Church and Culture: Language part deux

I think this video is a fitting conclusion in so many ways to part uno.
http://entertainment.todaysbigthing.com/2010/02/23

edit - Warning: Strong Language.

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.

Information vs People

Having spent several years being very critical of the Church here in the states, I'm now realizing that much of what's wrong with the Church is exactly what's wrong with the culture.  It is perfectly reasonable that Americans do church in an American fashion.  It's unfortunate that you get the bad with the good, but it's normal.  So I from time to time may write some criticisms of the Church, but it is my intention here to highlight the bad aspects of our culture, illustrate how they manifest themselves in American ecclesiology, and remind myself and my readers to be more aware of how culture has shaped us.

Modernists place a higher priority on information than on people.  As the church has good reasons to reject post-modern sensibilities, it is also highly modern.  I think the best illustration of this is the advent of denominationalism.  New denominations form by a group of people leaving a denomination because that denomination has its facts about God and the Bible wrong.  In essence, they forsake all of the relationships they had built in order to maintain their loyalty to the correct information.  This point was made clear to me in my Baptist History class.  400 years of petty bickering and parting ways over who was more "right".

We can see this manifest itself in other ways.  The central focus of the Church is a weekly religious lecture.  And the quality of the information of that lecture is considered the most vital element to the health of the church.  Sunday school is another example, stuffing kids away into the corner until they have been sufficiently educated on God to participate with the adults.

The wrong response would be to desire to be in a different church where they did everything correctly.  The right response is to not be so worried about how the church does things, and to invest in people's lives.