Do Words Pollute Cultures? Word-up On Hip-hop

Simmons, co-founder of the Def Jam label and a driving force behind hip-hop's huge commercial success, called for voluntary restrictions on the words and setting up an industry watchdog to recommend guidelines for lyrical and visual standards.

"We recommend that the recording and broadcast industries voluntarily remove/bleep/delete the misogynistic words 'bitch' and 'ho' and the racially offensive word 'nigger'," Simmons and Benjamin Chavis, co-chairmen of the advocacy group Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, said in a statement.

"These three words should be considered with the same objections to obscenity as 'extreme curse words'," it said. (Reuters News Service)

Colossians 3:8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.

Matthew 12: 36 On judgment day, people will have to account for every careless word they have spoken. By your words you will be found guilty or not guilty.

Do words really do any harm? After all, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.

The first of Moses' commandments was to not take the name of the Lord in vain. Meaning what? Meaning don't degrade it by just using it frivolously or including it as a curse-word in your vocabulary.

Psychologists know that words can damage children, even set them on a destructive course in life. We all remember when the word "nigger" was used to denigrate blacks. The fact is, words have power to build up or destroy. Words can set the world on fire. Hitler's words murdered millions.

Perhaps we can overdo trying to have pristine speech. But in the long run that is better than what we have achieved today by stretching the limits of free speech. What used to be the salty speech of men and sailors in the forties has become commonplace among even women and children. In other words, we're all guilty, not just Don Imus and Mel Gibson.

But perhaps our culture has gone far enough (although I'd be surprised). Maybe a backlash is coming: a return to a more genteel public speech. It is interesting in that our culture has lost its etiquette.

If we think of people as "ho's" and "pimps", we are slandering images of God. The popular slang that calls everybody a fornicator with their mothers is like the ultimate insult, thus it is popular. We are a "tougher" culture for it. We are not easily offended. And we are, after all, calling people what they are, sinners.

Christians, though, must take the higher road and, even if ridiculed for it, honor God and treat their fellow human beings with respect by learning to control the tongue. Maybe our music and arts have reached the saturation point on the glorification of the gutter. What a revolution that would be.

Our world is indeed steeped in a steaming pile of profanity and obscenity. It is a pollution that is likely as damaging as acid rain or greenhouse gas. But we love it.

We want to wallow in it. And that is exactly what we are doing ~ in the name of liberation, in the name of making a better world. I'm afraid, instead, it is making the world more sordid, dangerous, and malevolent. It raises corruption to a place of honor; and that can't be good.