Wednesday, January 11, 2017

OM?

  I feel compelled to write about something of a religious nature. Many of you reading this might not agree but I hope you will consider my point and give it due diligence.
  The topic is the ambivalence the world has with respect to taking God's name in vain. It is especially troubling in this day and time to hear those who profess to be Christians absent-mindedly insert "God" into their remarks - something God has expressly forbidden
"Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Exodus 20:7
  When we insert "God" into a remark as just a flippant annotation to some abject comment we utter during the course of our day we are in fact using God's name in vain because we are not recognizing the omnipotence and holiness of God when we do so.
  "But!" you say "God's name isn't God so it's okay to say 'Oh my god.'"
  No. No it isn't okay. True the term "God" is a word that recognizes that God is a position or title and Isaiah 42:8 God himself tells us his name is Jehovah. Consider for a moment though that any reference to our Creator spoken loosely and with little consideration for what and who he is can only serve to trivialize him. And in our society now we have found a way to trivialize God even further when in our digital universe we exclaim "OMG!" throughout our social comments. Think of it... we have reduced God down to a single exclamation, to a single word in our society, failing miserably to recognize the awesome power of a Creator who loves us. How sad.
  Having grown up in a very conservative and religious family I have heard it said that even words such as "gosh," and "golly" are extrapolations of God and we should even remove those words from our language. Whether they are or not (and there are those who claim to trace the etymology of the words back to God) the point is still valid - ANY word we use in reference to God would be a practice in trivializing God and reducing him to an afterthought. I don't know about you but I don't ever want to minimize our Creator in ANY way and I pray you wouldn't want to either.
  For another commentary on this subject I came across please click here.