The Bible says, “There is no God.”
Really — it does. Psalm 14:1. Four little words that look like atheism carved into scripture.
Some of you have undoubtedly run to check the citation and are now rushing back to scream in the comments: “YOU ARE TAKING IT OUT OF CONTEXT.”
And yes, I am. If you didn’t quickly Google the citation, here is the entire verse: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.” Technically, I wasn’t incorrect in asserting that the Bible says there is no God, but the full context of the verse means quite the opposite.
Much has been made in the weeks after Charlie Kirk’s assassination about the term “context.” As quotes illustrating his more controversial takes have circulated, his defenders argue that the short clips don’t represent the full picture. But his critics argue that the larger picture actually makes the clips seem worse, not better.
So before we throw around “out of context” like confetti in the comments section, let’s slow down and look at what context actually is.
The line itself: the words chosen.
The conversation: what came before and after.
The setting: the event, audience, or medium.
The history: what led the speaker to this place.
The consequences: how those words were received and used.
Each one adds meaning. Leave any of them out, and you don’t have the whole picture.
The same sentences shouted at a protest might look very different whispered into the ear of an assistant at a private meeting. They can carry one meaning if they’re a joke and another if they’re part of a policy speech. A comment made in 1965 may not convey the same thing in 2025. And even the consequences matter, because words are not inert — we have assigned deep meanings to them that shape how people feel and act. “Context” is all of these pieces together, not just the transcript of a single line.
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It was the summer of 1936. The Great Depression was gutting families, breadlines stretched for blocks, and millions of people found themselves homeless. (In fact, there were far more people without homes during the Great Depression than there are in the United States today.) President Franklin Roosevelt addressed a large crowd in Chautauqua, NY, and said, “We are not isolationists.” The newspapers could have ripped that quote and splashed it across the front pages to convey that FDR intended to drag America into the eye of the gathering hurricane across the Atlantic. But then he continued, “... except insofar as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war.”
When you listen all the way to the period, you hear what Roosevelt actually meant: he didn’t want to involve the United States in Europe’s octopus of alliances. Slice the sentence in half, and you end up believing he meant the opposite of what he said. That is the difference between the truth and distortion — an important component of understanding context.
Importantly, we should note that later, FDR did mean to involve the United States in WWII, and he gave speeches conveying that. But the fact that he later changed his mind (because of Pearl Harbor) did not negate what he previously said. We cannot now accurately claim that “FDR always wanted to go to war, you misunderstood him, you took his statements out of context, you obviously HATE FDR, HOW COULD YOU.”
And that brings us back to the present, where discussions of Kirk’s legacy have erupted into thousands of death threats and relentless vitriol against creators who bring up his statements. The question is not whether context matters — of course it does. The question is whether we are willing to use it honestly, when it upholds our already-held views and when it refutes them.
Sometimes people do get the context wrong and misinterpret a short snippet when the speaker actually meant something different. And sometimes dropping the words “out of context” in the comment section is a way of waving off words without being forced to examine them. Sometimes, even with all the context laid bare, reasonable people will still disagree about what was meant. The speaker’s tone might be ambiguous. The historical moment might be complex.
But simply adding the words “out of context” is not a magic wand that makes uncomfortable words disappear. It’s a lens, and sometimes, when you widen the lens, the picture becomes sharper, not softer.
Remember: it’s technically true that the Bible says, “There is no God.” Context doesn’t erase those four words, it reveals what they actually mean.
So as the discussions rage on — whether about presidential candidates, public figures, or with the person contradicting you online — consider the words chosen, the exchange they belonged to, the audience that was listening, the pattern of what was said before, the reaction that followed. That is what must be examined. Context doesn’t erase words. It makes them mean what they actually mean. And that’s the test every quote has to pass.