Why I Talk Like a Bartender, Part III
In which we see that the Bible should have its mouth washed out with soap
Note: Between a busy week and the Fourth, I’m a little behind today, so I apologize for the late post and resulting delay of Friday Happy Hour.
In Part I, I talked about harshly judging Christians who said bad words, until I discovered how culturally-based profanity is. Then, in Part II, I began examining the arguments against profanity, starting with the passages about swearing, cursing, and taking the Lord’s name in vain.
In general, Bible college talent shows are...dull. One exception was the time my friend and roommate did a dramatic monologue about a college student learning to trust God in the face of unrequited love. The substance of the monologue was unexceptionally trite and would have also been dull had it not been trainwreckingly obvious to everyone in the chapel (except him) that he’d merely slapped new names on his recent heartbreak—especially when he accidentally referred to the love interest by her actual name. Five minutes of delicious awkwardness that was in no way inferior to attending Steve Carrell/Michael Scott’s diversity training.
Then there was the “Mime Your Favorite Bible Verse” guessing game. Mostly flannel graph-ish, forgettable presentations, except this one...let me see if I can explain it. Three guys, one rolled up in the fetal position on the ground. The second guy kinda tosses the third guy into the first, then looks to heaven with folded hands and a saintly smile.
Huh?
They repeated the sketch. There we were, all Bible college students who knew the Bible annoyingly well but couldn’t match it to anything we’d read. So, the second guy opened up a Bible and read Psalm 137:9:
Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
Wow, I’d love to see the flannel graph for that one. I could write a whole post about the “cursing Psalms” and how they grant us permission to give full vent to our pain, but that’s not my point.
(Okay, one quick thing. I’ve oft uttered this prayer that’s my very loose paraphrase of Psalm 44: “O Maker of Heaven and Earth...what the fuck are you doing? Yet I will trust you.” Perhaps that seems blasphemous to you, but I find it preferable to the dishonesty of feeling fuck-level anguish and confusion but offering up polite prayers.)
So...my point. The Bible is often rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.
Case-in-point, another verse I never saw in flannel graph form:
Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses (Ezekiel 23:19-20, NIV).
I could continue with Ezekiel’s denunciation of Judah’s idolatry, but it would practically require a trigger warning.
On that note, let’s continue looking at what the Bible actually says about swearing by examining the three main passages used to condemn Christians who talk like bartenders.
Filthy language in Colossians 3:8
But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips (Colossians 3:8, NIV).
The word translated “filthy language” is aischrologia, which is a hapex legomenon, i.e., a word that only occurs once in the Bible. This is important because there are no ancient versions of Webster’s dictionary, so we only know what words mean by examining their general usage, making it harder for scholars to define rarely used words. BTW: this is especially true in the OT, where there are far fewer ancient non-Biblical sources and is the reason you’ll often see footnotes like, “Meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain.”
In the case of aischrologia, there’s disagreement about how it should be translated, with some scholars saying that “abusive speech” is more accurate (Gingrich’s Greek lexicon, NASB, and NLT). Given the context of “anger, rage, malice,” I agree. In other words, this verse isn’t about saying bad words per se, but speaking abusively, with anger and rage. Certainly, this includes profanity-filled tirades, but also whispered, G-rated verbal assaults.
Moldy words in Ephesians 4:29
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen (Ephesians 4:29, NIV).
“Unwholesome talk” could be more colorfully translated “rotten words.” Yep, I’ve been guilty of moldy words and sometimes they included profanities. But the vast majority of destruction that has escaped my lips has been un-bleepable. Conversely, some of the most lifegiving words I’ve received were well-salted with profanities.
Focusing on a list of prohibited words can cause us to miss greater matters. I mean, which would you prefer to hear from someone whose opinion you deeply value: A sincere, “God is fucking crazy about you. Never, ever forget that.” Or a patronizing, “Well, bless your little heart.”
Potty talk and naught bits in Ephesians 5:3-4
But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving (Ephesians 5:3-4, NIV).
While “obscenity,” “foolish talk,” and “coarse joking” are all hapex legomena, their combined effect, along with the context of sexual immorality and impurity make their meaning reasonably clear. First, what it is not.
It does not condemn “potty talk,” as the Bible has a rich tradition of scatological humor.
And at noon Elijah mocked [the prophets of Baal], saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (1 Kings 18:27, ESV, emphasis added).
