Last week I saw a quotation at @deadsoulpoetry on X (formerly Twitter) that said, “2000 years from now, people will not understand the difference between butt dial and booty call, and this is exactly why the Bible is hard to understand.”
While I would personally replace “is hard to understand” with “takes work to understand,” the overall point is the same.
Context matters.
Butt Dial or Booty Call?
Butt and booty are synonyms (or can be, at least). Call and dial can also be very close in meaning. Put them together, however, and you have two phrases that mean entirely different things.
Those of us who are familiar with the terms butt dial and booty call recognize the difference.
But what if you were a linguist two thousand years from now, your specialty was twenty-first century English, you came across those two terms in a manuscript in an ancient format called Facebook, and you had not yet discovered the Rosetta Stone of our time period’s slang known as the Urban Dictionary?
Context Clues
By examining what comes before and after those phrases, you could probably glean that in this case, the word booty is not referring to a pirate’s treasure, but to a person’s rear end. Call might be a bit more difficult, but with context you can make out that it means to contact somebody, and thankfully this particular passage references a phone, so chances are that that’s what you’re using.
So then you look at butt dial. Being extremely lucky with the passage you’re studying, you can tell that these two words also are referring to a person’s rear end and phone usage.
Since the parallel words in each phrase have parallel meanings, it would stand to reason that the two phrases also had at least similar meanings.
You would be hilariously wrong.
Without cultural and historical context and without a working knowledge of the slang of the time and place, you as a linguist would almost certainly miss the point of whatever it is you’re reading.
Biblical Context
Now, instead of a silly and current example in English, let’s say we’re talking about the Bible. Our first step in our initial example was to look at the surrounding sentences, since the words we’re studying could have multiple meanings, depending on their usage. So we do that. Next, we think back to what we know about the culture, the geography, maybe what was going on in the world when it was written. We check to see if some form of that word has been used elsewhere, and if so, how it was used. And if this is the only usage, we consider why that might be and what significance that might have.
After the difficult work of translating is done, there comes what can be an almost equally difficult task of making meaning from the translation. What is it that God is trying to say to us here? How does that affect how we live our lives, how we approach our relationships, how we understand right and wrong, who God is and what God wants?
Without context, the conclusions we come to might be as different from the original intent as the difference between butt dial and booty call.
Except with a book like the Bible, the stakes are much, much higher.
Taking Scripture Seriously
Who would you say takes the importance of the phrase meanings more seriously: the one who studies the language and idioms, recognizing first of all that neither the term butt dial nor booty call is to be taken literally and also that even though the parallel words in each phrase are synonyms, the phrases themselves have drastically different meanings?
Or the one who says “we should always take it literally because it means what it says—stop trying to twist it/water it down to fit your own ideas?”
When it comes to the Bible, I (and many I know) try to be in that first group of people. And we are consistently told by the second group of people that we don’t care about Scripture, that we twist it, that we’re just telling people what they want to hear.
Who’s Actually Taking the Bible Seriously?
Fine…if you want people 2,000 years from now to think in the Facebook message they discover from you that you were apologizing for an accidental booty call when you were actually apologizing for a butt dial, I guess that’s your prerogative. But let’s be real and call it what it is—when you do the same sort of thing with the Bible, it’s you who are actually not taking the text and how God is speaking through it seriously. You aren’t giving it the reverent thought it deserves.
When a person doesn’t care about context—literary, historical, or otherwise—not only do they miss out on the gorgeous richness of Scripture, they run the risk of developing a theology that runs counter to God’s mission of healing, reconciliation, and life.
That is exactly what so much of the American church has done.
What Have We Done?
Despite Jesus’s breaking down walls of patriarchy through his interactions, his followers, and his choice of Mary Magdalene to be the first proclaimer of the resurrection, much of the American church views women through a patriarchal lens.
Despite Paul’s invention of two Greek words to try to describe Roman practices of cultic pederasty, much of the American church sees the LGBTQ+ community as inherently sinful.
Despite The Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the example of the early church in living as community, of putting your neighbors’ needs on at least the same level as your own, much of the American church focuses on what we have the right to do for ourselves instead of what is right to do for our neighbor.
Despite God’s repeated command to care for the poor and most vulnerable, much of the American church opposes programs and policies that would do exactly that.
Despite seeing the different types of literature that make up the Bible and reading each as intended—poetry as poetry, apocalyptic as apocalyptic, fable as fable,
I could keep going.
We’ve Gotta Do the Work
Language matters. Context matters. History matters. Culture matters.
That’s not to say that Biblical scholars should be gatekeepers of Scripture. It does mean, however, owe it to ourselves, our neighbor, and God to do everything we can to really understand what the Bible is saying before we make decisions that impact our lives or the lives of others.
The American church, by and large, has done a terrible job of that. We can see the effects in almost every facet of society.
And there’s a lot more on the line than the difference between butt dial and booty call.
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