The Third Commandment
Taking the Name of God in Vain:
A Commandment on Truth-Telling
March 15, 2009
The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
A few months ago I embarked on a ten-part series to explore what meaning, if any, each of the Ten Commandments might have for us today. I did this because I have felt that most Unitarian Universalists – and probably even many progressive Christians and Jews – have lost sight of any good that might be contained in those “Laws of Moses” that have guided both Judaism and Christianity for so many centuries.
Back in October, we explored the first Commandment: “You shall have no other Gods before me,” and the importance of discerning and remaining faithful to our most cherished values in life.
In November we learned about the second Commandment, “You shall have no graven images,” and the human tendency to make idols of people and things that undermine our spiritual integrity.
Today, I want to explore with you the third Commandment: “Thou shall not take the name of God in vain.” (I have to share with you that somehow in the first draft of our Order of Service today, the word “vain” in the title was misspelled, and read “v-e-i-n” instead – which gave a whole new meaning to the commandment!)
I, like probably most of you, grew up with the assumption that to “take God’s name in vain” meant using his name as a curse – such as in “God damn it!” Leaving the name of God out of the curse didn’t get us off the hook, since the only Being who could damn anyone or anything would be God! I even remember one Sunday School teacher claiming that to use the exclamation “Gosh darn it!” constituted a sin, since those words were simply euphemisms for the real things – and she was probably right!
But theologians both ancient and modern will tell us that the third Commandment is about much more than merely the use of God’s name when cursing or swearing. Rather, the third Commandment calls us to authentic and loving relationships – with ourselves, and with one another.
The psychotherapist and storyteller Sylvia Boorstein likes to ask her adult students to raise their hands if they’ve ever broken a bone, and a number of people usually respond with raised hands. Asked to keep their hands in the air if those broken bones still hurt, everyone lowers them.
Then she asks them to raise their hands if they’ve experienced hurt feelings by something someone has said to them in the past year; many more hands go up for that than for the broken bones. She asks her students to keep their hands in the air if they still hurt from something said to them in the past five years; then ten years, twenty years, even thirty years. And still, most hands remain in the air.
Her point is that the old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is incorrect. The truth is that while “sticks and stones may break (our) bones,” words can always hurt us; indeed, they can break our spirit – at least for a time.
It is why the Buddha included Right Speech as one point on his Eight-fold Path, says Boorstein. She points out that he could have been more “efficient” and simply included it under “Right Action,” for surely speaking is an action. But he knew the power of words, and how what we say can either hurt or heal relationships.
In the Book of Leviticus in Jewish Scripture, there is the admonition, “Do not curse a deaf person.” When trying to decipher this puzzling statement, rabbis concluded it means that our ability to speak was given to us as a precious gift, to be used for blessing and uplifting our lives, not for degrading ourselves or others. So even if someone can’t hear our curses, the basic misuse of the gift of speech is wrong. I would imagine that would extend not only when speaking unkindly to someone who can’t hear us, but also when speaking unkindly aboutsomeone who is not present – speaking behind their back.
Most of us here probably remember the period in the 1960s and ‘70s, when it became popular to join “encounter groups” and share everything that was on our minds, including our anger at others within the group. Even outside such groups, we felt that we had the right and the responsibility to unleash our anger towards friends and family alike, with whatever words felt most cathartic. And in the process, we now know, many feelings were hurt, and relationships were broken.
Today, rather than encounter groups, we have e-mail and other cyberspace playgrounds where we can express our anger at people, and not even have to stick around to see how we’ve affected them. We do it with sarcasm, and we do it with angry outbursts. And then we hit “send,” shut off our computer and walk away.
It can be another form of cursing – a way in which we use the gift of speech to hurt, rather than to heal and connect. I think that if we had to put those words in a letter and snail-mail them, we’d have to take more time to think about the consequences of our words, and would end up not sending them. The danger of e-mail is the ease with which we can vent our anger, and with the press of a button, send it on its way. I know, because I have done it. And sometimes I have been able to repair the damage; but sometimes I have not.
The damage we do when using speech as a vehicle for our anger, is not only the hurt we cause to the other – often someone we care for dearly. We also do damage to ourselves, because rarely do we feel good after such outbursts.
The physician and Torah scholar, Maimonides, said over 800 years ago, “Cursing is prohibited not (only) because of what it does to the victim, but because of the effect on the individual who pronounces it.”
We can all remember times – many times, I am sure – when we have felt hurt by the angry words of another. But we can also remember those times when we have seen the effect our own angry words have had on another person, and it has not felt good.
So is the third Commandment suggesting that we never express our anger? That we lie instead, keeping our angry or hurting thoughts to ourselves?
