SACRED AND PROFANE

The world is becoming more profane. I don’t think anyone would dispute that. Profanity in language is becoming more and more common, and more and more casual. Even in our entertainment. Even in the mouths of our elected leaders.

And everyone shrugs and accepts it as the way of the world. So don’t get your knickers in a bunch about it.

Now, I grew up in a household where I didn’t hear profanity from my parents. Not even when they were incensed. I remember the day, when I was in junior high school when, in the middle of an angry storm, “damn” slipped out of my father’s mouth. They were very scrupulous about the model of behavior they set before their children.

Years later, I went to graduate school in Austin, Texas at the University of Texas. And discovered that UT and the town had to be the most foul-mouthed place I had ever encountered. (Yes, even more so than Hollywood, when I got there.) I’ll admit that my senses got dulled by the exposure, and my tolerance for profane language went up. Yes, I even allowed it to creep into my own usage, to a (comparatively) mild degree.

But why do we let this happen? Why do we accept it as a matter of course?

I think it is because there has been a terrible loss of the sense of the sacred in our lives. I feel as if there is an underlying attitude that it is ridiculous to hold anything as sacred or holy. And if that is the case, then it doesn’t matter how much excrement we heap on things that displease us.

Because it’s All About Us, isn’t it? What happens to us? What pleases us? What matters to us?

No? Gee, whiz.

Many of the things in the Sermon on the Mount address how we are called to behave toward those with whom we disagree, those who hate us, even are our enemies. And all of those comments from Jesus instruct us to behave well toward them.

God regards all his creatures as sacred. That’s why the “turn the other cheek” is there. That’s why the answer to “Who is my neighbor?” (whom we are called to love as ourselves) is what it is: even those that you despise, or who despise you. Because we are all sacred, not profane.

It doesn’t matter what the other person has done. It doesn’t matter what the other person has said. It doesn’t matter what the other person has done to me, or intends to do to me, or even what he thinks of me.

Everyone lives because God has breathed life into them. And having been given life by God, we are called to treat each person we encounter as being sacred and beloved by God.

Now, I’ll admit that I don’t succeed in behaving that way. I know that. But I will also be the first to admit that I know I should to better than I do, and why. But it disturbs me when I hear people who profess to be Christians (ie, they also claim to be following this standard), who shrug off casual profanity, and also shrug off any insulting behavior by someone they feel has been abused. “The abuser deserved it.” And that’s enough for them. Well, it’s not enough for me. No one, no matter what they’ve been doing, ought to be receiving reciprocal abuse, not from people who claim to be Christians.

But no one really wants to hear that they should treat their enemies, or opponents, or those they dislike, as sacred beings. When what we see, in our mind’s eye, is a pile of crap, why not call it that? Isn’t that being honest? Well, if it is a person, it may be honest, but it is not the complete truth. Because in the eyes of God (and it’s His opinion on this that really matters, not ours), that person is not a pile of crap. That person is a sacred child.