Once there was a man who wanted to host a Super Bowl party. Unfortunately, he felt inadequate inviting people to his home since he was pixel-deprived. Embarrassed by his 19” screen, he desperately wanted a high definition television. Occasionally he would drop into his local consumer electronics store to stare at the same football game playing on all the high definition screens, only to leave in disappointment. Despite all his desire to enter the 16:9 world, his wallet couldn’t swing it. They were just too expensive. He would just wait until the price dropped. “After all,” he said,”Look what happened with DVD players. They started out costing over a grand and now you can get one for fifty bucks. ”
One day, as he passed by a usually deserted strip mall, he thought he was in luck. In what was once an empty storefront hung a banner, “Discount Hi-Def TV’s!” Immediately he swerved into the parking lot and rushed into the store. It was as if someone had granted his impossible wishes. There they were, 52” high-definition screens for under a thousand dollars. Most surprisingly, they were brand names, Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba. Giving it little thought, after all this was a no-brainer, he bought the biggest screen Sony TV he could find for under a grand, loaded it into his minivan and brought it home.
Things were fine for a few weeks. The man enjoyed the his new HD television, watching sports and movies all in stunning clarity. A few days before the Super Bowl though, things went awry. One evening after work, this man sat down on the couch, clicked the remote and - nothing. The screen didn’t come on. No sound - nothing. The next day he went back to the strip mall where he bought it, only to find an empty storefront. The Discount Hi-Def store was gone.
The Super Bowl was approaching fast, so he went home, loaded the TV into his van again and brought it into a consumer electronic chain store. Of course, they said they only repaired products bought from their store, but the man convinced the service department to take a look at it. They carted the big screen into the store and a technician put it on a test bench.
The man said,”I don’t understand. I just bought it. It’s a Sony. They’re usually pretty reliable aren’t they?”
The tech just chuckled as he looked over the TV, “This isn’t a Sony. It’s a cheap knockoff made in Vietnam. They just slap a Sony nameplate on it.”
Even though he was disappointed, the man ignored his embarrassment and pleaded, “Can you fix it? I really need to have a hi-def TV for my Super Bowl party this weekend”
“Hi-def?” the technician laughed. “This isn’t a hi-def unit. They just take a standard def picture and blow it up to fit the screen. It’s really a piece of junk. Where did you buy it?”
The man’s heart sunk. He knew he had been had. Desperate to get what he wanted and valued most, he had been fooled by a cheap counterfeit. He thought he bought a Sony, but it was just a piece of junk with a brand name he never heard of and couldn’t even pronounce.
There are particular qualities we associate with certain brand names. We all know the quality that a Rolex watch or Gucci handbag represent. We have all heard stories of people being fooled by cheap knock-offs that don’t live up o the reputation of the real thing. A dishonest manufacturer puts together something cheap and slaps a brand name on the product in order to give it more perceived value. A good name is used to fool people into accepting an inferior product.
Likewise, the good name of God is often slapped onto inferior human endeavors in the hopes of getting people to buy into them. In the Ten Commandments, the third thing God tells us is not to use God’s name falsely or in vain. When we use the name of God in frivolous ways or to suit our own agendas, we bring guilt upon us. If you are like me, you were probably taught that this commandment had something to so with swearing or cursing. We weren’t supposed say things like, “Oh my God!” Those of you from Catholic backgrounds were really pushing the limit with your “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” exclamations.
But this commandment is about something much deeper than whether or not we use OMG in our text messages. It is about using the name of God falsely or for our own purposes. In its original context, this commandment most likely referred to those who perjured themselves in legal proceedings, who swore by God before others and then proceeded to give false testimony. So when this commandment says that God will not those guiltless who use his name falsely, it means that even if you fool others by invoking God’s name, you will never fool God.
God is not fooled by human attempts to misuse God’s name. God is not a brand nameplate we can just slap onto our own agendas and causes. It may seem like there are bigger sins committed in the world than this, but this is a big one. Talk to atheists sometime and you will discover that a major reason for their disbelief in God is all the evil and violence that has been done and continues to be done in the name of God. They will name everything from the Crusades, to the Salem witch hunts, to slavery, to the extermination of Native Americans, to hate speech eminating from Christians today. All of it, done in the name of God, justified with Bible verses, but nonetheless evil.
Even within families, the name of God is abused. There are parents who hold a Bible in one hand and beat heir child with the other. There are husbands who distort the apostle Paul’s words into and excuse for verbal or physical abuse of their wives. Meanwhile pastors and churches look the other way. Don’t even get them or me started on preachers and televangelists who go around thinking every bad weather phenomenon is caused God’s wrath at gays and lesbians, or that God endorses political assassinations, or any act of violence. Listen, if you want to be a part of a group that endorses violence in God’s name you may not want to join a church you may want to look into Al-Queda. Those people are the masters at breaking this commandment.
