For Those Whose Heart Language Is Tawdry

The notion of “heart language” is commonplace in missions today. Though a people group may know enough of the nation’s official language to make their way about in society, they have a particular openness to the gospel preached in their native tongue. So, for example, First Baptist Church in Lilburn, Georgia, hosts an ethnic congregation whose services are held in the first language of Ethiopians in the Atlanta area, Amharic.¹ Similarly, the Jesus Film Project has translated their movie into hundreds of tongues so that they might “give people the Word of God—in their heart language!”²

Though the expression, “heart language,” refers primarily to speech indigenous to foreign lands, it has also been appropriated to describe expression meant to connect with sectors of society sharing the same dictionary, but with their own cultural preferences. For instance, to speak the “heart language” of baby boomers, one might “tap into their leftover idealism” and “help them feel cool.”³

One does not have to spend much time in contact with American popular media to discern another people group, one whose heart language appears to be Tawdry. It’s the native tongue of any number of comedians who prefer to work “blue,” to the delight of guffawing audiences everywhere. You can hear it in the “premium cable” rants of HBO’s Bill Maher and in the verse of F-bomb-hurling rappers on both the East and West Coasts. And the “progressive” sorts in “flyover country” are doing their best to get up to speed.

Take, for instance, the glossy, four-color freebies one finds stacked at the entrances to restaurants in Louisville (Leo) and Nashville (Nashville Scene). While touting and reviewing the parade of entertainments available in their cities and offering an “insider’s” cynical take on what’s happening in the neighborhood, they salt their pages with smug naughtiness, even in the headlines. For instance, an issue of Nashville Scene offers up columns under the “clever,” excreta-oriented titles, “Pith in the Wind” and “Circling the Bowls” (the latter about football).⁴ Then, Leo features a column about the early end of a concert under the sexually-tinged heading, “Premature Evacuation.”⁵ It’s utterly gratuitous, but apparently it lights up either the publisher or the readers or both.

Now this heart language is being spoken loud and clear in the political arena. The frequently-nude, heavily-tattooed, often-obscene, and exhaustively-celebrated Lena Dunham, creator and star of HBO’s series, Girls,⁶ has made an ad in which she compares voting to sex. She salaciously urges young viewers to make their “first time” special, in this case by choosing Obama.⁷ And the ever-charming Michael Moore joins in the political cause with a singularly-vile ad featuring nursing home residents saying what they like to do to Romney and his voters.⁸

Supposedly this will energize a section of the base, the Tawdry people group whose heart language is scatology and sleaze. Perhaps, though, it will make for a sorry spectacle in the estimation of most and force embarrassed reflection among the Tawdry. Maybe the purveyors of such material will simply retreat underground and clear the air for a season.

It probably goes without saying, but one hopes that well-meaning missionaries to the Tawdry will not try to reach them with their heart language. There are, after all, proper linguistic limits to Great Commission work.

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