jeremiah in iraq's photostream

tall, hansome, debonair =)

The following is from Calvin Seerveld's "the obedient, aesthetic life":

I explain to my children the evil of swearing by telling them what a blessing it is not to be caught in that habit of empty speech, whether it be the locker room curse or formalistically mouthed prayers – God hates such vain talk and judges it into meaninglessness. Swearing people are verbally farting. And one often gets trapped that way, playing free and easy with God’s name, edging into off-color jokes unbecoming the tongue of a child of the King, lost in a vile, scoffing sort of raping with the mouth, because one has not been faithful in under-girding, developing, and norming the semantic quality of one’s communication. If you have poor grammar and no mastery of syntax, no color to your vocabulary, you have no control, no depth, no persuasive power to your language; so it’s very tempting to bolster one’s speech, speechly weak talk, by pulling in deus ex machina exclamations, and by violating different social and ethical norms in order to grab attention trying to load your speech powerfully enough to gain dominating control of the communicating situation. But it is in vain! Because God’s creational order forbids it! The habit of hate takes place; dirty and God-damning talk is terribly destructive! But that’s not strong language, any more than rape is passionate love.

So when I explain about swearing to my children (without going into the philosophical, aesthetic, theoretical background) I’m not content with them just quoting a Scripture verse banning certain words and saying, “daddy knows best.” Because God is God of our very creaturely speech! And He wants our speech whole! Shalom! So we shall know how rich His blessings are.

If it’s strength of speech we’re after, we ought to encourage learning a second or third language, simply for the exciting worlds of expressions it opens up – and learn ourselves to see the fun of a nuanced vocabulary by deciding during dinner, for example, if a person is good-looking, or lovely; svelt, comely; sultry, hansom; pretty, or just plain beautiful. And how important it is to be sensitive to different audiences, to elders or to peers, for saying the same thing. To be prepared and sure about what you are saying; so that if your discourse is normatively rich and flexible – able to strike home – there’s practically no need for swearing… See, don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that if you don’t speak the king’s English well you are not a good believer. No. I have heard unlettered men, pray in half-broken English and half dialect-Dutch so tellingly to the Lord you felt seared to the bone, and ached to be so clean inside you could be that close to the one they were talking to – so moving direct that no educated man standing behind a chancel could by intoning perfect sentences of impeccable Oxford-occident English ever match it.
Now, I’m not proposing that the aesthetic element inside language should be so emphasized it protrude and Christians walk around quoting poetry, or speaking at lye, or having their coffee-conversation come out Miltonic. I also don’t mean that good speakers never use foul language, or that relatively correct speech indicates a heart right with the Lord – no – but I’m after what God wants – an obedient, aesthetic life response beating, as it were, also within our spoken discourse, called to obey the Lord’s ordinance for that kind of activity.
Scripture itself says, “let your speech be winsome and salty” (Col 4). And it doesn’t mean sprinkled with unctuous platitudes, or “thee’s” and “thou’s” that make 20th century man think God-talk comes out of a 17th century curio shop. Salty, gracious speech means talk that bites gently, is deft, pithy, appropriate – pungently to the point, so that people will listen to the good news you bring.