Why does seemingly everybody have to be using the F-word these days?

You hear it almost everywhere. It pours from television, movies, music, podcasts, social media, sporting events, workplaces, restaurants, and everyday conversations. People who would once have been embarrassed to say it in public now use it repeatedly, sometimes almost unconsciously.

The word is f@#k.

It is, in my estimation, the foulest and most vulgar word in the English language. Yet what was once considered almost unspeakable has become a conversational commonplace.

How did this happen?

The word itself is quite old. Its precise origin is uncertain, though etymologists generally link it to Germanic words associated with sexual intercourse or breeding. Despite popular legends, it did not originate as an acronym such as “Fornication Under Consent of the King.”

For centuries, however, the word remained socially taboo. Respectable writers, publishers, broadcasters, and ordinary people generally avoided it. Samuel Johnson omitted it from his famous dictionary, and from 1795 until 1965, the word did not appear in a single English-language dictionary.

That very restraint gave the word enormous rhetorical force.

Profanity of this degree certainly has its shock value. But when such an obscenity is repeated constantly, something curious happens: eventually, it loses its ability to rattle us.

So the F-word has undergone an extraordinary transformation in our time.

Once primarily a crude term for sexual intercourse, it is now an all-purpose expression. People use it when they are angry, happy, surprised, frightened, impressed, disgusted, excited, or frustrated. It can function as a verb, noun, insult, exclamation, intensifier, or even little more than a verbal filler.

For some people, it has almost become a punctuation mark.

Perhaps the history of the F-word is not simply the story of how a sexual word became vulgar. It is the story of how a vulgar word became ordinary.

This raises a more important question: What happens to a culture when vulgarity no longer embarrasses it?

Christians sometimes approach this subject by asking, “Where does the Bible specifically say I cannot use this particular word?”

That approach misses the point.

The Bible does not provide a catalog of forbidden English words. Instead, it repeatedly addresses the character of our speech.

The apostle Paul wrote: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying” (Ephesians 4:29).

He warned against “filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient” (Ephesians 5:4).

He told the Colossians to put away “anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth” (Colossians 3:8).

The late Phil Robertson, founder of Duck Commander and patriarch of the television show, Duck Dynasty, once told of a sound man on the filming crew who had listened to the Robertson family for long stretches while they were miked.

Eventually, the man approached Robertson and said he had noticed something unusual: he never heard them curse. He wanted to know why. That question opened the door for Robertson to talk with him about Christ, and according to Robertson, the man was eventually converted.

There is something really worth pondering in that story.

In a culture saturated with profanity, sometimes what a Christian restrains himself from saying can speak loudly.

But even here, Christianity goes beyond cleaning up one's vocabulary.

Jesus said: “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45).

Our words are not disconnected from our hearts. That bears repeating: Our words are not disconnected from our hearts.

That does not mean that everyone who slips and uses a vulgar word is condemned, nor does avoiding profanity make anyone righteous. A person can speak without obscenity and still lie, gossip, slander, boast, manipulate, or wound others with words.

Nevertheless, habitual speech reveals something.

If filthy words characteristically flow from our mouths, the answer is not merely to replace them with a nicer or more pleasant vocabulary. We ought to ask what is happening within us.

The F-word is especially revealing because of what our culture has done with it. We have taken one of the crudest expressions for one of the most intimate and sacred human acts between a husband and wife and turned it into an expression of rage, contempt, ridicule, excitement, frustration, and casual emphasis.

Something associated with sexual vulgarity is now used to describe almost everything.

That may represent liberation to some people, but I’m not convinced.

A rich vocabulary enables a person to express anger without obscenity, enthusiasm without crudity, disagreement without degradation, and humor without filthiness. When one vulgar word must carry nearly every emotional burden, language has not necessarily become freer. It has simply become poorer.

When obscene speech becomes so commonplace that we scarcely notice it, the problem is not merely linguistic.

It's spiritual.

Jesus said that the mouth ultimately speaks from the heart's abundance.

So, if a foul tongue is characteristic of your speech, you need something more profound than a jar into which you put money every time you curse.

You don't merely need to clean up your language; you need Christ to cleanse your heart.

You need to be born again.

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