SHOULD CHRISTIANS CUSS?

A Response To Jonny Ardavanis And Tim Ross

I don’t personally know JA or TR although I have a lot of respect for both of them for similar reasons: they are creating content around and speaking to cultural taboos.

Jonny is a Reformed Bible teacher in the tradition of John MacArthur—he’s got a Sam Harris / John Mark Comer / Dan Maclellan homiletic style. Kind of reminds me of Data from Star Trek—there’s an almost robotic charm: I’m calmly and coolly offering the facts, disagree with me at the risk of being an idiot, per se.

Tim Ross is a black Pentecostal with a homiletic style in keeping with that tradition. Aphorisms, analogies, repetition, rhyme—Tim is a man of his culture and thus primarily speaks to his culture, with a pastoral emphasis.

I quite enjoy both styles—they can be done well.

Tim recently proved a point about cussing and then let his hair down on a podcast or three, to the shock of some evangelical listeners. I can’t imagine his base being very upset—they loved his Jesus Is The Only Stripper That I Reverence bit.

Word spread about Tim’s public cussing and he was chastised by some ministry guys, apologized, and went back to filtering for the podcast.

Jonny believes that Christians are allowed ZERO cuss words and quotes Eph 4:29.

I’m gonna show a clip of his here and respond with a Hebrew and Greek study on the use of questionable language in Scripture.

I’ll respond to Tim and Jonny’s analysis with a short summary.

Then I’ll tell you what I think and what my personal conviction is.

Here we go: