What Does the Bible Say About Using Profanity?

The Bible warns against profanity.

Profanity has come a long way, from the mildest outbursts to all the heavyweight curses being uttered on prime time TV programs and movies. For committed Christians, these developments are not so pleasing, and many wonder how users should be confronted. As even a casual reading of the Bible should demonstrate, the implications of not challenging profanity are spelled out clearly enough. Regardless of their usage and context in contemporary culture, profanity remains strictly off-limits to the Christian believer.

Significance

By implication, profanity is the treatment of the sacred with contempt, often expressed with blasphemous or sexually transgressive terms. In fact, the term "profanity" itself derives from Biblical terminology for "outside of the temple." Christians understand anger as the major fuel behind profanity, with sin as its bedrock; therefore, it is something to avoid, as 1 Timothy: 2 makes clear enough: "O, Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babbling." Ignoring these rules brings many of the Bible's heroes and heroines to grief, as illustrated by the Apostle Peter's denial of Jesus Christ, following his capture by local authorities: "Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, 'I Know not the man.' And immediately the cock crowed" (Matthew 26:74).

Types

Within the Old Testament, particularly, there are numerous warnings against profane actions that form the Christian's primary objection to including God in profane speech--as exemplified in the popular expressions, "God damn it," or "Jesus Christ". Leviticus 18:21 contains one of the more notable warnings against such misuses of God's name, saying, "And thou shalt not let any of the seed pass through the life to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name thy God: I am the Lord." This logically extends to other abuses, such as profaning the Sabbath day and name, for example. Christians are repeatedly warned to guard their tongue and the words that come out of their mouth, as in 1 Peter 2:1: "Wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and cries and all evil speakings."

Effects

Whenever the Bible speaks about evil men, its scribes consistently tie the habit of cursing to them, such as this verse in Proverbs 15:4: "A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness therein is a breach of the spirit." Christians are advised to be mindful of God's commandments, from which speech is not considered exempt, as James 3:6 warns: "And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell." As if this were not sufficient, verse 8 elaborates further: "But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison."

Benefits

Christians are frequently reminded in the Bible that God sees and hears all that they do and that they are never out of range. As Biblical writers make clear, God surely owns the words that come from His believers' mouths, making it is even more incumbent on them to set an example for nonbelievers--hence, this instruction from Matthew 12:36-37: "I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned." In this context, getting closer to God requires a level of discipline and maturity in all areas of life, and--as numerous Bible verses make clear--this also extends to speech.

Warning

Christians should seek to avoid profanity in their speech and follow scripture as it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:22: "Abstain from all appearance of evil." The Bible is clear against the use of profanity and what the Christian's main goal should be regarding his speech, as Ephesians 4:29 notes: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." As this passage illustrates, God's injunctions against profanity center on the idea that the usage of words does matter--which using unclean speech can only undercut, especially when witnessing to non-Christians.