Heart Form

We often refer to some human remark or conduct as being in bad taste – or we are impressed that it is in good taste.  Either may be bad or good.  The matter is usually recognized in acts of bad taste.  Like anything else in human thought and conduct there are variances in the intensity of expressions related to taste so that some instances the conduct has mild effect and sometimes deep and lasting influence both on the author(s) and receiver(s).  Formal education in our era does not deal seriously with this issue, and parents seem not to take it seriously enough to alert their children to the importance of it so to suggest that kindness and respect may be offered to all persons with whom they have to do.  Good taste in a context of relationships causes persons in that context to be lifted somewhat in their perceptions of self and others.

We have a common saying that covers a mystery in our lives: I love you with all my heart.  The reference is not challenged even though we know that our conscious thoughts and generator are seated in our brains.  We as human beings, unique to the nature around us, find ourselves developing into individuals and groups adopting patterns we reserve as our special right, and related to our identities.  They become seated in our being, so that we practice them without conscious thought.  They are sub-liminal to us, but become a part of us.  Some of the factors are small and some large, some important and some unimportant, but they are present.  We sometimes reveal this when we observe personality in this or that person or group.  Some of them we can’t account for.  They grew up in us because that is what we were subjected to in the course of everyday life, and we are often distracted from self-analysis and discipline to our own formation.  Both consciously and unconsciously we are forming ourselves into what we become.  Life falls into habits, permitted and repetitious, some to be followed, and some, when we understand ourselves, to be rejected or reformed.  One of these factors relates to what we call taste.  We are not to offend, even if we are right.

At this writing in 2014 we are going through a period of bad taste in the culture.  The four-letter swear words are now included in television and print; innuendos related to private sexual conducts are common; random mayhem is flashed across the screen even for products having nothing to do with the context; the sounds of voices and the responses of actors are often accented in ways unacceptable to the problem portrayed; and, so the story goes.  The contribution to society is that there is a taste that emerges.  Young people are now using language that forefathers might stop with a bit of soap in the mouths of their children.  Attitudes are taken that deny human respect.  It all may play a part in the repeated gun attacks on children in schools, persons at job locations and bars.  There is some mongrelizing of society, and society doesn’t know what to do about it.  Some of this can be traced back through the forces that form taste in society.

Most matters of taste are not so serious as to break over into dramatic events.  The lack of understanding taste and its meaning to relationships and the human condition becomes an important matter for Christians. In an article on advice in the newspaper, a syndicated columnist responded to a letter from a woman about a relative who, when he visits her home wears a T-shirt with the words across the chest: Christ died for your sins.  The hostess finds herself irritated and perplexed.  She is irritated in that the two persons know each other’s spiritual orientation, but he presses her in a passive-aggressive . . . proselytizing manner.  She is perplexed in knowing what to do so as to enjoy a family situation without the distraction of differences that have been addressed so to permit each person to press on without constant tension.  She feels she does not press her atheism on him.  The counselor suggests some responses, such as wearing a T-shirt in response: God made me an atheist.  The matter may not be settled with humor.  It isn’t funny.  The Christian has poor taste.  He little realizes that he presses his hostess into firmer unbelief.  Jesus made clear to his disciples to share the gospel, and if rejected in that to go on their way.  Christian duty is to live the faith life, affirm it, and get on in good will and taste.  We must be mature enough to adjust to what is offensive to persons, especially in their own homes.