And even in my own post I see that I have spelled out "damn" but not "the f-word." Similar to the "G-d" construction.

It is telling that the court is aiming at obscenity and vulgarity but not profanity.

I have far more tolerance for vulgarity (references to bodily functions, etc.) than profanity (vain naming, invocations of divine wrath). As the word vulgar implies, objections to vulgarity were once driven by class-based aversions to the low, filthy lives of the common people. There are questions of taste and stewardship of language of course, and so vulgarity should probably be avoided for the most part. But profanity is utterly indefensible from a Christian perspective.

The Christian perspective is in a real cultural minority. In olden days, the days of yore, that is, the profane words were the real taboo. In fact they were outlawed for some time, and you can look in the OED and find a whole array of substitute swear words that arose in the seventeenth century, such as "zounds" and "zooks" (referring to Christ's wounds and "hooks" or wounded hands). Today the obscene is a much stronger taboo. Particularly sexual obscenity. Especially the f-word. If you get really angry and you want to shock or verbally maim someone you don't damn them, you f-word them. Sex today is not just any noun but the name of a god. And that god, as the f-word suggests, is violent in will, dominating, and power-hungry, and the people who exhale f-words so frequently pay fitting homage to that god with remarkable religiosity.

I am unpersuaded, Peter. As a student of the great Augustan satirists I know a true descendant of personae like Isaac Bickerstaff and the Modest Proposer when I see one. And even though a Google search reveals over 25,000 hits for the indeed astonishingly brilliant "obozo," I am prepared to believe that all of those hits are merely other iterations and emanations of the singular satirical genius behind "Carl."

It took me some time before I realized that Carl is not the embittered calumniator he appears to be, but is actually performing a brilliant satire against such persons. I have trouble believing that a real person would go so far out of his way to coin new insults, and to always manage to get in his calumnies in the first comment. How foolish I was in that other thread to try and appeal to the Christian charity of a clearly satirical character.

Thoroughgoing masculinity: think LeBron James plus Martin Luther plus Bono plus Robert E. Lee plus Groucho Marx plus Johnny Cash plus William Wilberforce plus the Marlboro Man plus Samuel Johnson plus Ned Flanders plus Richard Petty minus Richard Dawkins...

In order to gently correct Dr. Veith's notion that I am a "she," I have updated my username so as to more accurately reflect my thoroughgoing masculinity. My new name has the added benefit of having more pop culture relevance than my Henry Fielding allusion alone.

Thanks to Dr. Veith for his continuing faithfulness in teaching about the rich doctrine of vocation.

One reason I find the distinction between vocation and career useful is that the former category has a teleological orientation which is lacking in the latter. By which I mean: the career culture has no sound way of differentiating legitimate careers from illegitimate careers. It doesn't really matter WHAT career you choose--the choice is the only important thing. Who are we to judge the choices of others, anyway? There is a built-in aversion to truth in the career mentality. And thus it leaves the neighborhood in the cold and fragmented.

But vocation acknowledges the flourishing--the shalom--of the neighbor as a legitimate check to the authority of choice. Vocations that prove deleterious to the health and well being of the neighbor are no vocations at all. But the same cannot be said of the career mindset, which is inherently choice-oriented. Vocation doesn't deny the role of choice, it just humbles it, redirects it.

I would posit back to you that both views are ok. God uses our desires and our being " true to ourselves" (which is ultimately what sanctification is and why non-christians suffer for not being christian).

The distinction I would make, FW, is that if it is possible for Christians to speak of "being true to one's self," then it would have be in the sense of "being true to the self God calls us to be." But that is not the usual language of modernity, of course.

Your view seems to be that without a conscious or implicit motive to serve one´s neighbor, that one´s vocation is not truly vocation

No, I would say that sometimes there may be motives, sometimes not. I wouldn't know how to draw a clear line in that respect, and even if I could I don't think I'd want to. The calling is the important thing.

It's instructive to contrast the metaphorical underpinnings of "vocation" and "career." The central metaphor of vocation is, of course, a calling--latin vocare. The person who is called is the receptor of that gift, the respondent to that calling, which originates not in oneself but in the Person who calls.

But the word "career" is etymologically associated with roads, courses, chariot-paths, etc. Poets used to speak of the "career" of the sun in its course across the sky. This is how modernity generally conceives of work, as a choice of course, not a calling and a gift. The person who faces a career choice faces a crossroads of choices. A person usually discovers one's vocations as they naturally unfold through the talents that arise in relation to the people to whom one is called. But the criteria for making the right career choice and taking the right career path are self-originating, they are discovered by being true to oneself and one's desires (to speak the Hollywood argot). Because that is extremely vague, and because one's desires are in constant flux and contradiction, there has arisen a whole industry of incantatory-astrological magicians and paperback mountebanks who hawk the right "formula" or series of steps, which, if purchased and followed, will bring happiness and success in one's career choice.

Universities today are extremely career-oriented, of course. Like all the secular schools the Christian university I attended had a Career Center but no Vocation Center, nor was vocation taught in any substantive way. The phrase "revolutionize" is a cliche, but a strong and full articulation of vocation properly understood would truly transform the way we approach education. In the humanities, for instance, an understanding of art, literature, and criticism as vocational means of serving the neighbor would provide a compelling alternative to the dehumanizing, obscurantist tendencies of modern English departments.

I don't know what you mean by that but I can only conclude you are not interested in persuasion of any sort. I have tried my best to be charitable.

If you wish to prove me wrong and try to persuade me, you could explain on what basis a person has the freedom as a Christian--not the right as a citizen, the freedom as a Christian--to verbally deride the President as a "bozo" and "0bama"?