The Most Vulgar Slur You Can Think Of

On the Necessity of Prophetic Naming

Introduction
This article is a follow up thought on Kevin DeYoung’s piece, but not so much a direct response but a further explanation and defense of at least one part of DeYoung’s objection and concern for the “Moscow Mood.” Likewise, this perhaps serves as a sort of tangential answer to Denny Burk’s recent Sunday School class on Doug Wilson’s use of coarse language. 

The Bible insists that words are powerful. God created the heavens and the earth by the power of His Word, and He upholds all things by the power of that same Word, which is the Lord Jesus Christ (Gen. 1, Col. 1, Heb. 1). Because human beings are made in God’s image and likeness, we are verbal creatures, and our words imitate and mimic His words. We see this immediately in the Garden of Eden when God gave Adam the task of naming the animals (Gen. 2). This was not merely a matter of assigning relatively random or capricious titles to the animals (like “Fred” or “Fido”), but rather something far more scientific, something more profound, related to the taxonomy of creatures, and what they were for. This becomes clear as the result of that labor was concluding that a helper had not been found that was suitable for Adam.

All of this naming culminated in the creation of the first woman from Adam’s side, and when she was brought to the man, he sang a poem over her, and named her “woman” because she was taken from man. The word for “woman” is related to the Hebrew word for “fire,” and indicates that she was created to be the glory of man (cf. 1 Cor. 11). But naming is not merely descriptive; it is also prescriptive and therefore prophetic. After the Fall, Adam re-named his wife “Eve” because she would become the mother of all the living. And notice that Adam names her this in faith believing that they will live and despite the curse of sin, his wife will bear children, including the seed that will crush the seed of the serpent.

Battle of Words
All of this is why words are so powerful and potent. This why Scripture says that “Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones” (Prov. 16:24). Likewise, “There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health” (Prov. 12:18). “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof” (Prov. 18:21). Words and names give either life or death, sickness or health, and we are always in some sense eating our words and becoming what we say and hear. James famously says that the tongue is a flamethrower, a tiny flame that is able to set whole worlds on fire – even the fires of Hell itself (Js. 3:5-6). And therefore he warns God’s people to guard their words carefully. Our mouths must not be simultaneously full of cursing and blessing, like some kind of foul fountain (Js. 3:9-12). And yet, clearly James does not intend to forbid all cursing, since he also commends the Psalms to be sung (Js. 5:13). 

Many Psalms include curses and imprecations: “Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man” (Ps. 10:15, cf. Ps. 58:6, 69:25). “As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones” (Ps. 109:17-18). And perhaps the most infamous: “Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones” (Ps. 137:9). Evidently, since God’s people are required to sing the Psalms, God’s people are to have these blessings and curses in their mouths so that the Word of Christ may dwell in us richly (Col. 3:16).

Elsewhere, Hosea prays that God will give “whoring” Ephraim “a miscarrying womb and dry breasts” so that they will be bereaved of their children (Hos. 9). And of course Paul warns the Galatians from turning away from the true gospel, saying that if anyone preaches another gospel, let him be anathema, that is, cursed or damned (Gal. 1:8). And if all the church ladies thought that was quite enough, Paul repeats himself in the very next verse: let anyone who preaches another gospel be damned (Gal. 1:9). And we ought to pay careful attention to this curse because it comes in the same letter in which Paul warns Christians about biting and devouring one another with their tongues (Gal. 5:15). Evidently, there is a kind of cursing that is full of love. There is a kind of cursing that is filled with the Holy Spirit, that has crucified the flesh and all of its lusts (Gal. 5:22-25). 

God Himself models this for us: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). And the patriarchs take this same language upon their own lips and pass it down to their children (Gen. 27:19). God proclaims blessings and cursing to Israel, and the people affirm them and say, Amen (Dt. 30). So God speaks blessings and certain kinds of curses that His people are required to affirm and echo. And this imitation of God’s Word is part of our prophetic naming. We are not merely agreeing with God’s assessments, we are announcing in faith what will become of these things. This is an act of dominion and rule. By the authority of God’s Word, we are binding on earth as it is in heaven. God says that the adulterer is already cursed (Prov. 22:14). Homosexuality is not merely the kind of sin that will lead to cursing, death, and destruction, it is itself a terrible curse of suicidal madness (Rom. 1), as is the murder of one’s own children (Dt. 28:28, 53-57).

When the Church speaks officially in excommunication, it is formally pronouncing a curse: handing a hardened sinner over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh (1 Cor. 5:4-5). While God forbids all cursing out of personal animosity and vengeance (Rom. 12:14), there is a kind of cursing that mimics God’s own cursing which foretells the Hellish destruction and agony that has already begun in certain actions. The Church and Christians in general must recover this authoritative naming – both blessing and cursing – speaking God’s words after Him, as acts of dominion and justice. 

At the center of this theology of prophetic cursing is the Cross. But for far too many Christians, the Cross is merely a nice piece of jewelry, an ornate piece of wood in the sanctuary or on the roof of a church building. And it isn’t the God damning curse that Scripture says it is: “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them’… Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written ‘Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:10, 13). We read these words and it is easy for them not to be the gut punch they ought to be. Perhaps we conjure up generally “bad” connotations, but not the foul stench of a curse, not the reflexive repulsion of a hateful obscenity. So let your imagination dwell on this for a moment: a man strung up naked, bleeding, defecating, suffocating, screaming in agony. Don’t look away.

