An article by Tim Shorey at The Gospel Coalition provided a helpful perspective on swearing. It contained a sentence that has lodged itself in my memory and which completely crystallized the issue.
There’s a reason we never hear anyone say … ‘It’s hot as a nazi oven out there’
The reason is of course that nazi ovens are too serious and horrific of a reality to be used in a such a flippant way as describing the weather. The obvious application for Christians who believe in things like hell and damnation is that it would be even more outrageous to use those terms in a similarly casual way. The author of that post, who has been diagnosed with stage four cancer, refuses even in his circumstance to say that he is going through hell. He rightly ends his article with a word on Jesus and hope beyond the suffering.
As horrific as my cancer is, I’m not going through hell. Thanks to Jesus, I never will.
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