving God’s gift. My point: most people throw around terms like “hell” (including “hells bells,” “bat outta hell,” etc.) and “damn” because they don’t believe them, they are nothing to them but words (words with a little “kick,” perhaps). Christians, however, cannot treat these words this way because they are much too solemn. To take them lightly, is to take lightly the love of Christ, who took hell so seriously that to save people from it, He took their hell into His own soul in that damnation which we call “Good Friday.” To treat hell and damnation lightly is, for a genuine Christian, to be dishonest with the world, for it is to give them the impression that these words mean nothing real, when, in fact, they ought never to be uttered without a sense of humility and profound gratitude at the thought of Christ’s cross, or a tear, or a trembling, or a new determination to live for Christ, sharing the gospel. As Paul says, “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.”

Finally, let’s talk sex. As a substitute teacher, one of the most amazing things I witnessed among some professing “Christian” young people, and still witness on Facebook, is the use of “the ‘F’ word” with its many combinations, abbreviations, and non-verbal substitutes like “the finger.” Closely related to this is the frequent, unrestrained use of references to genitals. Of course, I can imagine why it is done: it is a combination of a desire to fit in with one’s godless peers combined with an absence of teaching on the real evil of it. Why is it so very evil? Again, just like the first two, sexual sin in all its forms is an attack on God and a rejection not only of His authority, but of His wisdom and goodness. Why, what makes me say so? Well, there are a number of reasons, the main one being that sex between humans was created by God to be more than a means of mere reproduction. I had started to say it was more than pro-creation, but that actually, subtlety, is more to my point. God created humanity, male and female, with all their sexual equipment and drives to “create,” i.e., to participate with Him, in fellowship with Him, through a covenanted union, reflecting in faithfulness, joy, and all the application of their human powers, in the creation of His greatest creation—humanity in its fullness in union with God in His fullness. To talk of marriage as invented my man for lesser, subordinate purposes, such as the protection of the children, is to come short of the biblically revealed divine purpose. What this means for the purpose of this discussion is that sex is not dirty, it is much too “clean” i.e., “sacred,” “connected to deity” “devoted to the Divine purpose” to be made “common.” No, I’m not unmindful of how “messy” sex can be, but arguing that as it is, as felt and practiced by real, sweaty, flesh and blood men and women as God made them to be, sex is a holy thing. Because God made it as a physical means of men and women representing and expressing the all-consuming, powerful, blissful, whole-personed mutual in-being of oneness and to the death covenanted faithfulness of Christ with His bride, it is, despite all the physical features for which worldly minded men to call it “nasty,” – it is holy. Now, I do not even have to speculate on the unknown origins of “the ‘f’ word” to argue that it is hardly ever used to describe sex as something sacred. It is, at best (!), a cheapening word, fit for the gutter, not for the lips of an ambassador of Christ, which every Christian is, but the great evil of the word is that it participates in fallen man’s profaning and polluting of God’s creation. Human sexuality’s sacredness is the very thing that makes its illicit performance, its performance outside of the covenanted union of marriage, the sin that it is. It is the sacredness of sex that is behind God ordaining its strict protection by modesty in apparel, in behavior, and in speech. Immodesty in speech? What is that? Well, for starters, if you wouldn’t publically expose it physically, don’t expose it verbally. If it is only to be done with a spouse, it should only be talked about with a spouse. And don’t be deceived, sex is strictly protected from abuse in the Bible, where the only “safe” sex is between two married persons. I could, of course, go on and on about the evils of the “sexual revolution,” but, again, my point is that by our speech we show our attitude. The Christian’s right attitude to sex is very different from the non-Christian’s, and, if a man would be identified as a Christian, he must not belie his devotion to Christ by his careless use of sexual speech. That means, at a minimum (!), no innuendo, no dirty jokes, no pleasure in sexually oriented gossip, no fingers on Facebook pictures! Sex should be as good as can be within marriage, but outside marriage, chastity and modesty in speech and behavior must demonstrate our reverence to the Creator.

Let me close this by saying again, Christian speech is not just the avoidance of these few types of “bad words.” It is positive. It is noble, and ennobling, worthy of the ears and approval of Christ. There are many good things which must not be missing if we would have our speech identified as having the “Christian accent.” I have merely attempted here to point out some of the more obvious expressions used by those who display accents of the non-Christian world. May we, with trust in Christ and renewed determination to glorify Him in all ways, pray with the Psalmist, “Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips! (Ps 141:3.)