“Go down Moses, way down in Egypt’s land,” the old spiritual says. “Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.” I’m fond of this song’s rendition by Jess Lee Brooks in Sullivan’s Travels (1941). Brooks portrays a pastor that reminds his congregation not to make unwelcome by word, action, or look those joining the service that night. As they sing “Go down Moses,” prisoners from a local chain gang shuffle in and take their seats.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Wait. What?
As a convicted felon, this scene resonates with me. It speaks to my hope that somewhere a congregation will see me not as a person with a past, but as a fellow traveler on a road none of us escapes unscathed.
Moses may have agreed. He tells God that going to Egypt sounds like a bad idea. He waffles. He wheedles. He demands to know who’s sending him. Then God shocks Moses and us with a disclosure that forever changes how we interact with the divine. “God’s ultimate self-revelation to Moses,” observes respected Hebrew scholar James Kugel: “‘I am by nature compassionate and merciful (despite all evidence to the contrary). I hear the cry of the victim; I can’t help it.’” This convinces Moses, who heads out, Aaron in tow, to speak in the name of God.
But it’s not a blank check.
Later God lays down the law to Moses. His Ten Commandments are perfectly clear, but the third has frequently been misunderstood or perhaps misrepresented:
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Wait. What? God may forgive murder, adultery, theft, on and on, but not saying “Son of a—!” when I stub my toe? Or joking with a friend over our BBQ that he can crap in his hat and wear it backwards for all I care? (Who then doffs his hat and offers me a whiff?)
Not exactly.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin says the third commandment isn’t about foul language at all. It has been watered down over the centuries. The Hebrew phrase, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God (Lo tissa et shem Ha-Shem Eloheikha la-shav),” holds a surprise for us. “Lo tissa, literally means ‘You shall not carry [God’s name in vain]’,” Telushkin explains. “In other words, don’t use God as your justification in selfish causes.” He suggests that this helps us understand why, of all the other sins listed in the commandments, only the third is unpardonable. To behave poorly, or with evil intent, is to discredit oneself; to do so in the divine name is to discredit God.
Harvard philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich is also struck by God’s assiduous protection of his name against abuse. Commenting on the third commandment, Tillich suggests that people have always tried to use the divine name for selfish reasons. “This is the danger of religion, and even anti-religion,” he writes. “For in both the name of God is used as well as misused.”
I recoil. Cleaning up my language is one of the easier injunctions (on good days). But this approach to the third commandment deserves a closer look. Let’s see what others say on the subject.
“To take the name of the Lord in vain means to vociferously proclaim your faith in order to hide your faithlessness.”
Or our greed.
Influential Old Testament authority Walter Brueggemann writes that the third commandment “refers to light and perverse oaths based on the name and guarantee of Yahweh. This means the exploitation rather than service of Yahweh.” Another Hebrew Bible scholar, Chris Wright, insists that “by blatantly using God’s name in the interests of their own selfishness, power, or pride—they are in principle breaking the third commandment.” John Dickson, Anglican cleric and historian of early Christianity and Judaism, agrees: “The third commandment completely forbids the use of God’s name for petty human ends.” One example is the seemingly spiritual front that some churches put up to cover abysmal behavior.
Others weigh in with similar thoughts. Robertson McQuilkin, president emeritus of Columbia International University in South Carolina, succinctly speaks to the heart of the third commandment: “It is wrong to invoke the name of God to validate the truthfulness of one’s statement when it is actually untrue.” Dr. M. Scott Peck explains that the term “blasphemy” refers directly to a violation of the third commandment: “[It] refers to sweet religious language about God, which is used to hide or disguise one’s godlessness or wicked behavior. To take the name of the Lord in vain means to vociferously proclaim your faith in order to hide your faithlessness.”
Or our greed.
Journey with me to the 1990s. I’m trying a little experiment. I seek a church that might welcome my daughter and me without using the name of God to demand money for money’s sake. It’s not a trick; I’m hopeful. Let me explain.
