Christians Who Curse: Why I Do It, When I Won’t

Okay, friends, let’s gather round. We need to have a chat. I’m from Jersey, so I deal straight up, and I invite you to do the same. Let’s talk about the fact that I curse and the tiny little hubbub it caused on this post. Stick with me — you may be a little surprised at where I go with this.

Okay, let’s start with the expected: yeah, I curse. No, I’m probably not going to stop. I won’t curse in this post, though, so keep reading, okay?

I’ve tried stopping numerous times. I really have. And always within about twenty seconds of promising myself and God that I would stop cursing, inevitably something would cause a string of expletives to come out of my mouth like Niagra Falls. It was frustrating and yet another way that I could call myself a failure.

It made me nervous around Christians, and that made me nervous around God. I mean, I was obviously a complete screw-up, and how could I ever participate in the work of God’s kingdom if I keep screwing up by cursing?  (Please don’t tell me you consider “screw up” a curse word, because then I just give up. I use crap as a substitute for another word, which I won’t say here, and when I discovered many Christians consider crap a curse word, I knew I was in trouble.)

Anyway.

Then something really weird happened: I experienced a God who loves me not just despite my cursing, but even in my cursing. Now, don’t get your panties in a bunch — I’m not saying God is giving me the nod of approval over my swearwords. I’m just saying that God loves me wholly and fully and completely, sin and all. And God loves you that way, too.

And listen — for every complaint I get about the cursing, I get probably 5 more comments on pieces in which I curse that say, “Thank you for your honesty, I never knew a Christian I could relate to,” or something similar. These same people are the ones who say things to me like, “I never knew Jesus was so cool,” or “I want to read the Bible now because of how you write about your faith.”

Friend, and please know I don’t mean any offense here, but if someone will read the Bible or get to know Jesus because I’ve made them feel comfortable by cursing, that’s worth it to me. It’s worth making you a little angry or uncomfortable. But something tells me you get that. Something tells me that even though you disapprove of me and my language, you love the idea of people getting to know Jesus, because he SO FREAKING AMAZING, right? (PLEASE TELL ME FREAKING DOES NOT COUNT!!!!)

The other thing I want you to know is that writing, for me, is cathartic. I would do it even if no one ever read this blog (in fact, that’s pretty much how I blogged for years — all by my lonely.).  Writing is something my soul needs to do, and I need to be able to be entirely authentic and honest when I do it.

I do claim this as my space, and just like I would not step on stage at your church and let loose, so I hope I can ask the same of you — that you’ll enter this space respecting that it is the space of my creativity, and while it may not always be pretty, it will be authentic and real.

Maybe you know this or maybe you don’t, but it can be scary on this side, because you can be ferocious sometimes, collectively. Sometimes, your comments can hurt. I am far from perfect. Most of the time I’m a pretty big mess who is just trying to love the people we’re all so good at marginalizing, at making other. I’m just trying to love people like Jesus loved people, and sometimes that gets really unruly, and I get all these emotions and they come out as curse words.

I’m humbly asking you to open your heart to me, to love me like Jesus loves me, with your whole messy heart and my whole messy heart. How about I promise not to roll my eyes at you and tell you you’re a little tiny bit uptight and maybe should get over it, and you don’t lecture me in the comments like you’re my father and I’m ten years old. Because honestly, both of those things are totally not loving, even if it’s what we both want to respectively do.

But now I’m going to tell you that maybe you’re a little right, too.

I tread carefully here, because there were some very condescending comments on the post — comments that sounded a teeny bit Pharisaical to me. I do think that some of you maybe focused one word I used instead of the full meaning of the post, and that, I think, was a cop out.  To say you hang out with “the right Jesus” implies others hang out with “the wrong one.” Maybe Jesus never cursed, but I really doubt that the tax collectors and prostitutes and drunks he hung around with were all that pure in thought and language.

The point is, Jesus hung out with them anyway.

And if we’re going to be scared of a few curse words, we’re going to be living a pretty sterile brand of Christianity, one that stays far away from the real-life dirt and grime that covers most of the world that needs him.

But I also hear you when you say that because of that one word, you felt you couldn’t forward it to your friends. And maybe your friends are exactly the kind of people who need to read that post. Without the curse word. It’s inhospitable of me to not remember that.

That means something to me — because if one person is changed, if one person learns to love gay people, for example, because of something that I write, well, that’s more important than me indulging my seemingly inescapable urge to curse, and my creative drive that says sometimes a well-placed F-bomb is exactly what a piece needs. (Because that actually does happen.)

So here is my offer. You keep coming back. You keep reading, with a desire to understand my heart, knowing that maybe sometimes, I’ll let loose. You agree to love me even though I am obviously a person who has serious issues because of that language and I am different from you and totally imperfect and sometimes I curse and sometimes I am snarky (after all, the tagline does say, “Faith. With Attitude.”).  You agree to give me the benefit of the doubt in spite of me, and to try not to lecture me in the comments. If I do curse in a piece that you think a friend might need to read, I challenge you to love me — and your friend — enough to say, “Hey, I don’t agree with some of her language, but I thought you might like the spirit of this piece,” because maybe they need to learn how to love people who curse, too.

And I promise not to automatically think you’re just too uptight. I promise to try to be more respectful in my language, especially when I’m writing about bigger issues that might be highly shareable. I hear you, and I’ll try to do better. I’ll try to love you even though I think — with love — that you’re a little weird for not cursing, and that you are different from me, and that you are imperfect and a little condescending. I agree to give you the benefit of the doubt, and to not roll my eyes when you lecture me in the comments. I commit to really trying to hear your heart, and more importantly, to respect your heart. I promise I’ll try to do better.

Please know I’m really not sure I can stop cursing. In fact, I probably won’t. But I’ll try to do better, if you will.