And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean, Ezekiel 44:23.
It is sometimes taught that to be profane is to be unholy. I'm sure that profanity is unholy, but never make "unholy and "profane" to be synonymous. That can be seen by the King James Translators using both the words "unholy" and "profane" in the same verse. Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 1st Timothy 1:19.
Still, there are times when "profane seems to be used as the opposite of holy as in this verse, they have put no difference between the holy and profane, Ezekiel 22:26. That is because profanity is a form of unholiness. The Oxford English Dictionary carries this definition for "profane": To treat (something sacred) with irreverence, disrespect, or contempt; to desecrate. Profanity is a special kind of unholiness. To take something that is truly holy and to treat it as a common thing is profane.
Profanity is different than cursing. To curse something is to damn it or to place a judgment against it. In Adam we were born under the curse of sin and we were rightly damned. The Lord himself curses many things. He placed a curse on the ground which he removed in Noah, Genesis 8:21. He placed a curse on unfaithful women, And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, Numbers 5:22.
When men curse they are usually just foolish idiots cursing something in their lives that has displeased them. They hit their thumb with a hammer and utter a curse damning the hammer. They are angry with a neighbor and they describe him as damned by God. What is far more common is profanity. God's names are cast about in daily conversation with a profanity that should vex the soul of the just. When someone wants to use an exclamation point they'll utter the words, "Jesus Christ", or worse yet they give him a middle initial or vulgar middle name. That is profanity. They have taken a holy name and they have dragged it down to depths of their sin.
Esau is described as a profane person. Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright, Hebrews 12:16. That is explained in that he sold his birthright for one morsel of meat. Imagine being born into Abraham's family. Imagine having Isaac for a father. Imagine what it would be like hearing about the great heritage that comes from Abraham's lineage and the great promises made to his offspring.
There can be no doubt that Esau grew up hearing those things. Yet when he thought that he was about to starve, he cashed in his chips. His heritage meant nothing to him and the promises of God seemed as nothing. The promises of God were not mixed with faith in his heart and he saw them as just a common thing. He is described as profane. Our churches are filled with just such people who can mouth the promises of God but who consistently reach for earthly answers and worldly escapes when confronted by doubt or temptation.
What shall we say of the new versions of the bible? We have a King James Bible whose heritage is the heritage of men who burned at the stake to secure a proper text. It is the heritage of men who spent a lifetime in holy pursuit of the truth. These are men who with exhaustive research and with a fear of God separated the words of God apart form the counterfeits wherein they were mixed. Their work produced the holiest book ever written in English and a book that spawned nations. They understood that the words of God were indeed holy words to be kept sacred.
Juxtapose that with the new versions wherein committees of every whim and doctrine, along with perverts and rank heretics, lightly peruse existing texts to come up with one more profane mixture of the words of God. They intermix them with the words of 5th century philosophers and agnostics. Whereas the King James Translators, and similar men in other countries approached the sacred words of scripture with awe, these men approach the words with an eye to copyright and profit.
If a juror in a court case reviewed sworn testimony and tried to call all testimony of equal rank even when two or more witnesses said varying things, he would be called an unjust juror. When men seek to harmonize the disparate testimonies of the various documents that have come down to us in history as if they were all one, and treated them as if they needed no more sorting out than the various trinkets found at an archeological dig, those men have profaned the words of God.
They are profane men. They may pride themselves on having rooted out every idle word from their vocabularies so that no listener would ever catch the hint of profanity in them, but then they turn around and swallow a camel. They despise the promise of God that; Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away, Mark 13:31. The very premise behind the new versions is that we are not sure where those words are. How are they different from Esau who when confronted by worldly doubt, wondered wherein the promise of God could be?
Each year, profane men and women will remix the sundry manuscripts and with no more holiness than Hollywood screenwriters, produce a new version. Each year profane preachers will shill for these men. Each year profane men and women will buy into the scheme.