In one of the talks I give on marriage, I use an example of the sin I call “pleading the dictionary.” This is where a husband uses one or more of the flexible features of human language to get his dig in, and then, when challenged, he retreats to “plead the dictionary.” He says something like “we’re having lasagna tonight?” This may be accompanied by some other things that cannot be found in a dictionary at all, like shrugs, facial twitches, sighs, etc. But then, when his wife asks him why he is being so rude, he retreats to the safety offered by Madame Webster. “When did I ever say I didn’t like your lasagna?” All of us know how this works — we can see it in a boss’s sneer, in the rolling of a teen-ager’s eyes, and in the conniving of a toddler. This approach is reductionistic. We use language in the full-orbed way, using all the bells and whistles, and then when called on what we are communicating, we adopt the reductionistic fallacy, and ask that our behavior be interpreted along strict minimalist lines.
This was the procedure adopted by Shemiramoth from the tribe of Gad when Moses confronted him on his idolatry, and tried to make him drink the water with the ground-up gold in it. “I wasn’t worshipping the calf! I just like to dance. Dancing is the only thing that matters to me.”
Those who would confront the problems posed by what I have been calling “lowlife authenticity” need to be prepared for this, because it is one of the central retorts. But when I object to curse words or vulgarity, I do not object to the consonants and vowels that make them up. The letters that make up all our obscenities have benign uses as well.
If I object to greasy clothes, the comeback will be that auto mechanics have greasy clothes, and nobody sees me attacking them! Right, because the language event is different. The greaseball is claiming that the grease is what makes him an authentic human being. The auto mechanic is just working on my car. Ironically, this is what makes the mechanic an authentic human being, and it is also exactly why the poseur is not. And when I praise the one and reject the other, it is not an inconsistency, any more than it is inconsistent for a mother to not discipline a daughter who says, “Yes, mother,” and to discipline her sister who says, “Yes, mother,” while rolling her eyes.
When Christians are called on to explain their compromised behavior, they are the ones who have to come up with really innovative explanations for why they are doing it. Christian girls who wear bikinis are the ones who say they are concerned by the encumbrance of the bulkier suits and are frankly concerned about the threat of drowning. Non-Christians girls are willing to say out loud what they are doing, which is to get guys to look at them. Everybody in the world knows what is going on in such situations — except for the Christians who cannot yet afford to admit to the compromise.
So are skateboards sinful? Tobacco? Of course not. Alcohol? Music with a back beat? Ink on skin? No, not when you forgot your checkbook and have to write down an amount at the grocery store, and you have no paper. But the attitude that says that anything unwashed, unkempt, raw, visceral, and stone-washed is real, and that to comb your hair out of your eyes is to sell out to the Man, that is a profound confusion. The issue is what we are saying by what we are doing, and not what somebody else might have meant with the same action.