The F-bomb and Other Offenses

In three recent situations, I’ve stumbled on a common theme. Since one of those encounters was on Twitter — it seemed worthwhile to attempt a more robust, irenic, and thoughtful tone in a full post.

Start with a consideration of Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman recorded in Mark (and a similar encounter in Matthew). This was the sermon passage this past Sunday at my church. This passage is hard for me because I try to take the text seriously. Too often we create excuses for why the text doesn’t mean what it says. We try to soften it or massage it so it doesn’t hit us with the same force as it would its original hearers.

My second encounter around this topic was in conversation with family members who, appreciably, were outraged by Donald Trump’s vulgar language. In that conversation, I shared that I think we get it wrong if we are more upset by the bad language than by the actions that underlie it. To be clear, when a political leader uses language inappropriate for school children, that is a problem. What is a bigger problem is that he would view any human being as worthy of such a label. As my mother-in-law said, “He used this word about sons and about their mothers.”

There are few people in my life who are closer to my parents’ generation than mine who share both a commitment to Christ and civility. One friend, however, does continually set an example in Christian character by seeking out reconciliation, sharing the gospel in word and in deed with those imprisoned, and championing the cause of the unborn. On two occasions, this friend has challenged my decision to interact tweets that include harsh slang words-once in private and today, publicly.

Today, my friend asserted “When you believe you must use profanity to try to make a point, your point becomes pointless.” Knowing that I had shared clearly that the Bible uses offensive language, I thought such a challenge unusual — and a poor representation of the reality of Christian faith.

To be clear — I seldom use harsh slang, though on occasion I believe such words are important to communicate. As I’ve discussed with younger people that I have mentored, I believe that if we use words lightly we won’t have the tools we need when it is time to communicate. If every day things are described with the harshest words in our language, what will be left us to describe truly horrific acts?

The Bible is not over-run with vulgar or crude language, but no scholar of the original languages would argue that it is never present. Indeed, a strange characteristic of the text is that, at times, it is very circumspect in word choice — for example, when choosing the Hebrew expression for “feet” as a polite word for genitals or “covered his feet” to reference a bowel movement. However, there are certainly other settings in which quite offensive and vulgar language is used.

Language is a tricky thing. Particularly when dealing with slang terms, translation can permit us to gloss over offensive terms. Rather than choosing a word in the target language that carries the weight of the original, English translators have often chosen to translate into terms deemed acceptable by the dominate culture.

Consider a modern example: I have it on good authority from a native Spanish speaker that the word for bug, “bicho,” is in some countries used as a term for male genitalia. If I were translating “tiene un pequeño bicho”from that country, I could translate the word directly: “he has a small bug.” But this wouldn’t carry the same meaning as the original. I could, as many Bible translators might, use polite or formal language: “he has small genitalia” or “he has a small penis.” But, if I wanted to make the impression that a phrase would have made on the original hearer, I need to find a word that 1) slang and informal and 2) carries the idea of genitalia and 3) could be used as a put-down. The best, more accurate translation would be “he has a small dick” or “he has a tiny cock.”

Circling back to Mark, Jesus is using a slang word for dog to refer to a woman. While we can translate this as “dog” to make it comfortable for us, a translation that carries the 1) slang 2) diminutive 3) racial overtones might be “my little bitch.” But this is hard for us to imagine because we have created a comfortable, polite, White middle-class Jesus. “Stand in line and wait your turn. The children eat first, then the little bitches” is too devastating when it comes from Jesus mouth.

And here is the rub — and why I argued with my friend: when we create a sanitized Bible and a suburban Jesus, we become offended at the wrong things. We refuse to listen when people say, “my life is fucking awful.” We get so caught up on tone policing that we miss the human interaction. As Tony Campolo made famous, children are dying from preventable diseases and the Church doesn’t give a damn; we are more upset that he said “damn” in church than we are that people are dying. We spend more time complaining that the President cussed than considering our actions that put him in power or our complicity in the oppression that he perpetuates. The shocking language of the Bible drives us to consider the marginalized humanity of the text and of our own lives.

If we can hear the offensive words in Jesus’ address to the oppressed racial minority, we might read this story differently. We might realize that we need to look past social politeness and proper culture to engage with the human behind the offensive words. David Henson summarizes it well.

So what are we to make of this exchange?

Where exactly is the good news?

This, I think, is the great lesson of the Syrophoenician woman. It teaches us the dynamics of power and prejudice, of how even the best of humanity — the Incarnation himself — can get caught up in systems of oppression, in a culture of supremacy. Like many of us today, Jesus would have been reared into a prejudiced worldview.

Jesus, given his embedded culture, could not be colorblind (or ethnicity blind as it were). And neither can we.

But being caught in such evil, however, does not make one an overt racist. It is what happens in the moments afterwards that makes that determination. How we respond, when confronted with the narratives of the oppressed or the Other, reveal who we truly are. Do we continue to ignore or deny these realities of oppression? Mock them? Continue to brush them aside with dismissive prejudice as dogs?

Or do we, like Jesus, do the miraculous and listen to them, be changed by the power of the truth of they are speaking?

When this woman, in boldness, confronts Jesus and his ethnic slur, Jesus listens. And he hears.

It is the only time recorded in the gospels in which Jesus changes his mind.

My friend challenged me to consider what I would do when my children start using offensive language. I pray that I’ll be Christ-like enough to listen.