Theological Musings

t’s no secret that one of the very natural tendencies of humankind is toward legalism. And it’s no secret that Christians face the temptation quite often to become legalistic. Even when we attempt to explore liberty, we run the risk of becoming legalistic about our liberty! Ironic, isn’t it?

Usually, the danger in legalism is seen as being too restrictive. In other words, if someone is being legalistic about a certain issue, they are usually drawing a tighter line around something than needs to be there.

But what about the times when drawing that line causes us to miss the point entirely? What if it causes us to completely permit other thoughts/behaviors while focusing on particular thoughts/behaviors that aren’t even relevant?

Such, I fear, is the case with a particular Old Testament commandment.

Someone put together a series of billboards posing as messages directly from God. I’m sure you’ve seen them somewhere along the line. Stark white letters on a solid black background. Things like “Let’s meet at my house Sunday before the game. — God” or “Don’t make me come down there. — God”, etc.

Apart from the constant theological problems in most of the messages (i.e., God’s ‘house’ is not a church building and, ummm, He already did “come down” here and has sent His Spirit to remain here with us), there was one that really jumped out at me and caused me to think about this particular issue.

“Next time you curse, use your own name. — God”

A similar one said, “Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer. — God” Yeah, that’s exactly the type of God we serve, right? Ahem. Anyway, back to my point…

We are all familiar with the commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” And many of us believe that we know exactly what it means, right?

So I got to thinking, what does it mean to take God’s name in vain? I mean, I know what I was always taught it meant.

Be honest. Most of us were taught that this meant not saying things like “Oh, my god” as a careless expression. I was even taught that it was wrong to say “Thank God.”

And then, of course, there were the “substitution words” that were equally sinful. Gosh. Gee. Geez. Golly. Because these were all substitutions for the word God or Jesus, I was told, they were equally sinful.

Now, contrary to what you might be expecting, the point of this post is not to actually defend the use of any of those words or phrases. I’ll leave that up to the reader to draw his own conclusions.

But, my thought process went something like this: By focusing so much on the casual phrases and “substitution words” that are used, have we missed a bigger point? More frightening, are we actually condoning behavior and thoughts that are in violation of this command while believing that we are innocent because we “don’t say those things”?

And so I began to mull over what it means to take God’s name…

Wait a minute. What is God’s name? Is it “God”?

We use the term “God” (with a capital G, of course) as the name for the god we worship. We rightly believe that our god is different from all other gods, and so we distinguish him by calling him “God”. But is that his name??

It’s almost sad that we don’t actually use his name. And while I have no evidence for this, I believe that the reason we don’t actually use his name is a derivative of the Jewish tradition of not speaking his name for fear of violating this commandment.

However, one must be truthful and acknowledge that we do use the term “God”, even with a capital G in other ways. As was pointed out in a post on another blog (a blog unfamiliar to me, and one I only found in looking for some other information about this topic after I had already decided to write this), many Christians say “God bless you” just as casually as the phrase “Oh my god” is used. Is that offensive? To most people, no. At least not in my experience.

But, and here is the rub: How many times do we invoke the authority and blessing of our God on the things that we are doing, teaching, saying, thinking, desiring, exhorting, preaching, etc.? And how many times do those very things that we are doing, teaching, saying, thinking, desiring, exhorting, preaching, etc. go against the very nature of what we have revealed about our God, yet we claim his backing and authority for them anyway?

Is that not a greater offense to our God?

Or when we claim to represent Jesus (which if we believe that Jesus is divine, than we must treat the name “Jesus” as a name, if not the name, of our God) and yet live a life that does not reflect his character and work, is that not an offense to our God? Are we not “using [his] name” in a vain manner?

Think about it, and feel free to discuss or dispute it below.

Until next time,

steve