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A slightly different category is blasphemy, where the name of God is used to give extra punch to a statement. It's not a sincere prayer, which is why it's "in vain," as the commandment says. Obviously, misuse of God's name can't hurt him, because nothing we do can hurt him. Christians believe that God came to earth in human form, was tortured and died, then triumphed and rose again. We can conclude that God is not particularly scared of anything humans can dish out. Blasphemy doesn't hurt him, but it hurts us; it numbs us to his presence, and leads us to gradually substitute an imaginary dummy-god for the real thing. A person who loves God would not be able to use his name "in vain," any more than they could use the name of their lover or child. They would not want this powerful thing, the name of the beloved, rendered common or cheap, because the next step is that it becomes invisible.

This is what's happening to these previously forbidden words; they're losing the ability to shock. It seems strange that Earnhardt's casual obscenity provoked such punishment, when you can't avoid the word in daily life, encountering it on bumper stickers, in movies, and used by nicely-dressed young women out shopping with their children. These words no longer indicate fashionable defiance, but just lack of imagination.

English is unusually rich language, with over half a million words, about five times the size of French. If there's something you want to say, you can probably find a way to say it. Naughty words become a blank token we can stick in any sentence as a substitute for really thinking through what we're trying to say. If Earnhardt hadn't been in the habit of using this word casually, he could have come up with something equally eloquent for the occasion. I'm not particularly offended that he used this word, though I regret that such words are becoming more common while so many thousands of other words get used rarely or not at all. Our vocabulary is becoming more and more narrow, until one day the English spoken in the streets will be reduced to a few grunts and hand gestures.

But Earnhardt is right about this: it's one thing to let a word slip out in a moment of exuberance, and another to use it in anger. If the intention is to convey hatred, contempt or violence, there's a much bigger problem than just that earthy little word. (This is true even when the user is a "rebel" or "artist" and his targets are "squares.") No matter what language you use, self-righteousness and hate should be questioned, not indulged. Count to ten, and if you still feel inclined to unleash your withering scorn, here's a handy four-letter word for you: don't.

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Evangelist Tony Campolo has been known to use Earnhardt's recent jubilant word in a sermon illustration.

Christianity Today Movies has examined profanity in film in a 2001 survey of Christian critics' opinions on the subject, in a more recent explanation of why the site positively reviews some movies with such language, and a follow-up to that article.

Regulating language can sometimes be misguided.

Today's Christian, a Christianity Today sister publication, offers tips for taming your tongue.

Patricia Heaton, of "Everybody Loves Raymond," walked out of the 2003 American Music Awards for "vulgar and disgusting" language from the stage. Gene Veith reflected on this in The Wall Street Journal.

Newspapers weighed in both for and against the NASCAR fine, both sides noting that profanity is commonplace in sports.

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October (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48