I continue with the APART Acrostic. The last post I asked you to think about the people, events and activities that you perceive as Adverse. In much America today there is an awful lot of talk about language. The Political Correctness Police are obsessed with forcing everyone to alter their language and "save" people from being upset and having their self-esteem destroyed. However, as we attempted to indicate in my past posts, it is my Perception about events, terms and actions that cause us to be upset.
If I Perceive an event or activity to be an Adversity and give it power over my Beliefs, it can cause me pain. If I ignore it or decide it was done in fun or love I can actually Perceive it as a compliment. The NFL is attempting to ban players, coaches and officials from saying the N_____ Word. If they do, some want to call a 15 yard penalty on the team of the player caught saying N_______ ! Some of the younger African American players are outraged. One said, "My friends and I use the N _____ word all the time. It is part of our music, our play and our games. It is not a bad word."
It has always been a negative term to my family and we never used it. However, these young Black Men are offended to have the organization to tell them they can't use it. The Perceptions are miles apart. If a Black Man heard a White Player use the term and was offended, that event would be an Adversity to him but not to a younger man.
Truth, beauty and Adversity are in the eye of the beholder. This makes it difficult for the Politically Correct Police to come up with laws. If I do see the N_______ word as a threat, or attack, I might get Pessimistic.But it is MY Beliefs that cause the Pessimism not your language.
Sticks and stones can break my bones!
But (your) words will never hurt me.
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2 comments:
What about the F-word? It has always been considered vulgar/crude and obscene until recently; now it's appearing more and more frequently in main line writing and many peoples' casual speech.
Is it wrong/inappropriate to be offended by and to discourage its use? Surely speech such as this example is objectively harmful as it coarsens our culture, and not merely a matter of personal perception or preference.
Where do we draw the line? Blasphemy is not far behind profanity. While we Christians cannot actually enforce our standards on non-believers, we do have a Biblical mandate to be "salt and light". Words do have tremendous power to either hurt or heal. So it's surely important to carefully weigh their use or abuse, and advocate accordingly as citizens.
I draw the line very tightly. Scripture says "Do not let anything come out of your mouth that does not edify other people". However, that is getting more difficult in a PC world. This post is focused on allowing the crude comments of others cause me emotional turmoil. Most of the depressed people I know are overly reacting to the words and behavior of others. They give too much power to their speech and fail to take every thought captive.
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