Cussing

In my research for this upcoming Sunday's message on bad words, I found an insightful article by Carolyn Arends on The Trouble with Cussing Christians:

All language is a kind of social contract. We agree—as heirs of centuries of etymological development—to call the pointy thing in our arm an elbow, just like we agree to label things we find despicable with words we identify as profane. The words themselves hold only the power we give them. But curse words tend to be powerful indeed, because to linguistically reduce something or someone to the level of biological functions (and their resultant products) is almost always an act of contempt. And contempt is toxic.

Read the whole thing.