Another great round of the Questions and Answers series.
What kind of speech ought to be characteristic of a Christian?
Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.” (Colossians 4:6 NASB95)
When answering a question such as this, there are four principles that can come from scripture that are helpful.
- The bible deals with different abuses of language, in a general way, but there is no catalog of prohibited words. Scripture could not possibly provide a list of “forbidden” words, since words come and go.
- No mere assemblage of letters creates an intrinsically evil word. Words become “bad” by virtue of their connotation, motive, etc., and such circumstances can change from time-to-time, or from place to place.
- “Words convey ideas; they are vehicles of communication. It is the idea associated with an expression that can create an evil word pattern.”
- Words become profane when sacred meaning are treated in a common and trivial fashion.