B@d W*rds W# S@y

I recently read a very interesting blog post on Taking the Lord's name in vain specifically, but also more generally on the bad things we say, including cursing or shouting substitutes for explatives. The author bemoaned both those who are ultrasensative to such phrases, as well as the silliness of those phrases. The most interesting part was on what it truly means to take the Lord's name in vain...

Christians take God’s name in vain the most

When people say “Oh my God,” they don’t even think about it. Sure, it’s rude. But what does it really mean to take God’s name in vain? I think God gets way more P.O.ed (cuss word ititials are dumb too) from Christians who sincerely take his name in vain. How do we do it? By showing up to church and praising him while we curse our neighbors. By sincerely asking God to do things that He has said he won’t do. By creating a false idol and calling it “God.” By worshipping God so He’ll give us more stuff. By calling ourselves “Christians,” which has the name of God in it, and not acting like we follow Christ. And God’s up there saying, “Holy shrimpcakes, you’ve got to be kidding.”

When it comes to cussing, maybe it’s not the words that come out of a man’s mouth that’s wrong, but the cause of it in his heart. If I can get so mad at the ATM that I let out a string of curse words at it, something is wrong with my emotions, and my mouth is just a symptom.

But instead of doing the hard thing by not asking God for stupid crap that’s bad for us, or getting our emotions under control, we do the easy thing and tell some new Christian that now that he’s a Christian he’ll need to stop swearing and “talk nice” so he doesn’t offend the delicate sensibilities of other Christians. We get riled up about non-Christians using the word “God.” But when you realize that Christians are the biggest abusers of God’s name, you know that we should really shut the smurf up because we don’t have any place being offended.

Great graham crackers.