“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
If there is one of the Ten Commandments that has a certain level of ambiguity to it, it’s good old No. 3.
The first two are fairly obvious.
No other gods before me. No graven images.
Those are easy, although you have to go some to known what “graven” means.
It’s the third one that gets iffy. Traditionally it has been taken to mean not using the Lord’s name when you curse. Don’t say “Goddamn” or “Jesus H. Christ.” It makes some sense, but let’s face it. That’s the easy way out.
There’s another interpretation of the third commandment, one that makes a lot more sense in being a meaningful way to lead a righteous life.
Consider this:
“God hates fags.”
“God is on our side.”
Now consider this:
This has been true throughout history, but it has become much more obvious on the political right in the last 40 years or so. Going back to the emergence of the political Christian Right in the late 1970s, folks like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson started saying they were doing God’s work in supporting Republicans like Ronald Reagan.
In other words, God was on their side.
Falwell gave perhaps the best example of misinterpreting the third commandment when he said “It is impossible to be a liberal and a good Christian.”
It got a lot worse and it really hasn’t gotten better. Taking God’s name in vain got really bizarre when Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, came along.
Phelps became a crusader against homosexuality in the most repulsive way possible, coining the phrase “God hates fags” and picketing all sorts of military funerals to object to American tolerance toward gay people.
Phelps is dead now, but the political right seems to be using religion for nearly every issue they support.
Whether it’s abortion, immigration, tax cuts, transgender rights or education, Republicans will tell you their stand on all these issues agree with what God wants. God hates abortion, Mexicans, transgender kids, education and rich people having to pay taxes.
God loves, well, God loves Republicans and hates Democrats.
The most famous Republican of all wouldn’t agree with them.
Abraham Lincoln explained it more than 150 years ago.
We shouldn’t want God to be on our side.
We should want to be on God’s side.
Saying God is on our side is the true way of taking the Lord’s name in vain.