No. In fact, according to many scholars, it suggests just the opposite.
Another way in which we “take the name of God in vain,” they contend, is through lying – to ourselves and to one another. It is about saying, in a variety of ways, “I swear to God” – promising something we cannot fulfill, or telling a lie to avoid consequences of the truth. And the question to always ask, I think, is why do we feel the need to make unreasonable promises, or why do we find it necessary to lie – especially in relationships that should be grounded in honesty?
Years ago, when my daughter and I were living in San Diego County – she in the city, and I in the northern end of the county – she asked me one day if she could borrow a dress of mine to wear to a party. Flattered that Tiffany would want to wear anything of mine, I ignored the discomfort I felt with her request, and quickly said yes.
The next day I drove to her house – a visit already planned so I could see the place she and her husband had just moved into. After spending about an hour with them, I began to get ready to leave. “Mom,” said Tiffany, “did you bring the dress?”
Well, I had completely forgotten, and now there was no time to go back home for it. I apologized profusely, and Tiffany said, “Oh, that’s OK; I can find something else to wear.”
I burst out laughing. “No, it’s not OK!” I said. “I bet you’re really thinking, ‘Damn! How could she have been so stupid?!” Tiffany chuckled and admitted that yes, that was pretty much the words going through her mind! So we looked through her closet and indeed, she found something that would work just as well as my dress, and everything was truly OK.
But what would have been so terrible about her acknowledging from the beginning her anger and frustration with me? And what would have been the problem with me telling her my concerns about lending her my dress in the first place? Would our relationship have been irreparably damaged? I doubt it. Indeed, it might have even been strengthened.
There are, of course, lies that have far more serious consequences than this example – the kinds of lies we witnessed during the Bush administration that cost the lives of thousands of people needlessly; or the lies of Wall Street and financial experts that have resulted in the loss of millions of dollars, jobs and dreams for innocent Americans. If you caught the brilliant interview Thursday night of financial analyst Jim Cramer, by comedian John Stewart, you know what I’m talking about.
Those kinds of lies demand an entirely separate sermon. For today, let’s stick with the more personal lies we tell relatively easily in our everyday lives.
And here’s where we see the two different interpretations of the third Commandment woven together. Do we not often lie to ourselves and to one another because we cannot figure out how to express our feelings – especially feelings of anger, disappointment, and frustration – in ways that aren’t hurtful? Are we not sometimes afraid that the only words we will find to express ourselves will be words of spite and bitterness? Or that any expression of negativity towards another person will result in their anger at us – and that the relationship will be beyond repair? Is it not a lack of trust, ultimately, that is behind these lies?
But is it not also true, that every time we withhold the truth from another, we are creating a small – and sometimes quite large – crack in that relationship? Sylvia Boorstein contends that “We are obliged to tell the truth; it is the way we take care of one another.” Indeed, she goes on, the Buddha insisted that we must always be completely honest, but with the “extra instruction” that we tell the truth in a “timely” manner, and that our words be “gentle, kind and helpful.”
If we define “God” in the way that the theologian, Paul Tillich, did – as that which is of “ultimate concern,” then we see that the third Commandment is advising us to not treat that which we cherish with carelessness or disregard. If what we hold most dear is the dignity of every person, and our unity with all that is, then to use our speech either to tell lies or to harm another person, is a breaking of that Commandment. And we end up hurting our very soul.
The poet Adrienne Rich writes: “It isn’t that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once. It means…that I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us. The possibility of life between us.”
You will hear me say over and over how much I dislike anonymous complaints, or surveys that don’t include names. I fully understand why people may not want to attach their names to their opinions, especially negative ones; but I do not believe such anonymity extends “the possibility of life” between people. And what in the world is the purpose of a faith community such as Emerson, if not to help us “extend” such possibility in human relationships?
The people who wrote the Book of Exodus, in which the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments is told, knew the tendency of we humans to use our words carelessly at times – to lash out in anger rather than with understanding; and to speak falsely at times rather than risk alienation. Perhaps they even knew how we are so afraid that we will not be loved; sometimes we are even afraid we will not be able to love ourselves.
But I believe that we come to church seeking reassurance that we are indeed worthy of love. We come hoping to see in the reflection of those sitting next to us, that spark of the Divine that was in us from before we took our first breath, but that we can so easily lose sight of. And we come yearning to be that reflection for others as well – to be a blessing to others, as they are to us.
And that only happens when we dare to be true to ourselves, and true to one another. That is what relationship is all about. That is what community is about. “Extending the possibility of life between us,” so that together, we may become “as good as in our hearts we have always wanted to be.”
So may it be.
© 2008-2010 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
