“What about swearing?”

Steve Brown:
What about swearing? We’re going to answer that question and others, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase, and worship. So, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Hey Pete.

Matthew Porter:
I’ve got to be, well, I’ve got to watch my language right now.

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
You know.

Steve Brown:
I know, you can’t. And that includes, well, we’ll get to it when we get to it. But that swearing, I guess, is swearing to tell the truth in court. And then swear words is another subject.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And we will, given our prowess intellectually, our wisdom and the depth of the years of study, we will answer both of those adequately. And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. That’s Pete Alwinson, you’ve got to go to ForgeTruth.com and by the way, there’s a great podcast and you ought to be a part of it that Forge puts on, is that a weekly.

Pete Alwinson:
A weekly deal ForgeTruth yeah.

Steve Brown:
And they can get it by going to ForgeTruth.com

Pete Alwinson:
ForgeTruth.com

Steve Brown:
Check it out. You’ll be glad you did. As you know, Pete comes in and we answer questions on Friday. And we love to get your questions. You can send a question to

Key Life Network
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if you live in Canada, it’s

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you can e-mail [email protected] or if it’s convenient for you, anytime, any place, pick up the phone and dial 1-800-KEY-LIFE follow instructions, ask your question, and sometimes we put your voice on the air. And if you can help us financially, please do, this is an expensive ministry and the bills are paid today, but I worry about tomorrow. So help us if you can, I promise we’ll be faithful. We’re a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. Both of those organizations oversee financial giving in organizations like ours. And assure you that we’re ethical with the handling of your gifts. So, help us if you can, if you can’t, we understand. Do pray for us. I would appreciate your prayers. But I’d rather have your money. No, that’s a joke. We would appreciate your prayers. Hey Pete, pray for us and especially for me, and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
After that comment. We need to pray. All right, let’s pray. Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you that we belong to you. Thank you. Thank you that in every way, shape, and form, you have done everything necessary to draw us into a relationship with you. And Lord, thank you for the joy that brings, and thank you that we can take ourselves not seriously, you very seriously, and that we can love other people, that we can be more patient and kind. And Lord Jesus, thank you that we can laugh, the laughter of the redeemed and we just give you praise. We look forward to experiencing more of that presence, a little bit of heaven on earth as we come to worship this week-end. And so, we do pray for our leaders that they would prepare messages and finalize what they’re going to lead us to sing, of Scripture that is to be read. Lord, we pray for them. Fill them with your Spirit and use them in a powerful way to draw us one step closer to Jesus because of your grace. And so, we commit this time to you of Q&A, and Lord, thank you for the questions of our listeners. Thank you that they are thinking people and we ask that Lord, you would use this time to strengthen their faith. Lord, we pray in Jesus’ strong name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I was talking with a young Christian who said he carried Jesus in his heart all the time, and suddenly he swore violently. And I said, God doesn’t want you to do that. I didn’t know how to deal with a Christian who swears.

Steve Brown:
Well, man I, you know, I’d have to eliminate about three fourths of my friends, I think. But I understand, there’s some things that when they happen, seem so contrary to the Spirit of Christ, that it causes you to wince. But you’ve got to be careful too because it’s a more complicated matter than we generally think. First, words change over generations. You know, there was a time when g wiz was a very bad word, or gosh a very bad word. And when people say it today, it doesn’t mean a thing, and they never think you’re swearing. And cuss words change too. And if you look at Scripture, some very strong words are used in Scripture. In fact in a couple of places they have to be softened in the English cause they’re too harsh for our tender ears. So, you’ve got to be careful cause what is a swear word to one person may not be a swear word to somebody else. When you get to taking the Lord’s name in vain, absolutely, that fits. There’s no question about that sort of thing. R.C. Sproul said words you can’t use that refer to bodily functions or bodily actions that those shouldn’t be used by Christians, but you know, sometimes things are so bad, that mercy tea cups is just not strong enough. So, yeah, I understand what you’re saying. I don’t, I don’t, I think maybe if you feel, if this is a good enough friend for you to say that to, you can say, I’d rather you didn’t do that, that bothers me, but if you do, I’m going to love you anyway. Or something like that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. That’s a practical way to deal with it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it is. But most of the time, Man, you can hardly go any place in our culture that you don’t hear swearing. You’d have to burn your television, turn off your radio, and never speak to anybody other than your wife. And she’s not that safe sometimes.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, I would say another practical way to deal with it, I like what you said. If this is a brand new Christian, you can expect them to cuss, generally speaking. If you’re closer to this person, you might say, Hey, you know, could we talk about that? What you just did. Could we talk about that? I don’t think that our job is to go around cleaning up everybody’s language, you know? I loved it when I was a pastor in New England and the guys in the car shop, the mechanic was, came to my church. But his buddies all popped in and were sitting around cussing up a storm. We were just talking and one of them says, turns to me and says, what are you doing? I said, I’m Joe’s pastor.