And the thing we must not miss is that our God, the God of infinite blessing, also spoke this infinite curse. His Eternal Word became this vile curse. God spoke this revolting curse about our sin. It was a righteous and holy curse, but it was the most offensive obscenity, vulgarity, and blasphemous curse in the history of the world. And that curse has become the salvation of the world. 

The distinctions between slurs, vulgarity, swearing, cursing, and obscenity are important and helpful distinctions, but they all come together in the Cross of Jesus Christ. There we have a blasphemous oath, the fiercest damnation of Hell itself, and the most vulgar obscenity and bigoted slur of the righteous God-man stripped naked and shamefully lynched as a spectacle for all to see. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. 

Conclusions
So this is the center of all prophetic naming. Preachers of the gospel in particular are required by God to proclaim this curse: the filthy fact of our Lord Jesus with stakes driven through His hands and feet hanging from a Roman gibbet for the forgiveness of all our sins. The only One who didn’t deserve to be there, hanging like an animal ready for the butcher, like a stag to be gutted, stripped and shamed like a whore. The Righteous for the unrighteous. 

Certainly words are powerful. And we must not overuse certain potent words and so water them down. And we do not speak curses with any sort of glee or lustful thrill. Some folly we are required to laugh at like our Father in Heaven (Ps. 2), and sometimes wisdom does answer a fool according to his folly (Prov. 26:5) or mock certain superstitious irrationality with a kind of juvenile sarcasm (1 Kgs. 18). But we do not chuckle about real curses. We do not rejoice in the death of the wicked, lest we bring God’s wrath upon ourselves (Job 31:29). But sometimes it is right and proper to name the evil, to pronounce the curse – not because we relish the filth but because more than anything, we want it die and rise again. 

This is why church discipline and excommunication is sometimes the most loving thing: pronouncing the the destruction of the flesh “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5). Some churches and elders do not love erring sinners enough to save them by this means. This is why the Cross is at the center of our prophetic cursing and naming. Whatever gets nailed to the Cross, whatever needs to die stays there and is buried in the tomb of our Lord, but whatever God wills to save will be raised to eternal, indestructible life. The prophetic task sometimes includes the naming of filth out loud in order for Jesus Christ to be evidently set forth as crucified (Gal. 3:1).

So when Pastor Wilson named what Nadia Bolz-Weber did with a bunch of purity rings, this was no junior high coarse jesting, which is clearly prohibited by Scripture (Eph. 5:4). It was rather a prophetic naming. The goal is for that kind of objectification and destruction of women made in the image of the living God – for that sin to be shamed, humiliated, and repudiated for the vulgar obscenity that it is, so that women everywhere may experience salvation, honor, and real love in Christ. 

Another example occurs to me: Given how unborn babies are being mixed up in test tubes, frozen in labs, discarded down drains, bought and sold to the highest bidders, and wombs are being rented, before ripping children from their biological parents (if they somehow manage to escape being poisoned, beheaded, and dismembered in the middle passage of pregnancy), America has collectively said that human babies are nothing more than niggers. 

And why would a Christian minister, knowing the offense of that word, dare name what we do to our children by the millions by that name? Certainly not for kicks. Not for some kind of cheap thrill, or even for the accolades of five belligerent white-supremacists. No, the only good reason would be in the real hope that maybe it would be the kind of truthful offense that would prick consciences and bring a righteous shame and anger on our land – so that all our hatred of the image of God would be crucified and all human life would be cherished and honored. 

Rolling Stone magazine recently ran an article on the so-called empowerment of using the c-word, and it was interesting to note that some folks have apparently noticed that the increasing offense of vulgar obscenities (f-word, c-word, etc.) has roughly corresponded with an overall decrease in societal offense of profanity and blasphemy (e.g. using the Lord’s name in vain). And whatever the evidence they may cite to back up that assertion, the claim rings true: Christians have put up with the casual dishonor of the name of the Most High God, and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ in particular. But if you write or say certain sexual or ethnic slurs, you have committed the unforgiveable sin. But this tells us who we really fear. It tells us what we really worship. The deepest offense in our vocabulary is against man, against their skin, against their sexuality and dignity. But while men certainly can and do hate and abuse one another in truly despicable ways, our deepest offense is against our Maker, our Savior, the Triune God of Heaven. 

Take all the bad words you can think of, the worst words in every human language, list them all out, with no blanks, no asterisks, now stand on a street corner and yell them with all the vitriol you can manage. And you still haven’t even come close to the obscenity and coarseness of our Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the Cross. And He hung there for the sins our land, for all the hate and vitriol, for all the murder and violence, for every lustful thought or glance, for our all bitterness and envy. He hung there so that by that curse, we might be set free and come under His blessing. So don’t look away. This too is central to the “Moscow Mood,” and this is how we win.

Photo by eberhard 🖐 grossgasteiger on Unsplash