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Baptist News Global | October 27, 2025
What’s a four-letter word that means feces?
Dung.
What’s a four-letter word for something many people love to do with a partner multiple times per month?
Golf.
Thus, if you need to instruct someone to hit a manure ball with a club, you could say, “Golf that dung.”
Language is weird. Why is the s-word considered vulgar, but “dung” is not? Context is everything.
We know when the cartoon Smurfs smurf the word “smurf” as a noun or a verb. And given time and enough use by abusive drunken frat boys, “dung” or “smurf” would be profane to holy ears as well. I mean look how MAGA supporters vulgarized “Let’s go, Brandon” to say, “F*** Joe Biden.”
Going the other direction, something harsh can be toned down, as when “damn them” — which wishes someone to hell — is softened to “D\darn them” — which simply hopes for them to be repaired like a damaged sock.
However, what if we have an overly softened view of Jesus? In the biblical story of Jesus and the disciples in the storm-ravaged boat, English versions report Jesus saying to the storm, “Peace, be still.” Pretty soft. But in seminary, my New Testament professor, Gerald Borchert, said Jesus literally said to the storm, “Be muzzled.” Asserting a more accurate translation to the modern American idiom, Borchert bellowed Jesus commanded the storm to “shut up!”
“I have found myself wanting such spiritual cover to use harsh language to match the vulgar behavior being described.”
Lately, as the storm waves of fascism in the United States have grown more violent, I have found myself wanting such spiritual cover to use harsh language to match the vulgar behavior being described. This holds especially true when boat crews are horrifically slaughtered based on the assertion by the MAGA regime that the boats are loaded with drugs, that the crews know that, and they warrant receiving the death penalty without capture, trial and conviction for a crime that is not even a capital offense in the first place.
I grew up in a home where I never once heard profanity. One time my dad, barefooted, tried to kick a mouse running across the kitchen floor. On the follow through he connected with an oak chair, knocking off his big toenail. All he did was scream in agony. My mother sometimes got so angry she’d say, “Shoot a monkey.”
I inherited a distaste for crassness and an admiration for self-control. This was reinforced by the wisdom of Scripture passages such as Ephesians 4:29: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”
Of course, what constitutes unwholesome talk and perverse speech is a bit vague. Is it using any “cuss word” at any time, or is it how the words are used based in context?
For some reason, many progressives mock and treat as quaint anyone who feels uncomfortable with crude language. At the progressive-minded seminary I attended, a friend in speech class gave a speech against profanity. She was actively ridiculed by many of our classmates.
“We need to differentiate between gratuitous profanity and cursing.”
I believe we need to differentiate between gratuitous profanity and cursing. Crudity for its own sake reflects a lack of self-control. But prudishness can be a form of crudity. If we’re too self-righteous to say a rape victim is going through hell, or to use coarse language to communicate we are listening to the vulgarity of what they are going through, that’s disgusting. Jesus cursed the fig tree that was not producing good fruit. We surely need to curse the behavior of a rapist.
I never had uttered the f-bomb until I was 27 years old, driving home from seeing Schindler’s List. I said it over and over, the passing wind pulling it out the open window to heaven. It not only felt appropriate, it felt sacred that God listened to my rage and pain. I have felt appropriately sacred in lamentation many times since then.
Besides refusing to curse bad behavior, another form of profane prudishness occurs when a crucifix-wearing Caroline Leavitt smiles while she lies and bullies on behalf of the MAGA regime on a nearly daily basis. How vulgar that many Christians who will stop reading a book that quotes a person in pain using profanity will watch without blinking as MAGA officials baptize their cruelty in smiles and religious language.
However, despite Jesus calling the scribes and pharisees “vipers,” there are nuances that make me very uncomfortable with calling MAGA supporters “MAGAts.” Nazis referred to Jews as rats. It is dehumanizing to refer to people as something that sounds like maggots. A viper is vicious; that was Jesus’ comparison. Maggots and rats are vermin we kill. Enemies often use slang to dehumanize their enemies, and this makes them easier to kill. We must not dehumanize our opponents.
However, we very much need to thoroughly and accurately curse the tree of greed that doesn’t produce good fruit for those in need and also curse the conversion of evangelicalism into a secular political force.
So, let’s consider how to describe profane things like these:
Project 2025’s attempt to make the U.S. into a theocracy despite it being totally contradictory to the gospel of Jesus Christ
The destruction of our historic White House without our approval — to make way for a gawdy vanity project ballroom
Human beings blown to bits on the assertion they are drug runners rather than their being captured and given due process
Masked goons thuggishly abusing people under the guise of enforcing the law
Professing Christians like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and White House Press Secretary Leavitt smiling smugly as they assist in the suppression of an investigation into sexual abuse
We can describe all these vulgar sights and so many like them with words that have come to embody vulgarity: Holy MAGA. What a pile of MAGA. MAGA that MAGA to MAGA.
The moment I finished writing the previous sentence, I glanced at my phone and saw Speaker Johnson say people who miss football games due to flight delays can blame the Democrats. He said this the same day furloughed workers missed their first paycheck and aren’t sure how they will pay for food and medicine.
Hey, Speaker Johnson: Brené Brown says blame is pain being discharged from the body. So, may righteous justice convict your MAGA-infested schemes and your piece-of-MAGA speeches, and may God’s grace heal your pain.
Brad Bull
Brad Bull graduated from high school in 1984. He wrote his senior thesis on George Orwell’s novel. He was on guard against communist Soviets, not his neighbors.