And they just, you know, they’re used to priests and not cussing in front of priests and stuff, and so it freaked them out, but you know, people cuss. And we’re not there to micromanage everybody’s sin.

Steve Brown:
I agree.

Pete Alwinson:
But if it’s a new Christian, we could talk about language.

Steve Brown:
Language is important.

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
But you know, you can take this principle and begin to apply it in so many ways. Are you offended by a fat Christian, are you offended by a Christian who is a cheap skate and won’t help people that need to be helped. Are you offended by Christians who don’t care for the poor. Are you offended by Christians who are racist and you can go on and on and on. And if you start going down that road, you end up being everybody’s mother and you’re not called to be that.

Pete Alwinson:
That is right. And we’re so easily offended. And really, the point about cussing is not, am I offended, but what is, how is God offended or not glorified. And how is that person in their spiritual life needing to grow and how can they grow? We’re so, that offends me, is not, we’re too easily offended.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. We really are. We live in a canceled culture. And listen, Christians have had a canceled culture for years before pagans thought about it, so we have to be, and then there’s the other issue that I thought when Jeremy, our producer, told us what this question was going to be about swearing. And we hadn’t heard the question, so I just assumed it might include swearing in a court of law. There are those Christians who refuse to swear on the Bible. I think that ought to be respected. If that bothers them to do that, they can affirm and that will be fine. But I don’t see anything wrong with swearing with your hand on the Bible either, for the president or for a witness in a courtroom.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. We take oaths when we get married, when we do very important things.

Steve Brown:
Okay. This is an interesting question. Why did God make Adam sleep deeply so he could make a woman? There was no pain involved because there was no sin.

Pete Alwinson:
Ah. Now that, I don’t know if we got this question before, but that’s a huge assumption that there was no pain

Steve Brown:
yeah, that’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
before the Fall. So, it’s an assumption and he’s reading into the text. We know about childbirth, for instance, that after sin did happen, it said the woman’s pain in childbirth would be increased. So, there apparently was always going to be some pain in childbirth. Maybe if nothing else to mark the moment. Pain does mark a moment.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it really does. And that’s where God speaks, C.S. Lewis, that’s his megaphone in our pain. But you’re right, the question, and we almost missed it, the question presupposes that pain and sin are the same thing. They’re not always.

Pete Alwinson:
Not always. That’s right. So when, when you get a tooth fixed, you know, there’s, I mean, it’s.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, right. And if you were Adam and had a tooth fixed, it’d probably hurt a little bit.

Pete Alwinson:
It probably hurt a little.

Steve Brown:
Just not as much.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And then of course, assuming the assumption is cruel sin in pain. Then there’s another reason that God put him to sleep

cause he wanted to surprise Adam. He wanted to wake up and say, I’ve got a surprise for you and Adam. And it’s not in the text, but I know that’s what he said. Wow.

Pete Alwinson:
There you go.

Steve Brown:
What a great gift that you have given me.

Pete Alwinson:
There it is.

Steve Brown:
How does God use evil men and women to advance his will in the world?

Pete Alwinson:
Boy, he does the fact of the matter is that he does, how specifically does that happen? Perhaps it’s, one way is in judging other people or in bringing the demise of other people.

Steve Brown:
And also evil manifests itself of eventually and becomes the illustration of the truth of God. And so, in that way, but sometimes God uses evil rulers to work his way in the world and history is his story. Well, you going to come back next week?

Pete Alwinson:
If you’re here.

Steve Brown:
Okay. I’ll come if you’re here.

Pete Alwinson:
All right.

Steve Brown:
You do it. I’ll do it. Guys, before we go. Key Life is a listener production of Key Life Network.