STOP SWEARING, NOT BECAUSE IT IS IMMORAL BUT BECAUSE IT IS LAZY.

I observed a synchronicity about a week ago. I had just read Exodus 20:7, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. and I saw an essay someone had written and shared that had the f-word in the title.

In order to progress on my spiritual journey, I have decided to stop taking the Lord's name in vain (I still do it very often, it's going to be a long process). Realizing how difficult this process would be to carry to its completion, I began to watch carefully the language I've been using.

I brought more awareness to anything passing through the language center of my brain — reading, writing, speaking, listening. It is when I was operating with this new awareness when I came across the aforementioned essay.

The contents of the essay aren't important and I don't want to boost its reach by linking it here. It was a web technology opinion piece. While reading I noticed how contrived the wording was. The topic wasn't a highly emotional one, it was merely about an opinion on what type of technology to use for certain types of projects. Upon finishing reading the article, I realized what was "off" about all of the profanity — it was lazy writing.

I am prone to laziness just like everyone else. I am constantly working to root out laziness in my writing but I am sorry to report, dear reader, that I have sunk back into old habits.

If you need to use profanity to make your point "hit" in the right way, you are making a decision to be lazy. The passage wouldn't need profanity to boost it if you had written it in a way which conveys your point in the correct way.

I am correcting this laziness on my blog in two ways:

1. I have implemented a profanity filter that will remove profanity from all existing essays and titles. Please report to me if you find any missed utterances.
2. I will not swear in my future essays.

I also hope to stop using profanity in my verbal speech but due to the more temporally-constrained nature of its performance this will take significantly longer. In the mean time I'm not beating up on myself for doing it (and doing my best to ignore the overly prideful that have been incessantly calling me on it — Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?). I am a process. I am repenting but repentance is not perfection. Part of graceful repentance is picking oneself up after falling, usually over and over again.

I urge you to examine your use of profanity in your own life, not because it is immoral but because it is lazy.