I have committed myself to stop cursing. PLEASE JOIN ME!

Welcome to another video from FatherHurley.com. My message today is short and simple. Stop cursing. Now I’m basically being a hypocrite; I’ve cursed for a long time, and do it more than I should. I am always able to control it. I never curse in the pulpit or around children or what have you. I never curse around my parents. As I was looking at Meet the Press on Sunday, after I got home from church, and listened to Bill Cosby speaking, something happened that had not happened before. I don’t want to sound like some weird religious person. I literally felt my lips twinging as he spoke, and I knew right then and there, that cursing had to go into the past for me.

And today, I just got home from work. A girl at home said she took her daughter to the doctor on yesterday. There were two young ladies there, who looked like they were 16 or 17 years old, and they were having a raunchy conversation, cursing. Even an older lady in her 40s was doing the same thing and joined in the conversation. They seemed to have no regard for the fact that they had young children in their midst.

It is something wrong when we cannot control what we said, what comes out of our mouth, what comes into our mind. Even some the videos I watch here on YouTube, people curse all the time. I know a lot of people use it for shock value, or for entertainment purposes only, and they probably don’t use it all the time. But how many of you—or how many of us can’t control our cursing, can’t control what we say? [How many of us] have no regard to who’s around? Have you ever been anywhere and heard people cursing, using foul language, having foul conversations out in the grocery store, on the bus, on the subway or what have you, around the elderly, around their children? We have to start using our minds, we have to lift ourselves up.

I think the reason people curse so much, is because so many people curse. It becomes a habit a natural, you pick it up. Also in the music there is more cursing, more raunchy material, so it comes into our vocabulary. It’s more acceptable now, you hear it on television—more and more profane words are not censored anymore, so it is heard more, and it’s coming into the mainstream. But we have to lift ourselves above that.

What is considered normal, is not necessarily normal for us. Right is right, wrong is wrong, regardless of what society says. One plus one equals two, no matter if everyone believes it or not. We have to bring ourselves to a higher standard, we have to change our ways. And one way we can change that is for us to start with ourselves.

As I said, as I looked at myself, most of the time I curse at work, more so than anywhere else. AS I look at that, and think about it, the main reason I do it is because the others who work there curse to, so it seems natural.

But I thought back to when I was a grad student at Wayne State, where I had a fellow classmate, who was an atheist, which means one who does not believe in God. Whenever we would have a conversation, he would never [rarely] curse in front of me, and the few times he slipped he would say, “I’m sorry. Excuse me. I apologize.” He knew I was a minister, and we would often debate about that because we were in the philosophy department.

I thought, my God, this man doesn’t even believe in God. He thinks I’m foolish for being in the ministry, yet he has so much respect, he would not use profanity in front of me, expect the few times it slipped out.

And when I thought about my response, I never cursed in front of him. I never, one time, cursed in front of him. Why? Because he had that respect for me, and that respect for me, came in me, and went back to him. We have to start respecting each other. So I want you to challenge yourself!

Some of you cannot have a regular conversation without using profanity. If you are in that situation, it’s gone too far. Look at what you see on television. Listen to the words in the music you’re listening to. I’m not trying to get down on hip-hop or rap music, but listen to the words that you are hearing. Some of that stuff is degrading you and tearing you down. We have to come up to a higher level, and a higher standard. We have to do it for ourselves, no one else is going to do it for us.

When you hear your friends cursing all the time, stop them, tell them, “Don’t use that language in front of me.” If they ask why, tell them. “I’m trying to make myself better, I’m trying to lift myself to a higher level, and I don’t want you speaking that way in front of me.” And if they have any kind of respect for you, they will respect your wishes, and they will hopefully change. And they will see a change coming.

We want jobs, we want to be professionals, we want to be in the higher echelon of society, we want to be in government. All these different things we want to do as Black people, as people period, we can’t use that kind of language, and do those things.

I hope you all understand what I am trying to say. I hope I don’t get a lot of hate messages or negative comments, but if I do that’s alright. May God bless you.

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