I don't swear. Not only because that is how my parents raised me, but also because one of my high school literature teachers once put it that "all profanity proves is that you don't have the education required to express yourself better."
Not swearing isn't something I consciously think about doing, I just don't, and people notice. Boy, do they notice.
A couple of years ago when the recycling skip outside of my office caught fire in the middle of the night and I had to evacuate my team, I will confess I let slip some language.
The reaction of my very non-Christian, profanity-spouting team members was one of shock and funnily enough, of judgement. I got comments like "Wow Rosie, I never heard you swear before" and "I didn't think you were the kind of person who spoke like that". I didn't let loose some string of profanity guys, it was only one word starting with 'S' because of the giant fire outside, and suddenly I had disappointed them.
They had been watching and listening to me closely all these years. After that night I was much more aware of how they would speak and behave when I was on the floor with them. Walking into the break room I would hear them talking, laughing and swearing away, but once I was present, everyone kept chatting but they would watch their language.
Not swearing is quite an easy act of self-control, most of us do it automatically and it is a learned behaviour. Why do I bring this up, you ask? Well it's because recently my understanding of Galatians chapter 5, verses 22-26 and of the fruits of the Spirit was challenged.
I had been treating Paul's list of fruits as behaviours that I should practice and learn to show daily. I thought of them as nothing more than, I guess, outward works of morality. But in fact love, joy, peace, patience... are not works that we do, but are organic expressions of our faith in the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
John Piper puts it like this:
But the mentality behind the fruit of the Spirit is the mentality of faith depending upon grace. People who bear the fruit of the Spirit know they are worthy only of condemnation. They know that the only pay they can earn is the wrath of God. Therefore, they have turned away from self-reliance and look only to mercy in Christ who "loved us and gave himself for us" (Galatians 2:20). They do not expect anyone to be their debtor because of their worth. Any satisfaction will be a free gift of grace. They bank on the mercy of God and entrust themselves to his Spirit for help. And out of that mentality of faith depending on grace grows not "works" but "fruit": love, joy, peace, patience, kindness . . . (Walk by the Spirit)
I used to pat myself on the back about my lack of profanity. Look at my excellent example of godliness. Now I realise that the self-control of my language had nothing to do with my faith and everything to do with how I was raised and taught, both at home and at school.
I got caught in that pesky 'false morality' trap. My avoidance of certain words didn't come from a place of wanting to honour God through careful rein of my tongue, it came from fear of a disapproving looks and comments from my parents and Christian peers.
There are plenty of good, kind, patient and joyful non-Christians out there. Paul is trying to teach us in Galatians that the crux of the issue is not our outward activities and works of life, but instead, it is all about the kind of heart that produces our outward actions, because it is in a person's heart, not their outward life, where the truth of the who victor of our soul is can be found.
By day Rosie Timmins is AP Magazine's Social Media Coordinator and by night she is a media analyst at an international media monitoring company.
Rosie Timmins' archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/rosie-timmins.html