Adaptation or Abandoment?

Something that I’m finding interesting and picking up on more and more is the difference in language. Having grown up in a Christian family, I realize that a lot of my morals are based on what my parents taught me and how I was brought up. Growing up, my parents told me not to drink, do drugs, have sex, and use profanity. Swearing in my family was a definite no-no.
In high school, people knew that I didn’t party and that I didn’t swear. If you were to ask someone that I went to high school with about me, I would guarantee that they would say something about me being the “Christian girl” or the “goody two shoes.” I took pride in the fact that people knew what I stood for.

Coming to a different culture, I obviously encounter differences in language or even in meaning. Growing up with swearing not being allowed or looked at really negatively, I never would have dreamt to swear, especially not in front of a complete stranger. Each week, I help out with a Christian after school program called “Champions.” It runs from 2-5 pm on Thursday afternoons.

Today I was in charge of making the sandwiches (using three loaves of bread), cutting ten apples, cutting ten oranges, and making four bottles of juice. I had made Marmite sandwiches, which are disgusting, but I had to make them. The senior pastor’s son, Joshua, came up and grabbed a Marmite sandwich, and came up to me and said, “Why does this Marmite sandwich taste like ass?” I had to turn my head and ask him what he just said and he said it all over again.
I’m so blown away that profanity is acceptable here, even from a nine-year old, but in the States, in a Christian household it would be deemed unacceptable.

Why is that? What’s changed from culture to culture? What makes things acceptable here that are unacceptable back home? How do I determine what’s right and wrong to me while I’m here. If I’m to adapt to the culture, does that mean that I should include profanity because they don’t think that it’s wrong at all? Where do we draw the line from adaptation or abandonment of all that we’ve come to know and make our own?