A Return To Civility: 3 Respect God's Name Series

Recently I was reading an article written by a friend of mine, Mike McNeil. Mike and I are from the same home church, and he taught at Kingswood University for forty years before taking a teaching position with Kings Church in Saint John. Mike writes a column called Soul Apologetics, and this week the article was entitled: Countries, Commandments, Classrooms, and Culture.

And Mike was basically writing about the same topic we’ve been looking at for the past few weeks, the loss of the common morality that our society used to share. A short list of laws called the 10 commandments, and it was Zig Ziglar who wrote, “If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society, He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.”

In his article, Mike observed, “As far as the 10 Commandments go, does anyone really believe that a poster on the wall saying things like don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t murder, respect your Mom and Dad… is a bad thing ?”

He goes on to write, “By the way, there is already an alternative 10 Commandments being taught to your children, if not written on the wall, at least written all over the media they consume:” And then he goes on to list the new 10 commandments.

1. Have all the gods you want, including yourself.

2. Curse liberally. Let it fly; don’t hold back.

3. Sunday is a fun day. Church is optional.

4. Blame your father and mother for everything.

5. Don’t murder… the wrong people. Only those who disagree with you.

6. You shall not commit adulting. Adultery is no problem.

7. Don’t steal… more than $950 at a time.

8. Treat truth as a social construct.

9. Covet freely…

10. Just make sure to call it reparations.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve looked at the first two commandments, which 1. have no other gods, and 2. Don’t make idols.

Two takeaways here were, that we worship what is superior to us. That is the very nature of worship and the bible tells us that God is above us and everything else is below us. So be very careful about what you put in the number one spot in your life.

And the second is when we make idols or use religious symbols or imagery to portray God, we are reducing Him.

And maybe you felt those messages didn’t really apply to you. After all, you consider yourself monotheistic, that is you only worship one god, and you have never, ever carved or crafted an idol.

If you were here the last two weeks, you probably left thinking, well he really told them. So, let’s see if I can step on a few toes this morning.

Commandment number 3 is found in Exodus 20:7 “You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. . ..

Very few things bug me as much as hearing the Lord’s name misused.

When I was 15, I went to work on the tugboats out of Saint John New Brunswick and hanging around with sailors it didn’t take long before I had pretty much heard any words that I might have missed in high school.

And so, if you take the time that I spent on Tugboats, oil tankers, fishing boats and the little bit of time I spent with the Military Police in the Reserves I think I’ve heard it all.

For the most part, obscenities deal with bodily functions or body parts and don’t really require a lot of imagination. While I’m not necessarily comfortable hearing them I’m not personally offended.

My dad put it in perspective for me a long time ago when he told me that obscenities were the refuge of illiterates and children.

William Ward said “Profanity is the use of strong words by weak people”

And you know what? When I hear someone cuss I automatically make value judgements about them.

I know it’s not right and probably not fair, but I immediately put them into a stupid category.

Not necessarily uneducated, there are a lot of educated folks out there who fall into the same category.

Author David Seaman writes, “Plenty of educated and seemingly intelligent people also talk as if they had been to hell for a post-graduate course with the devil as their speech instructor.”

They think they sound cool, but to many of us, they just sound stupid.

But it’s different when I hear God’s name being misused, I cringe inside, because it is personal, they are talking about my God, my Saviour.

The sad thing is that society as a whole and even Christians seem to feel just the opposite. They feel like blasphemy isn’t as bad as some other words.

I don’t know how often someone’s told me about a movie, and I’ve asked, “How’s the language?” And I’m told “Oh there isn’t any foul language in it” and then when I see the movie I discover that there are very few obscenities, but the Lord’s name is misused time and time again.