8-10-2011 - "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."
TOTD: Do you think there's more to this commandment than what we all initially think of?
We all usually defer to the thought that this means we shouldn't use the names of Deity to curse, and while this would certainly be a vain use of Their names I couldn't help but feel that there was probably more to this commandment.
Think of it - the Lord had 10 main things He wanted to make sure that we wouldn't do. Don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't have a God before me... don't curse with my name. While this is certainly important, it doesn't seem to carry the same magnitude as the other 9 commandments.
The only other time I have heard the phrase, "take the name of the Lord," is in conjunction with the covenant of baptism and in the renewing of that covenant through the sacrament. When we are baptized we are promising Heavenly Father that we will be saviors of men as Christ daily is a Savior to us. We are committing to be who Christ is and to walk as He walks, and to talk as He talks. We are literally coming unto Him by taking His sacred name upon us. So what would it mean to do that in vain?
I had struggled with finding the proper understanding of the word vain in the past. You hear it in popular culture like it's a good thing, like in the magazine Vanity Fair which I guess is purposefully glamorizing worldly things. But that definition didn't seem to fit the way it's being used in this commandment, so I would typically stop there. With the advent of the iPhone and its trusty apps, however, I've become a very prolific dictionary user. So this time around I went digging into the dictionary app to read the varying definitions of the word vain, and what I found opened up a lot more than I was anticipating. The word vain comes from the Latin word that also means wane.
So with that understanding of the word vain I learned that I shouldn't take the name of the Lord my God upon me with a waning heart or regressing effort. I should in fact be waxing in my efforts to serve God by serving my fellow man. I should be waxing strong in faith, hope, and charity. Much like the moon, I should turn my face towards the Son and get the world out of my view. I should let the Son's light illuminate me to a fullness. My light, which is truly the Son's light, would then reflect off of me and onto the world, and then they would see in the darkness my good works and know that it was of the Son. That is taking the name of the Lord with an increasing heart. Line upon line, precept upon precept, horizon over new horizon, until there is a fullness and no longer any disposition to do otherwise in my life.
This is what I learned, and I welcome any further discussion on the topic.
We all usually defer to the thought that this means we shouldn't use the names of Deity to curse, and while this would certainly be a vain use of Their names I couldn't help but feel that there was probably more to this commandment.
Think of it - the Lord had 10 main things He wanted to make sure that we wouldn't do. Don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't have a God before me... don't curse with my name. While this is certainly important, it doesn't seem to carry the same magnitude as the other 9 commandments.
The only other time I have heard the phrase, "take the name of the Lord," is in conjunction with the covenant of baptism and in the renewing of that covenant through the sacrament. When we are baptized we are promising Heavenly Father that we will be saviors of men as Christ daily is a Savior to us. We are committing to be who Christ is and to walk as He walks, and to talk as He talks. We are literally coming unto Him by taking His sacred name upon us. So what would it mean to do that in vain?
I had struggled with finding the proper understanding of the word vain in the past. You hear it in popular culture like it's a good thing, like in the magazine Vanity Fair which I guess is purposefully glamorizing worldly things. But that definition didn't seem to fit the way it's being used in this commandment, so I would typically stop there. With the advent of the iPhone and its trusty apps, however, I've become a very prolific dictionary user. So this time around I went digging into the dictionary app to read the varying definitions of the word vain, and what I found opened up a lot more than I was anticipating. The word vain comes from the Latin word that also means wane.
So with that understanding of the word vain I learned that I shouldn't take the name of the Lord my God upon me with a waning heart or regressing effort. I should in fact be waxing in my efforts to serve God by serving my fellow man. I should be waxing strong in faith, hope, and charity. Much like the moon, I should turn my face towards the Son and get the world out of my view. I should let the Son's light illuminate me to a fullness. My light, which is truly the Son's light, would then reflect off of me and onto the world, and then they would see in the darkness my good works and know that it was of the Son. That is taking the name of the Lord with an increasing heart. Line upon line, precept upon precept, horizon over new horizon, until there is a fullness and no longer any disposition to do otherwise in my life.
This is what I learned, and I welcome any further discussion on the topic.
posted by A. Travis Moore at
12:32 AM
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