Ranting

I'm really struggling with the use of acronyms lately. Not my use of them, but of others...usually in texts or on facebook. People who I know to be good upstanding members of the church (and others who aren't) have been using acronyms for, what I consider to be, highly offensive language, yet are trying to pass it off as something else. Take OMG, for instance. It's become practically a universal acronym for Oh my God! - right? Offensive. Isn't it an example of taking the Lord's name in vain? Am I wrong here?

I gave a Primary lesson a few weeks ago about speaking reverently about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. One of my eight-year-old kids said that it's okay to say and write "OMG" because you're not really saying the "bad word." NO! It's not okay. In my mind, you still mean the same thing. The person hearing or reading it is ingesting the spelled-out meaning. Abreviating it doesn't make it okay!

Another example I came across was someone who said, "Well, I mean 'Oh my gosh.' Anyone who knows me knows that's what I mean." Well, I know you and I didn't know that's what you meant. Come on. If the whole world thinks it means one thing, why would "those who know you" think you mean something else? Do we really need to be so much like the rest of the world that we are willing to stoop to such a low level? Are we so incredibly lazy that we can't spell out a four-letter word (g-o-s-h) to avoid any confustion whatsoever? Do we really want to put "those who know us" through the mental exercise of "Let's see...it's her who said it...and she's LDS...and from Utah...so surely she meant, "Oh my 'gosh.'"

I say, "WTH?!" (What the heck?!)