shock value

bad words and bad actors

“But in the society we actually have, in this chaotic place where the Gramscians have brought us, our arbiters of approved speech insist that they be the only ones allowed to shock, and that we be the ones to be dutifully shocked. In response to this proposed arrangement, I cheerfully refuse. I refuse to accept their authority in any of this, and I fully intend to make sure that they get an opportunity to eat their own cooking.” — Douglas Wilson, No Such Thing

Modernity is hellbent on making the medieval mindset feel uncomfortable. So, it says shocking things, things no one ever dreamed of saying before. They do so in order to move the Overton window and to change the bell curve of public discourse. They do not have a problem with shocking language in principle, they have a problem with anything that shocks the other end of the window. If something is said so baldly as to fall outside of the standard deviation of the mean to the left of the window, they howl. They pass laws to ban it or to punish it as hate speech. They want to be the shockers, not the shocked. They want our norms to be scandalized and our manners to be offended, but they do not want their hopes and dreams to be challenged or refuted, especially unapologetically. 

But it is the Christian's job to make sure that they wicked are forced to eat their own cooking. They will reap what they sow and sometimes your rejoinders are the very things the Lord uses to serve it up for them.