The other day I tripped going up the Presbytery stairs with a pile of papers and slid painfully (but unharmed) down most of the flight. Each step I bounced off was accompanied by a colourful word of the kind priests allegedly don't use which at least shows I have a fair number stored in my subconscious reserved for unguarded moments.

When Jesus says "Do not swear at all" [Matthew 5:341 we may not realise that he was referring not to "naughty words" but to the taking of elaborate (and unkeepable) oaths binding the person who made them to a course of action. "I swear by my own life ... I swear by God's name". It would be interesting to know what Jesus would make of swearing by the Bible to tell the truth for example.

What also would Jesus make of the information that his name, according to a 1997 survey of the offensiveness of swear words and insults on TV, comes only 26th out of 30 with a rating of 1.1 out of 4 preceded by a long list made up of the anatomical, the racist, and the depraved? One can almost believe it is true that someone was asked "Who is Jesus Christ?" and answered "Isn't that a swear word?"

'Inappropriate speech' is effective if it pulls people up with a start and makes a point. When Clark Gable says to Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939): "Frankly my dear I couldn't give a damn" it may seem small beer but it wasn't then. It had a point like Eliza Doolittle's "not bloody likely". Nowadays there is so much 'f...ing and b...ing' in the media that it has become the equivalent of "um" and "er".

We may not be aware that the Bible has a place for bad language. The prophet Jeremiah attacks hypocrisy in the language of a trooper. But it has all been ironed out in the translations. Possibly this is just as well as otherwise we would never concentrate on the message. The playwright Dennis Potter said that if he was dealing with a controversial theme he would always put in a few "f....s" to put sensitive people off the scent and help them miss the point!

Does our language help our message? The most offensive language in the Bible, looked at from one point of view, is Jesus' own. When he said "I am" he equated himself with God and committed the ultimate 'blasphemy'. Not bad language as we see it, but at the time deeply shocking, and totally true.