Misusing the Name

              You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.  (Exodus 20:7)

But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. (Matthew 15:18)

 

Since the purpose of this review of the Ten Commandments is to explore their reasonableness and rationality, we should begin there, but there’s more that I hope to address afterwards. How does this commandment make perfect sense? First, there is the fact that if God is God, and if we are to be called by His name or otherwise associated with Him and His name, is it really wise to drag that name through the mud? What does that say of us or our relationship with Him? If you are employed by a company, and publicly trash talk them, you’re not likely to be employed there for long. The commandment makes perfect sense.

But let me move on to another issue with this idea. I suppose I should begin by noting that people have used language in my presence to which I have responded (or wanted to) with “Do I have to? Right here? Right now? In public?” And they looked at me in confusion, trying to remember what they said that would have provoked such a strange response. The problem is that we say things without realizing what it is we’re saying. When I was a Toastmaster, I learned that certain of these utterances were the sign of a bad speaker: um, uh, ah, eh, hm, etc. I college, I had a professor who said, “ya know” so often that I stopped listening to his lecture and counted: 30 in 15 minutes, two of those with nothing between. So I understand that some of what we say that we shouldn’t say is said because we’re used to hearing that sequence of sounds, not because we mean them.

But the King James version of this commandment is that we not use the Lord’s name “in vain” – or emptily, and what could be emptier than to use His name as verbal filler? Without even intending to?

But as much as we tend to point fingers when someone uses God’s name in anger or in some other inappropriately emotional setting, what does it say of us if we use His name without faith? We’re praying – we think – but we don’t really believe God will act on our behalf, and when we don’t get what we want, we blame God. Could the reality be that we didn’t really ask Him? That we prayed an empty (faithless) prayer and signed in “In Jesus’ name, Amen” but the words we thought or even said were nothing more than lukewarm air? Isn’t that just as disrespectful as “OMG!” used as an expression of everything?

And who is to blame when we don’t receive the answer we claim we want when we can’t be bothered to fill our prayers with our faith or our selves?