What's in a name?

“You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name” [Deut 5:11]

For years and years I couldn’t actually bring myself to use the name Jesus.

It could be due to years of being exposed, directly or indirectly, to bible-bashers – generations of people who use the name Jesus to run their own agenda; from the Crusades to the Inquisition to the “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” picket signs.

It has been misused; and now we all feel yuck. We feel yuck to associate ourselves with the “god” that people have been portraying; we feel yuck to associate ourselves with the “jesus” that some ”Christians” have been portraying.

A fellow speechie and I were talking just the other day about sensory issues; how certain experiences in the past will make us aversive to different textures or sensations in the future – like being forced to eat that one green pea on our plate may lead to an aversion to peas for years to come, because of that immediate negative association we’ve made.

Perhaps similarly, we now make an immediate negative association with the name Jesus or Christianity. Even I do that – but really as a product of being exposed and aware of all the crap that has gone on, or is going on.

SPTG talked about the Ten Commandments were given to Moses as rules or guidelines to building a life*-giving community; given to a people who were entrenched in slavery for years, and now suddenly had freedom. He also mentioned how the relevance of this particular commandment is more for the above, than merely using “God’s name in vain”, e.g. merely saying something like “Oh My LOOORD!”

I used to be told off at school to “not use God’s name in vain” whenever I exclaimed “oh my god!” as it was “in the 10 Commandments” (WHICH IRRITATED THE HELL OUT OF ME!).

I wonder which was more destructive to humankind – the Spanish Inquisition, or my exclamation?

My God – let me be careful to not use your name to run my agenda; to leave people with “no choice” since “GOD had a say in it”; to use you. Continue to reveal to me, and others, how indeed beautiful and powerful and pure the name Jesus is – untainted by men; so let it be.