The Third Commandment
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless anyone who takes his name in vain.
One of the more interesting aspects of the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which involves the collaboration of Indiana and his father,
Dr. Henry Jones, on a search for the Holy Grail, shows the older Jones as a representative of an antique piety to which his son is a stranger. While on their way by motorcycle to Berlin, the secular younger Jones, in an episode of disgust, says “Jesus Christ!” as an expletive. His father slaps him hard, points a finger, and says, “That’s for blasphemy.”
The son registers only surprise, and they continue their journey, finding themselves at a Nazi rally where books are being burned —a sacrilege the younger scholar can understand. Henry tells Indiana, “My boy, we’re pilgrims in an unholy land.” There is, Henry is shown to understand, a form of moral uncleanness that even a learned blasphemer can understand —as perhaps the atheist who mocks churchgoers can see in maldisposal of plastics.
Pounding More Nails
The idea that using the name of Jesus as the younger Jones does is actually a detestable affront to God, with “blasphemy” as its own term of deserved condemnation, was doubtless to many members of the movie’s audience a reminder of something that had been unlearned, and to many others something else —something, perhaps, of a novelty. Why should anybody whose good opinion means anything care about this? To use as an expletive what religious people regard as a holy name has the desired effect of affronting the effete and hypocritical with the defamation of one of their idols, demonstrating the superiority of the unsuperstitious, and providing shock value in societies where holiness still has meaning.
But there is something deeper involved here, an intuition that using the name of God in this way is, unlike other manners of abuse, not simply noxious gas, but efficacious, that it is actually taken seriously as an injury by Someone Who Matters, is a word whereby one can, by misuse, strike and harm not only those who claim to be his partisans, the religious, but God himself, the ultimate Cause of all misery and mischance in the world. If I am not mistaken, there are a good many people who do this continually and derive pleasure from it.
I used to work with a man who was one of the most constant and proficient blasphemers I knew, and it was like living near the forges of hell. The Christians I worked with prayed for him, but he continued with pleasure to make them suffer as he every hour pounded nails into the body of Christ. What is even worse is to hear the Beloved’s Name used in this way by a child, the horror of which is unknown to those who are able to regard it as nothing more than the effect of bad breeding.
I suppose the most common breach of the Third Commandment is in the aborted prayer, “Oh God!” or “Oh my Gawd!” used as a mere exclamation, but the ways of using the Holy Name in an empty or useless way —for which God will not hold the user guiltless —are as multifold as they are unrecognized as such. These breaches may be found in the greatest concentration, I believe, in services of “worship,” the very business of which may be said to be exercises in the right use of the divine Name, thus giving God the right glory which he deserves.
When something that is not God’s or Christ’s is attributed to him, when an offering, like Cain’s, is not a proper tribute to his person, when there is a lack of sense or wholeness to our representation of his gospel, when the word of man is presented as though it were the Word of God, then his name is being taken in vain by misrepresentation of the Person who is himself Ha Shem (the Name), as the Hebrew denotes, and as pious Jews represent by using the locution G-d to stand for it in writing, and so avoid the possibility of misuse and breach of the Commandment.
Fearful Responsibility
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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