Church and Culture: Language

I've always found the phenomenon of "swear" words interesting.  There's nothing particularly wrong about the words themselves.  For instance, neither the culture nor the church has any qualms with calling a donkey an ass.  So it's not a quality of the spelling/pronunciation that causes the word to fall into the category of "swear" word.  Likewise, "poop," "crap," and "shit" carry the same exact semantic domain (for all intents and purposes) whether used as a noun, adjective, interjection, etc.  It's not like poop is less stinky than crap.  So it's not the meaning of the word that makes it taboo.  So why can't Christians go around saying, "Damn! That ass's ass smells like shit!"?

Because for some odd reason, the culture has taken certain words tied to certain semantic domains and labeled them as taboo.  And people who say and do taboo things are assumed to have a certain kind of character.  As Christians, as those who claim to have something of the character of Christ, when we say/do taboo things, the culture associates that certain kind of character with the character of Christ.  There's nothing particularly sinful about the words themselves.  So as Christians, don't swear.  You make Christ look bad when you do.  As Christians, don't get your panties in a wad over those who do swear, or over movies/music/etc that contain swear words.  You make Christ look bad, and proclaim Him as law-giver rather than Savior.