Watch Your Language: Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD
Watch Your Language
We have arrived at a moment in which language is no longer governed by discipline but by appetite. Public speech, once shaped—however imperfectly—by a sense of occasion and proportion, has collapsed into whatever serves the immediacy of the moment. This is not evolution. It is erosion. When speech becomes reactive rather than reflective, it ceases to illuminate and begins to corrode. The issue before us is not stylistic but moral. A culture that cannot govern its words will not long retain the ability to distinguish truth from noise, conviction from performance, or seriousness from spectacle.
Moreover, the degradation of language has not occurred by accident. It has been justified, even celebrated. We are told that bluntness is honesty, that profanity is authenticity, and that restraint is somehow a form of dishonesty. This is a category mistake of the first order. Language without discipline is not more truthful; it is less exact. It substitutes force for clarity and volume for substance. In such a climate, words are no longer instruments of meaning but weapons of effect. When everything is said at full volume, nothing is said with weight.
There is, however, a deeper disorder at work—one that cannot be reduced to cultural critique alone. The theological dimension is unavoidable. When the name of God is invoked within the grammar of threat, contempt, or casual insult, something essential is not merely diminished but profaned. The distinction between the holy and the immediate collapses. God is conscripted into our conflicts rather than confessed as sovereign over them. The Christian tradition has never regarded speech about God as casual. It has insisted—rightly—that such speech demands reverence, precision, and restraint. To abandon that discipline is not merely to speak poorly. It is to speak falsely.
What is perhaps most concerning is how little this now troubles us. Language that would once have shocked now barely registers. However, habituation is not neutrality; it is surrender. The normalization of degraded speech does not make it harmless. It reveals the extent of our accommodation. Standards have not simply shifted; they have been abandoned. If there is to be any recovery, it will not begin with policy or policing but with recognition—the recognition that words form us, that they shape the moral imagination, and that without their careful use, even our most deeply held convictions dissolve into incoherence.
The recent Easter message by Donald Trump serves as a particularly stark illustration. A day that the Church has always understood as ordered toward proclamation, reconciliation, and the astonishment of resurrection was instead made to bear language marked by expletive, grievance, and threat. This is not merely a lapse in tone. It is a failure to recognize that certain moments demand a different register. Easter is not infinitely elastic. It cannot absorb every rhetorical impulse without distortion. To treat it as such is not boldness; it is confusion.
Moreover, the invocation of “Allah” within that same rhetorical frame intensifies the problem. Here the issue is not only coarseness but theological incoherence. To speak of God—by any name—within a context of antagonism and rhetorical aggression is to blur distinctions that both Christian and broader theological traditions have labored carefully to maintain. This is not strength. It is imprecision masquerading as conviction. Words about God are never neutral. They either clarify or they distort. In this case, they do the latter.
If the Church has anything to say in such a moment, it must begin here: language matters. It always has. The Word through whom all things were made is not honored by speech that is careless, coercive, or profane. A Christian response does not require outrage, but it does require clarity. We are not free to speak as we please and then baptize our words after the fact. We are called to speak as those who know that words carry weight—that they reveal what we believe, and more importantly, who and what we worship.
Watch your language. Not because it is polite to do so, or your mother told you to , but because it is faithful.
Yes, language really does matter! Nothing positive ever happens when people are shouting at each other except the deepening of anger and further wounding. Two of my closer relatives like to shout, and I stopped listening long ago. I tune out and try to quiet the noise. They still haven’t realized that the shouting never gets them the results they want except the alienation of the very people with whom they claim they want to communicate.
As for the words of Trump over the weekend, I have a Muslim colleague with whom I frequently share my lunch hour. She was absolutely appalled by Trump’s declaration of “praise Allah.” I told her how horrified I was with the way Paula White compared Trump’s behavior to that of Christ rising from the dead. We both agreed that the denigration of important religious leaders was not the way for a president to communicate. I continue to pray that the irritation of the American public will get more people to see who Trump really is-a shame to the American people.
Profanity used to be a something intelligent people used sparingly to accentuate a point that was so outrageous that something shocking was needed to convey the extent of it.
Now, it is simply , as you say “degraded speech’ that is used repetitively by people with limited vocabularies….as a “right” for illiterate people who don’t have other words…
@ Michael,
Limited vocabularies?
Don’t forget limited intelligence.
And the grand irony?
Those people actually think they’re ‘smart’.
II Timothy 2 puts things in perspective.
To quote Mark Twain, “Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”
That being said, there is an art to profanity and as Michael said, used sparingly and creatively to accentuate a point that was so outrageous that something shocking was needed to convey the extent of it.
Interestingly, the Bible uses rather vulgar, and blatant terms in a few places.
– Where Elijah ask if Ba’al busy pinching a load or taking a wiz to answer his followers’ prayers.
– Where Paul tells the judiazers to go all the way and cut off their own balls.
– Paul counting his former life as literally shit before his conversion as quoted in Philippians 3:8.
“If the Church has anything to say in such a moment, it must begin here: language matters. It always has. The Word through whom all things were made is not honored by speech that is careless, coercive, or profane. A Christian response does not require outrage, but it does require clarity. We are not free to speak as we please and then baptize our words after the fact. We are called to speak as those who know that words carry weight—that they reveal what we believe, and more importantly, who and what we worship.”
Very well said!
I also remember years ago when here on PP the very topic and justification of being crude and coarse was being addressed by the old school posters. Many agreed that crude and coarse language was acceptable and yet the slippery slope always is a part of everything we do.
Life choices, which language are a part of, have consequences.
PS. I was equally disturbed by the “f” word and the Allah reference. Both could be considered insults and foul.
It seems a few these days dominate, justify and continue this coarseness here on PP.
In the good old days (if there were ever such a thing) here on PP the talk was about dogma and quite often life choices of people. Yes there were some pretty spicy people like the Luther guy, but in general it was always about doctrinal and pastoral abuse issues.
These days it seems to be dominated by political hate. What will be the consequences of such talk and behavior?