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What did you say?

Or Common Mistakes We Make, Part 2

I was reading to my six year old son from Psalms the other day when he stopped me suddenly in shocked disbelief. He couldn’t believe the foul language that David was using right there in the bible. How could David have gotten away with saying something so horrid? What was my son talking about? David said the words, “Oh my God.”

My son, like most people in the church, failed to understand two things. First, he failed to understand that swearing is not the sounds and syllables that come out of your mouth. Swearing is the vocalization in any form of an evil heart. My son wasn’t paying attention to the heart of the man speaking, in this case the worshipful heart of King David, and therefore failed to understand the purity and holiness of those words. The second thing he failed to understand in coming to a false conclusion that David had broken the third commandment, is that God is not God’s name. Let’s deal with this second point first.

The name of God:

We’ve had a fear of God’s name for centuries. Israel was rebuked by the prophets for being so afraid of breaking the ten commandments and taking God’s name in vain, that they refused to speak it at all. This is how we got the term Jehovah. God’s name is not Jehovah, it’s not Lord, and it’s not God. God and Lord are descriptive words that explain His position. Some people will argue that that’s what a name is, a descriptive identifier like “king”, but they’re confusing a name with a title. If I said “God is king”, you would understand what I meant. But if I said “King is god”, you would probably think that I had messed up grammatically. However, both sentences do exactly the same thing. They treat a descriptive noun as a personal name.

Although not grammatically incorrect, it’s fundamentally and logically incorrect if it’s spoken with the belief that it’s his actual name. Just like “Boss” is not my boss’ name. In the same way, “Boss, help me out.” is a grammatically correct statement, but a fundamentally incorrect statement if my intent by calling her that is to treat the word “Boss” as the name she put on her driver’s license.

Jehovah, on the other hand, is a name, it’s just not the name of God. Well, ok, it’s not the name he calls himself. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said “My last name is not dammit.” written as if God had said it. I understand the motivation for such a bumper sticker, but it unintentionally misleads in its insinuation that God’s first name is God. God’s name is Yahweh. Afraid to speak His name for fear of unintentionally breaking the third commandment, the Israelis of the Old Testament changed it to Jehovah. That way they wouldn’t actually have to say the correct name of God, but everybody would know what they meant when they said it. Their incorrect emphasis was on the sounds coming out of their mouths and not the intentions coming out of their hearts.

Note: So how can you tell where the name of Yahweh should be included in the scriptures? Out of respect for the previously mentioned Jewish tradition that Yahweh was a name too holy to be spoken, the King James Bible translators opted to replace “Yahweh” with “LORD”. Not every time you see “Lord”. Only the times you see capital L, capital O, capital R and capital D.

So from a technical standpoint, saying the word God in any context, even with a malevolent intent, does not break the third commandment. However, before you say that I’m endorsing or simply allowing you to shout “Oh my God” in a profane manner, read on.

The definition of swearing:

What’s in your heart will come out of your mouth. So what’s in your heart?

Swearing is not a sound that falls out of your mouth or a particular collection of syllables. If that was all it was, everyone of us would be swearing constantly all day long, only it would be in a language we didn’t understand.

I was amused to discover from some Laotian friends in Junior High School that the word “He” was a vulgarism in their native tongue. I’m not sure how they spelled it, but the pronunciation of He was vulgar to them. Many women might consider “He” a vulgarism in English too, but that’s another essay. Needless to say, my Laotian friends got a big kick out of the comic hero He-Man.

By the same token, a French princess in Shakespeare’s Henry V finds a few English words vulgar and distasteful due to the fact that they sound like French vulgarisms.

So are we swearing every time we use the word he or the word foot (Henry V)? Of course not. Why not? Because the intent of our hearts when we speak it (for the most part) is not evil.

The bible says to guard your hearts and minds, because this is the starting point not just for evil words, but for evil actions. What you ponder consistently, you will believe. What you believe, you will say. What you say, you will act upon. This is true for both good and evil purposes. Swearing is simply the middle stage of an evil heart holding on to evil thoughts and preparing for evil actions.

So what does all of this mean:

We need to understand the power of words, but we don’t need to be afraid of them. I understand the power of electricity and the fatal consequences of misusing it, but that doesn’t mean I cut the power to my house in order to ensure that I don’t damage myself should I ever feel the need to shove a penny into a wall socket in a fit of lunacy. Electricity is dangerous, and yet we surround ourselves with it. We do this because of the benefit we get from using it properly. The same thought process should be applied to our words. I don’t fear hearing the word ass in an old black and white western when referring to a donkey or burro even though I understand that improperly used it could be insulting. I don’t gasp in shock when the Flintstones sing about having a “gay” old time because of the current distortion of what that word means.

Let me give you a better example. On three different occasions I have asked people not to tell my son that we don’t use the word “hate”. This shocked all three people and made one of them angry. Dare I say it made her hate me. Hate is a good word and a proper word to use in the right circumstances. God hates. Look it up. It’s all over the bible. What does He hate is the real question. Hate has its place. To every thing there is a season, even a time to hate.

I hear parents all the time inadvertently teaching their children that it’s ok to hate, it’s just not ok to use the word hate. What do I mean? They teach their children that hating another child is fine as long as they call it “strongly dislike” or some other euphemism. I teach my child that the focus of the hate is what’s important, not the word itself. I’ll tell you right now, I HATE cooked spinach, beets and alcohol, not for moral reasons, but because the very smell of all three physically sickens me and I will involuntarily throw up if forced to consume any of them. When my son was younger, we had hate practice in which we would identify things that it was ok to hate and things which God encourages or commands us to love.

The power of life and death is in the tongue. The recognition that words can be fatal should make us soberly predispose ourselves to using them properly, but it should not make us disavow speaking altogether in order to avoid using words that bring death. It should make us more closely safeguard what goes into our hearts and minds. After all, you don’t have to watch what comes out of your mouth if you know that only things that are good, things that are pure and things that are holy are entering into your heart. Life will come out if life is what you put in.

It’s for this reason that breaking the third commandment means so much more than just saying Yahweh, Jesus Christ, God, or anything else in casual conversation. Breaking the third commandment means speaking with evil intent while standing under the banner of Christianity. Don’t take the name of Yahweh in vain. Taking the name of Yahweh means you’ve identified yourself with him. When my wife took my name, she publicly said that she was forever going to be identified as my partner. When I claim to have partnership with Yahweh God, and then treat that relationship callously, carelessly, apathetically, spitefully, or selfishly, that’s when I take the name of Yahweh in vain. Calling myself a Christian and then telling someone how stupid they are and explaining how they’ll never amount to anything is breaking the third commandment. Explaining to someone how much Jesus loves them and then hating them with my actions is taking God's name in vain. Publicly opposing pornography and then buying a Playboy magazine because I really admire the writing is mocking the name of Jesus Christ and vainly treating His sacrifice for you as if you have the right to abuse it.

No, swearing and being vulgar in general even if you’re not speaking are not beneficial actions which will please God, but don’t confuse an utterance you find offensive with the substance of an evil heart. When you hear something questionable, seek out the heart of the individual before chastising the mouth. After all, if you read this, and still believe that swearing is simply improper syllables that come out of your mouth and you say about me, “He sure put his foot in his mouth.” according to your own beliefs, you'd be swearing in two different languages.

I am the pen.
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