- CURSE
kərs noun. A solemn utterance, meant to invoke supernatural evil, punishment, or harm. - 2. verb. Invoke supernatural evil, punishment, or harm.
- 3. noun. Cause of evil or suffering.
- [Curser
'kərs.ər noun.]
Years ago, when I taught at a Christian school, I had a mom ask for a meeting to object to something I wrote on her son’s report card. The boy wanted to grow up to have a highly technical job… but he didn’t do his homework. In any of his classes. I’d told him more than once, “If you don’t do your homework, you’re not gonna get the future you want.” And that’s what I wrote on his report card… and his mom was offended. She claimed I’d “word-cursed” him.
What on earth is a “word curse”? It’s a curse. In some churches they claim every negative thing we say, whether we intend them to be acutal binding curses or not, are actual binding curses. And true, sometimes the things we say will get into someone’s head and affect them for years. I’ve met people who were seriously hindered by the awful things their parents, teachers, pastors, bosses, or coaches told them. They believed that junk, and it still messes with them. It surely worked like a curse! So that’s what these Christians claim they are. It’s an unpleasant word… which is functionally a curse.
Okay, those who teach about “word curses” kinda have a valid point. But by their definition of “word curses,” I actually didn’t curse the boy. My comment is an if-then statement. If you don’t do X, then Y. It’s conditional. And a whole bunch of God’s messages are conditional: If you obey him, then you get blessed. If you don’t, then you don’t. That’s not a curse; that’s a warning. Fulfill the conditions!
Ultimately she agreed with me… but I can’t fault her at all for being sensitive about curses. I certainly didn’t wanna hinder my student by making him believe he wasn’t capable. Quite the contrary!
But you’ll find certain Christians are extremely sensitive about “word curses.” And of course regular curses. And “cursing,” by which we mean profanity,
Among certain
See, according to these fearful folks, all our words—including idle ones—spoken into the atmosphere, have the power to create and destroy. They figure we humans are made in God’s image,
Which is rubbish; it’s based on
Don’t get me wrong. The spoken word isn’t a powerless thing. Words can build up; words can tear down. I can make someone’s day by giving ’em a compliment. I can ruin their life by criticizing ’em at the wrong time. That’s what Solomon meant when he wrote death and life are in the tongue.
But the idea my words have magical power that might trigger a reaction in nature around us, and create all sorts of unintended horrors: Not biblical. Ridiculous.
And illogical too. You’ll notice all the Christians who fear accidentally destroying stuff through their “word curses,” somehow never worry about accidentally blessing stuff. “Gee, it looks like the weather today will be really nice!” never seems to force the clouds to dissipate. Nope. Blessings have always gotta be intentional, but curses can be accidental.
God’s children are curse-proof.
Whenever I encounter a worry-ridden dark Christian who’s terrified they’ve just been “word-cursed” by someone who wished them evil, I gotta remind them (or inform them for the very first time): We Christians are curse-proof.
Seriously. Curse-proof.
Satan can’t curse us. Other people can’t curse us. Oh, they’ll try. It’ll range from people whom you’ve annoyed, intentionally or not, who wish all sorts of hateful vibes upon you; to Christians who pray God might smite some sense into you; to capital-p Pagans who seriously dabble in magic, trying to hex you. This isn’t just the “
And none of it’s gonna work. At all. Not just ’cause these people’s vibes, prayers, or spells have no power. Even if they did have power, it’d bounce off you like a rigged carnival game.
What God has blessed, nothing and no one can successfully curse.
Dark Christians, to be blunt, don’t trust God. Their whole relationship with him is purely contractual: They said
“But what about the word curses said over me?” Oh, all the lies spoken over you which you’ve chosen to believe, and permitted to influence your life? Stop believing them. Stop granting them power over you. Reject them. When they pop into your head, rebuke them. No, I’m not at all saying it’s easy to do this.
God’s children aren’t to curse people. (This includes you!)
During Jesus’s earthly ministry, he never cursed a single human being. Not one. Ever.
People who believe in “word curses” might be thrown into an utter panic when anyone says something like Jesus’s, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.”
- Sin, and something worse than paralysis happens to him.
- Sin—and out of
pure dumb luck, worse doesn’t happen. But the odds of this aren’t good; hence Jesus’s warning. - Sin not, and something worse doesn’t happen to him.
- Sin not, and accidents happen anyway—but these accidents absolutely aren’t any consequence of sin.
But whatever ultimately happened to this guy, Jesus didn’t mean him harm! Only blessing. And if the guy heeded Jesus’s warning, worse shouldn’t happen.
Nope; Jesus cursed nobody. But he did curse a tree once. “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,” he declared.
Mark 11.23-24 KJV 23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
It wasn’t to tell his kids, “Go ahead and curse fruit trees whenever they don’t do as you want.” Nor go ahead and curse people when they don’t do as we want. Curse no one. “Bless your cursers,” Jesus elsewhere instructed;
Well what if we do curse people? Will they shrivel up like the fig tree? Not necessarily. God doesn’t say yes to requests for him to do evil.
Yep, there are biblical commands which specifically forbid cursing certain individuals.
- Don’t curse God;
Lv 24.15 duh. - Don’t curse your parents.
Ex 21.17, Lv 20.9 - Don’t curse a ruler.
Ex 22.28 (Man, are somepartisan Christians in trouble for this one.)
When we read of Old Testament saints cursing people, often it’s curses upon any generic person who commits a certain sin. Like anyone who makes idols,
Now, cursing objects—yeah, God’s okay with that, depending on our motives. The tree Jesus cursed, fr’instance. If you have had it with that vending machine which keeps stealing your money and not giving you soda, you go right ahead and curse that machine if you wanna. Condemn it to utter ruin. Of course, you might feel silly doing so… and probably should. It’s only an inanimate object, after all. And taking a sledgehammer to it might be way more effective than your curses.
Cursing yourself. (Whoops.)
So if God won’t let other people curse us, and God won’t permit us to curse others, are there any curses we oughta worry about?
Yes. Those curses in the scriptures against generic sinners: Let’s not become one of those generic sinners! Don’t commit those sins. No secretly moving your property lines around,
Then there are the curses we call down upon ourselves. This practice is a little more common. No, it’s not necessarily where people say, “May my genitals rot off if I ever do
Even so, God does hold people to our promises.
And some of us have called down similar things. When you first became Christian, didn’t you promise to follow Jesus? Heck, just about all of us have—and we’ve made similar promises ever since. Some churches make it a regular part of their worship services, where the pastor gets up and prays, “God, we promise to do everything you ask of us!”—
They have a ridiculously easy solution, though:
