You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.Click through for reflections on this oh-so-tricky commandment...
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.
As usual with these commandments we have adopted an over-simplified, almost ridiculous definition of "taking the Lord's name in vain", the better to convince ourselves that we're keeping the law, the better to avoid the struggle of actually following it. In this case we have narrowed down the violation to swearing using God's name. If we don't say that "GD" thing we're good! Now let's move on to the third commandment!
Not so fast there, sparky.
Cursing and swearing are indeed included in the definition of the second commandment, but they're only part of it. Really they turn out to be a minor part. When you hit your thumb with a hammer and utter something profane, the average listener can probably distinguish between that form of speech and, say, reverencing God at the altar or praying to him. Few people are going to equate the thumb smash name with the Actual Dude. When they enter a church they're not expecting to hear from the guy invoked in the swear. They know God is different than that. Using that phrase is not a great thing to do by any means. In fact I usually ask confirmation students how they'd like it if someone yelled their name every time something really bad happened. But the harm is comparatively small because the phrase is not too misleading about the nature of God.
The really bad stuff comes at the end of the list of ills: lying or deceiving using God's name. Another translation of this commandment says, "You shall not misuse God's name." Misuse can be defined as anything you say or do that misleads people about God, their relationship with him, his intentions towards them, or his plan for the world.
So...let's say you're a church person on a Sunday morning who greets your close friends warmly but walks by the stranger or can only manage a nod? What message did you convey about God and his community?
I was once sitting in a Bible Study when a very passionate, church-going man pounded his fist on the table and said, "I believe in God and those [insert group he was mad at here] are in BIG trouble!" I knew full well, even if he did not, that some of the people sitting around that table with him were members of that group...and also people of faith.
What about the kids who grew up in Genesee when both the public and parochial schools were operating who would walk by each other and yell, "Cat-lickers!" and "Pup-lickers!" in derisive tones?
What about all the God-fearing parents who told their children they'd be disowned if they ever dated a person of another denomination, race, or ethnicity?
In fact what about all the times when we equate "Lutheran" with some flavor of Scandinavian-ism knowing full well that most of the people in our midst aren't? Or the times when we assert that the people who have been at the church longest have the real power? Or the times when we complain because somebody besides the pastor delivered the sermon this morning?
Hold onto your hats...
Do you tell your children that they have to be good in church because it's a special, holy place, implying that God isn't really present as strongly elsewhere and that it's not as important for them to be good in "real life"? Do your children get the message that the main point of church for them is not making you look bad?
Have you judged a neighbor or failed to forgive him...communicating God's intentions through silence if not overt hostility?
Have you come to church cross with your spouse and left the same way as if it had no effect?
Have you failed to stand up or speak up when someone was being wronged?
Have you ever said something about church wasn't right and shouldn't be done just because YOU didn't agree with it?
Have you ever said you're going to make God PART of your life or encouraged someone else to do so?
Have you ever made someone think, even on accident, that their salvation or acceptance depended on their good works?
Have you ever kept silent when you could have offered a comforting word about God? Have you ever called religion a "private matter" or decided not to talk about your faith unless it was wholly safe even though people around you know good and well that you go to church?
Yup...not only have we failed to keep the second commandment, we've trampled all over it, ground it up, and stuffed it down the garbage disposal. We could go on all day long with the ways we've communicated icky stuff in God's name and failed to live up to the message he's asked us to carry. In fact if you didn't say that "GD" thing before you read that list you're probably ready to now out of sheer frustration from not being able to keep this commandment!
And not to make you feel worse, but these missteps matter far more than the swearing because people actually believe these things are true of God. Those people sitting around the fist-pounding Bible Study were affected in a way that's hard to undo. Every day I have to fight the perception that God is judgmental, that Christians are holier-than-thou, that church only belongs to good people, that I'm only out to convince people to believe exactly like I do lest they go to hell, that the life of faith is supposed to be perfect, that your faith is nobody else's business, that the world can be divided into holy things that you give a little time to and real life where you spend most of your passion, energy, and effort. The unspoken truth: I have to fight this fight constantly because people keep saying all of these things to themselves and each other! And every one of them is a violation of the second commandment.
My interpretation of this commandment is simple. I use "in vain" in the literal sense. Anything you say (or sometimes communicate by failing to speak) about God that causes another person to perceive something wrong about him might as well be empty air. You're using the immense power of God's name for something worthless, leading the person you're communicating with a choice between rejecting what you say or accepting it and believing something wrong about God. The whole conversation has been, quite literally, in vain...a waste of time if not damaging.
Therefore my prayer regarding this commandment is also simple: "Dear Lord, please don't let me waste my time." Whether it's wasting our time being angry, grumpy, judgmental, self-righteous, silent, timid, mistaken, or full of swear words doesn't matter...we shouldn't waste any of it. And note that we're not just talking about wasting church time and church words here. We're talking about wasting any second of any day in any word or any relationship because God is a part of all of it and should be flowing through all of it.
After I've prayed this prayer I try my best to do two things. First, I make sure I'm engaged in God's Word so I can know him as well as possible. This can mean reading scripture, faithfully participating in worship, going to Bible Studies, talking about God with my brothers and sisters in faith over coffee or crafts or service projects. If I'm not regularly engaged with God, growing and evolving my faith experience, my chances of communicating something right about him shrink. Second, because I realize that every word which passes from my lips hits ears on the other side, I try to get to know my neighbors, friends, co-workers, family members as well as possible. It's not enough to understand how my brain thinks and my words come out. I have to understand how their brain interprets the words I'm saying before I can understand what I've truly communicated to them.
In this way the second commandment may be the clearest example of Jesus' saying that the whole law depends on loving God and loving your neighbor. You can't even begin to keep it until you've spent plenty of time doing both.
Our devotional commitment this week is to get to know somebody better--God and/or someone he's sent into your life--and then to pay close attention to how you're witnessing God's presence before them. Pay attention to your words and actions. Instead of judging your neighbor, try to judge whether your own words and deeds are communicating the truth about God and his gifts of grace, love, and salvation to you and the world. Start doing this with more people in more situations (not leaving out those closest to you with whom you spend the most time) and you're going to find your relationship with God, your community, and the second commandment deepen.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
No comments:
Post a Comment