If a church calls for cash to help with an obviously failing roof, my wallet is open. A youth trip; new hymnals (the current ones are falling apart); a ramp in the cultural area for wheelchairs? All reasonable requests. Even the smallest church has certain costs. If I don’t have the money, I’m glad to pitch in with construction or in other ways. I endure ubiquitous collection plates in a nod to tradition.
But inevitably someone asks me for money without a clear purpose. It usually starts with a call (like a recalcitrant child) to the pastor’s office or an unexpected visit to my home. Once the word tithe rears its head, I know what’s coming. I listen politely (I hope) until the pastor winds down.
“I agree we should do our part,” I say. I have no problem with sacrificial tithe. Between us, though it’s hardly a secret, I mention my volunteer work at our local adult learning center, museum, and food bank.
At this point the pastor gets a lemony-faced look.
Then his well-trod sermon begins. A sign of faith, he intones. Build the kingdom. And so forth. My mind wanders as this speech hits the usual highlights.
I don’t point out that giving money as a sign of faith seems to be an indication of its lack. We often pay out of fear that we’re not sufficiently obedient, a sense of obligation, or guilt over sins and overlooked back payments. Vanity may come into play for some. Our cash payment seems to be transactional, either to buy congregational approbation or God’s good grace. This seems to miss the point.
I have an idea that giving for giving’s sake is one of humanity’s noblest aspirations.
I picture a man at the famed pearly gates. “I haven’t done much with my life,” he tells Peter. A book is opened. What about that stranger you helped with his tire? Or filling in for a co-worker when his mother died? Peter scrolls the pages. Here’s a time you warned a blind man when the street light hadn’t changed. “Oh, those don’t count, I wasn’t doing it for God,” our man says. “I just wanted to help.” Peter replies, “Exactly.”
But there’s no need to mention my thoughts to the pastor, since his purpose in this “word of prayer,” as it is called, is simply to extract money. Not for local volunteer organizations, not for worthy causes, not for any other church, but for his particular church. Even as I type, I close my eyes and try to recall if a single pastor did not invoke God’s name to aid in his institution’s financial cause. None comes to mind.
I tried over a dozen churches that year. My sole disqualifying criterion was the act of personally entreating money for its own sake. Not one church lasted longer than three weeks.
And it’s not just money.
Some use God’s name in attempts to control others. I cringe at the phrases word of knowledge or God told me. In my experience, these and similar expressions can frequently be ways of saying look at me or do what I want. Not always, but often enough. Conversely, when help arrives at an unexpected moment, the divine name is seldom invoked, save in my prayers. True service has little need to announce itself.
Politicians call on the name of deity with such frequency that we’ve grown inured to its abuse. They may use it to manipulate, look good, pander to a certain demographic, or convince constituents that their agenda is divinely-approved. As a history writer, I know of leaders who spoke the name of God with reverence and devotion, but they were rare indeed.
Social media pages and other web locations tell us God wants you to know today. The rationalization for speaking in God’s name, they explain, is usually a passage of scripture. For example: “God wants you to know today that he loves you.” Well, that seems safe enough. But is it? We might instead try speaking for ourselves: “I was reading about God’s love today and I believe he loves you.” That’s more accurate, but it lacks the zippy false credibility of a meme that pretends to be God. Expect no shares.
My foul language is not nearly as frightening as the idea that God holds me accountable for acting in his name, or presenting my viewpoint as though it were his.
This aspect of the third commandment is oddly absent from many Christian books. In my dark moments, I think the lack is because it may be difficult for the power-hungry or greedy to swallow. Even less charitably, I muse that financial self-interest prevents some from revealing to their congregants the true intent of such a disturbing injunction.