The sad part is that not only do they choose to reject religion personally because of these events, many endorse working to do away with religion altogether. For them, God has become the bad influence, the troubled kid with whom you don’t want your kid hanging out.
It’s not just extremists. Even in civil public discourse, the name of God is evoked whenever a political leader needs more oomph in a speech. When we go to war, we trot out some Bible verses about righteousness and battle. When we start a new social program, we quote something about being our brother’s keeper or helping the least of these. In either case, rarely do we Christians take the time to first discern where God is leading us. Instead we start with our cause and agendas and then go looking for a Bible verse or some God language to back up what we already thought. It’s as if we spout our opinions and want God to dutifully show up at the end of our sentences and say, “I’m God and I approve of this message.”
We cannot just slap God’s name on our human agendas. This even happens within the church. A lot of what passes as Christian books are really just marketing vehicles dressed up in religious language. I have read so many books on Christian leadership or pastoring that often seem like they could be secular books written for the business world. The only difference seems to be that these books have Bible verses (usually taken out of context) peppered throughout them to support the authors point. These verses are used like fortune cookies pasted in the pages of the book.
Sometimes it isn’t the name of God that is recruited to an agenda, it is another word or phrase that is used to push people’s religious buttons. The word “spiritual” often serves this purpose in our culture. It’s a way to bring God-sized gravitas to an idea or product without invoking God. Spirituality is a great thing but not everything labelled spiritual is in line with what Jesus taught. For instance, Jesus did not teach that if we envision ourselves getting the good things in life such as wealth, health and a good spouse, we would attract those good things toward us. Yet one can walk into any bookstore, rove to the Spirituality section and purchase a book that will teach just that.
Not everything called spiritual comes from the God who spoke to Moses at Mt. Sinai. The name of God finds its origins and power in a specific narrative and history. It is not merely a generic concept. This commandment warns us that just because someone invokes God’s name, it does not necessarily mean they are speaking on God’s behalf.
Even in personal relationships and conversations, we should be wary when someone uses the phrase, “God told me..” Certainly God speaks to us, each in different ways, but I have found that, especially in the life of the church, when someone speaks that way, it is often an attempt at gaining control. After all, when someone tells you God told them such and such, how can you disagree? If you do, now you are not only disagreeing with them, you are disagreeing with God.
The ancient Hebrews would not even utter the name of God. They wrote the name Yahweh in the unpronounceable consonants YHWH. This led later German scholars to translate it into JHVH from which we get the name Jehovah. Even today, some orthodox Jews will write the name of God as “G*d”. Paul Tillich, a twentieth century theologian once wrote that there should be a hundred year moratorium on using the name of God, since it had been so misused it had ceased to have any real meaning.
Have you ever seen news footage of a bomb squad removing an explosive device. Dressed in protective clothing, an expert carefully and slowly handles the bomb and places it in a safe place. Such images remind me of the priests in ancient Israel who wore special clothing when they came before God. There were special instructions on what could be handled by humans and what could not. It was said that even if you touched the Ark of Covenant in which the tablets of these commandments were kept, you would die. God’s name and the things of God were considered dangerous.
Using the name of God is still a powerful and dangerous thing. It is something we should handle with the utmost care and respect. Perhaps you think you are off the hook when it comes to this commandment. You don’t go around claiming to be God’s representative, or having divine revelations or even invoking God’s name when it comes to the causes in which you believe. Maybe you never use God or Jesus’ name as a curse word. So this commandment, not to use God’s name in vain, is one you can forget about.
Truth is, you and I break this commandment probably far more often than any of the others. We break it when we come here on Sunday, sing songs about God, profess to be believers and then walk out the door behave in ways that make God weep. We break it when we or our parents take vows at a baptism, or confirmation, to be a follower of Jesus Christ, and fail to live up to that name each and every day. We break this commandment when get involved with church because we want to look respectable to our neighbors, or we need community service hours to get into college, but our personal lives tell a different story. We break this commandment when we tell people we are followers of Jesus, but our behavior betrays us as hypocrites.
For many people, you and I may be the only encounter they have with Christ. They will evaluate who Jesus is, and who God is, by how we act. When we use the name of God in any aspect of life, people will evaluate us and will be able to tell if we are the real deal, or just another fake. Are we truly high quality products of the love of God through Jesus, or are we just a cheap knock-off sporting a fake nameplate?
This commandment challenges us as believers and as the church to always be asking ourself, “What in Gods name are we doing?”
Great post, Don!
Posted by: Daniel Kirk | October 05, 2009 at 03:35 PM
Thanks Daniel. Are you going to be @ C21 this week?
Posted by: Don Heatley | October 06, 2009 at 07:07 AM