In fact, the Bible is less prudish about our bodily functions than we are. Here’s an excerpt from my book, Radically Normal:
I recently finished a three-year series preaching through the Bible. For me, the biggest surprise of the series was discovering how much I enjoyed the Torah and the Mosaic Law. In it, I was able to see God’s interest in everyday life. Chapter after chapter deals with normal, earthly things—from crop rotation to another very practical matter:
As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement (Deuteronomy 23:13).
Why is it so hard for us to believe that verse is in the Bible? Because it seems so “unspiritual.” By the way, did you know that Jesus talked about using a toilet? See if you can spot it:
“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? (Matthew 15:16-17)
Did you find it? No? That’s because almost all English translations leave it out. In the original Greek, it actually says, “...whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is expelled into the toilet.” Or it could be translated “sewer.” Either way, I find that very interesting: Why did translators feel the need to censor that out? What does that say about how we read the Bible? I’ll tell you one thing, God is far more comfortable with our bodily functions than we are—he doesn’t even blush when talking about menstrual cycles and nocturnal emissions. How much more is he comfortable with all the normal things of this life?
See what I’m saying here? Our hyper-spirituality has us actually bleeping out Jesus when he talks about using the shitter. It’s like we see him as so sanctified that we’d be afraid to fart in front of him, but I’d bet $1,000,000 that he not only farted but cracked plenty of fart jokes with the disciples. (If we get to heaven and I’m proved wrong, I’ll gladly pay up.)
Okay, bodily functions and potty humor are not “course jesting.” Nor does this verse mean we should return to the prudish 1950’s American/evangelical zeitgeist that was scandalized by any talk of sexual matters and blushed at words like “tampon.” Don’t believe me? Read Song of Solomon.
Okay, we can talk about sex in poetic language and reverent tone, but surely we shouldn’t joke about or make light of sexual matters, right?
Oh, wait. The donkey balls verse. And don’t call me Shirley.
Then there’s this little gem, where St. Paul expresses his feelings about the false teachers telling new Christians that they needed to be circumcised. First, in a more sanitized translation:
I wish that those who are troubling you would even emasculate themselves (Galatians 5:12, NASB)
The Contemporary English Version, however, made me laugh aloud and (I believe) better captures the sarcasm of the original Greek:
I wish everyone who is upsetting you would not only get circumcised, but would cut off much more! (Galatians 5:12, CEV)
Okay, that’s legitimately funny, and it’s from the guy who said, “no course joking.” Also the guy who wrote “shit” into the Holy Bible:
What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ (Philippians 3:8, NIV).
Only “garbage” is (yet again) a sanitized translation. KJV is closer with “dung,” but not quite there. The Greek word is skubalon and is another hapex legomenon. As I said earlier, we don’t have ancient dictionaries, so scholars have to look at how the word was used in other writings. Here’s what we know. It means fecal matter. It’s found in various inscriptions but “only with hesitation does literature seem to have adopted it from popular speech.”[1] And there’s a colorful story about a seagull pooping in a sailor’s eye and him shouting, “Skubalon!” Finally, here’s the NET’s textual note:
“The word here translated dung’ was often used in Greek as a vulgar term for fecal matter. As such it would most likely have had a certain shock value for the readers. This may well be Paul's meaning here, especially since the context is about what the flesh produces.”
Similarly, Christianity Today’s recent article, Should the Bible Sound Like the Language in the Streets?[2] says,
English translations in the past century have also cleaned up words that Wycliffe had no problem using. A taunt from an Assyrian military figure toward Israelites in Isaiah 36:12 went from insulting them as men who “eat their turds, and drink the p— off their feet” to people who “eat their own excrement and drink their own urine” in the NIV.
“Our modern evangelical ideas about the use of language are much more uptight than the original biblical text itself,” Warren-Rothlin said. “The perspective [we’re] seeing it from is itself odd in the perspective of history.”
He noted that the prophets used very strong language when speaking about the ways Israel had strayed from God, and “famously Paul uses this word skubalon, which some people think meant something like s—” in Philippians 3:8 when comparing his former accomplishments to knowing Christ.
So, there are my thoughts on what some of these key passages don’t mean. But what, exactly, is the “obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking” that should be absent from our mouths and replaced by thanksgiving?
I wish I could give some clearcut answer, but it isn’t as simple as a list of words we can’t say. That would be seriously easier. And shorter. So, looks like I have to stretch this out another week. Join me next time when I share what I taught my own daughters about swearing.
[1] Theological Dictionary of the New Testament
[2] Angela Lu Fulton, March, 2024