I was reading an article about Ballmer’s comments on Windows on servers. Apparently, he claimed that Linux was not gaining market share on the server side, and that raised the ire of the Digg community. One poster, however, wanted to find a source of actual sales numbers. His last sentence read, “I’m not defending him, but please look for the numbers before calling him an effin liar.”

I spent ten minutes wondering what the adjective “effin” meant.

When I realized that it was a euphemism, I laughed at myself. Sometimes I can be danged literal.

I was about to continue on with other things (like paying bills) when I began to think about the use of euphemisms. It’s an age old question – is a euphemism for a profanity profane itself? More pointedly, am I breaking the third commandment by using a euphemism? Am I, as Mennonites contend, not letting my “yea be yea and my no be no” when I use any kind of expletive?

In pondering the question, I thought about two series of articles from two different bloggers. The first is a series on “The Little Things” posted on the Cerulean Sanctum. The second is a series on the Sandbridge Creek address and aftermath posted on Christian Unity. The former speaks to the need to focus on the little things because they make a difference in our lives. The latter speaks to the danger of binding inferences, which usually appear in the form of binding little things as divine mandate. (By little things I mean things such as one cup, one loaf, no kitchen attached to the sanctuary, etc, as opposed to big things like the divinity of Jesus.)

This also lead me to think about the definition of spiritual depth. The Pharisees defined spiritual depth by the hedge they placed around the Torah. As Jesus remarked, they even tithed their spices. Some Christians define spiritual depth by their wealth of knowledge: Did you know that the word unicorn is used eight time in the KJV(AV1611)? Did you know that God is not mentioned in Esther? Other Christians define depth by what they do. As Paul remarked to the Corinthians, if a person moves mountains, heals the sick, and gives their possessions to the poor and yet doesn’t have love, the actions were meaningless. Still others look for some mystical connection. Talk to any good Kabbalahist and you will find the number of the word ‘love’ and the number of the word ‘oneness’ is the same. That fact means that love is related to oneness, presumably oneness with God. Other items are used as markers of spiritual depth as well. These include length and/or intensity of prayers, amount of liberty, allegorizing the Old Testament, learning Greek and Hebrew (with bonus points for learning Aramaic), reading multiple translations of the Bible, and the rate of gaining ‘new’ insights.

All of these things are important, even the mysticism (though not through numerology), but are they spiritual depth? Do they demonstrate spiritual depth even if they are not good measures of spiritual depth?

What does any of this have to do with breaking the third commandment? Good question. My overall thoughts lead me to wonder if focusing on little things like this is truly beneficial. Minutia lead to the fractionalization of the Restoration Movement. Focusing on the little things ultimately led the Pharisees away from God. Is it a good practice to focus on these little things in my life?