Yes there’s always a danger of being wrongly influenced by the culture around that – though I’m not sure that swearing is anywhere near as high on God’s list of priorities as say Western greed and consumerism for example. Also language changes over time so that your mum probably used words quite happily that in earlier generations were shocking. Why is it by the way that using a word that means “poo” to describe something bad is morally wrong?

Far more importantly though, I really don’t think it’s this sort of thing that Jesus meant by “the yeast of the pharisees”. They were the religious, respectable, self righteous ones who wouldn’t dream of using colourful language. In fact they prided themselves on not being “contaminated” by the wordl around them. That’s why it was so shocking for Jesus, a rabbi, to warn against being “contaminated” by the pharisees (yeast was a common picture of someting that spreads and contaminates – interesting then that in another place Jesus shocks by using it as a picture of the kingdom of God.)

Hope that makes sense. I’m sitting here feeling fed up with a broken toe from football with my son! In fact I feel like… sorry I won’t say it ;-)

Is it me, or are we being contaminated by society?

I think that Jesus is repeating what God warned the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land – do not absorb the cultures of these people; it is also a prelude to Paul’s exortations in many of his New Testament letters to the early church that they were not to continue with their old ways, to distance themselves from wrong pratices. Just because people do things, it doesn’t mean they’re ok.

If we do not challenge, then we condone