Continuing my quest to find some part of the Bible worthy of basing a rational moral system on, I turn now to the Third Commandment.

#3 – “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.”

In other words, don’t take the name of the Lord in vain, otherwise you’ll be found guilty of taking it in vain – got that?

Sorry, I don’t mean to quibble, it’s just that I really get the overwhelming feeling sometimes that this allegedly perfect Almighty God could have used a decent human editor.

The dictionary meaning of “in vain” that seems to apply here is “In an irreverent or disrespectful manner.” So, this Commandment seems to be basically saying, “Hey, treat Me with respect. Don’t be mocking Me none. It’s always Mister God to you. DON’T FORGET or I’ll whomp your ass but good!”

God seems very down on mocking. When a group of little kids mocked the prophet Elisha’s baldness in 2 Kings 2:23-24, Elisha cursed them in the name of the Lord and two she bears came rushing out of the woods and tore 42 of these kids to bits. One can only wonder how much worse their punishment might have been had they been over 18 and had mocked God Himself.

I guess I can kinda see how this Commandment might be advantageous to a God whose feelings are as easily hurt by humans as those of the God of the Bible are, but is it the kind of thing we can really base a moral system on?

When President John Adams tried this same sort of thing by signing the Sedition Act in 1798 which prohibited false, scandalous and malicious writing about the President, Congress, and the nation, he ran into a political firestorm from which he never really recovered. Attempts to safeguard the U.S. flag by passing a law banning its burning in protest have not yet succeeded because we generally seem to agree with Voltaire’s comment about “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” A WWII vet who was interviewed on TV this last Memorial Day actually said that he told school kids that he fought Hitler precisely so that misguided people would have the right to burn the flag if they so chose to do so. Somehow this seems a lot nobler and more moral to me than a Commandment that says, “Hey – no making fun of God Almighty or I’ll rip you limb from limb!”

Other countries at other times have taken a different course. Unwilling to rely upon the lackadaisical behavior of she bears in these matters, they have made mockery of their God and leaders a serious criminal offense. Are these countries happier, better places? Maybe we should ask Salmon Rushdie, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or the surviving relatives of Anne Frank.

If you want to avoid mocking your God, that’s your right and privilege. But then if He’s your God, you probably wouldn’t even think of doing so, would you? To the extent this Commandment is a reminder to you to be sane and consistent in your relationship with your deity, you can have it. To the extent that it’s an attempt to impose your God on the rest of us, or shield Him from legitimate analysis and criticism, it’s an extremely unfortunate attempt to pre-empt free thought and free speech by fiat and the threat of force.

These words of Ben Franklin come to mind: “When religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

Putting it in my own words: Any God who has to command His own followers not to mock Him is probably a Bad One; and any followers who must resort to law and intimidation to protect that God from being mocked by others probably deserve to be mocked themselves.

Continue to the Fourth Commandment…

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