On any given day when you step outside, pay attention to the conversations going on around you. We live in a very noise filled world with incessant chatter going on all the time. There is no room for quietness. Folks, we are in the generation of the clanging cymbals! A lot of noise but no depth or substance to our chatter, it would seem.

We live in a society where everyone feels the need to air their opinions whether one wants to hear it or not.  The most irritating moments are when you think you are going to have some quiet reflective moments on your morning commute. Lo and behold, a bunch of chatty women or school kids appear in the vicinity. There goes your solitude. Understandably this is to be expected when you are taking public transportation. However, sometimes you wish people would just be quiet. People will share all the sordid details of their lives with no shame at all. What next one wonders, where is all this going? What happened to that air of mystique, leaving people guessing. Must we know all the intimate secrets of your life?

I would not mind if all that was going on was polite conversation. Oh no, all around you are curses and swear words. It would seem this is now a normal part of our societal vocabulary; f…k this, f…k that. Even at work which is supposed to be a professional environment, you hear it. One senior officer burst out once, “son of a bitch”, as if it was the most normal thing to say. Half an hour later I hear another person exclaim, “holy shit”. Is there no code around here on how we conduct ourselves verbally?

I was dealing with a client recently who swore over the phone. I let it go the first time. The second time she did, I called her on it. To which she replied “pardon my French”. I am sensitive to that kind of garbage. When my girls say “heck”, I correct them. They then say to me, “Mom, heck is not a swear word. I just chuckle. One has to take a stand. My colleagues know that I do not swear, so when they do it around me, I invariably get an apology. It never fails.

Our standards as a human race appears to have gone the way of the “dodo bird”. Where have our values and etiquette vanished to? Does any one remember Miss Emily Post’s Etiquette? It used to be we had all kinds of rules guiding how we behave socially. Today it has all been thrown to the curb, and we have descended into a morass of foul mouthed humans . It is simply shameful.

When our kids use bad words, we tell them to stop otherwise we will wash their mouth with soap.  Now the adults have taken over from the kids. Today, believers have also joined this bandwagon of cussing and swearing. It is out hearts that need cleansing and not our mouths. We have been told to guard our hears for out of it flows the issues of life. Your speech is a great indicator of the condition of your heart. You tell people who you are by your speech. Now that is a comforting thought (tongue in cheek).

Remember that the lips of the righteous bring forth what is acceptable. But the mouth of the wicked what is perverted (Proverbs 10:32). The choice is yours to decide which group you fall in.