Another reason may be healthy fear and genuine awe. My foul language is not nearly as frightening as the idea that God holds me accountable for acting in his name, or presenting my viewpoint as though it were his. The moment we presume to abuse the divine name, we convey our ignorance, impose our opinion, and project our motivations onto the unknowable actions of God. Job’s friends learned this at great cost. The third commandment is truly terrifying.
What bothered me in the 1990s, and may irritate the forty million Americans that have left churches in the past twenty-five years, is the use of God’s name to achieve selfish goals. This problem is not universal, but if we’re honest, most of us may recall moments in our congregations when God’s name was invoked to further financial, political, or other aims that had little to do with worship.
Still, we’re not all up to no good. There is another side of the third commandment.
“This commandment is truly among the most radical,” observes Ana Levy-Lyons, author of No Other Gods. “It calls us to earn our own rewards and admit our own failings without dragging God into it.” Jeanette Mathews, Senior Lecturer in Old Testament with Charles Sturt University, calls breaking the third commandment lifting the Lord’s name: “When God’s name is used by individuals, communities, or nations in support of any type of injustice, it is being used wrongfully.” But she sees a positive side to the prohibition that should not be ignored: “Equally, God’s name is honored by those who live and work for truth, peace, and justice.”
I return to Sullivan’s Travels as the pastor tells his congregation that they will once again share their entertainment “with some neighbors less fortunate than ourselves.” They clear the first three pews so their visitors may have convenient seats. He then asks them not “to draw away from them or act high-toned.” He leads the congregation in a stirring version of “Go Down Moses” as a welcome for their guests. Fiction has captured an ideal as old as the Ten Commandments.
Maimonides, one of history’s finest Jewish philosophers, maintains that God’s first commandment, “I am Adonai your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the abode of slavery. You are to have no other gods before me,” invites willing obedience to his subsequent statements: you shall (inevitably) have no other gods; you shall (inevitably) not murder; etc. Martin Buber builds on Maimonides when he insists that in knowing God as a living, actual being, we cannot avoid spiritual change. We become what we are enjoined to become because we cannot do otherwise: what we would do if we could is inevitably what we will do.
It wasn’t quite so inevitable to Moses. He never really stopped quibbling with God.
In the film Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), Moses is confronted by God’s messenger, Malak, who appears as a young boy about the age of Gershom, the son of Moses. This seems to be an act of compassion. It certainly would be for me. My daughter is dead. If God chooses to commune in a way my heart can stand, he need only send Jess. He’ll have my full attention.
Later in the film, as Moses is inscribing the Ten Commandments, Malak asks his thoughts about them. Of course, God knows the answer, but his messenger is showing love and pleasure in Moses.
MOSES
I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t agree.
MALAK
That’s true. I’ve noticed that about you. You don’t always agree with me.
MOSES
Nor you me, I’ve noticed.
I find this fictional scene heartening. My motives are not always clear to me, and God’s intentions remain a mystery. I needn’t worry. As Maimonides wrote centuries ago, in the promise of change, I will not abuse the name of God because I slowly, inevitably grow incapable of the act. I hope so, but I’m still waiting.
Tillich concludes his remarks on the third commandment with a question: “Could it be that godlessness is not caused only by human resistance, but also by God’s paradoxical action—using men and forces by which they are driven to judge the assemblies that gather in His name and take His name in vain?” He has a point. A different approach may be in order.
Rather than moan Why do they leave? we might ask Why would they stay?
A good starting place may be to stop putting words in God’s mouth and join in song, silence, prayer, and communion. We’re in this together, after all. “Mercy heals in every way,” writes Thomas Merton. “It heals bodies, spirits, society, and history. It is the only force that can truly heal and save.” Perhaps our fellow travelers are showing us a better way, inviting us to share in a compassion that our abuse of the third commandment has lacked. “Oppressed so hard, they could not stand,” the old spiritual groans. “So the Lord said, ‘Go down Moses, tell all Pharaohs to let my people go’.”
That’s worth showing up for.
Source: Christ and Pop Culture – christandpopculture.com
