Good News for the OMG Generation

Exodus 20:7; Luke 15:11-32

Sometimes it really helps to hear a familiar Bible verse in an unfamiliar translation to refocus on what is actually said. The Third Commandment becomes much more clear if we use Eugene Peterson’s Message version—

No using the name of God, your God, in curses or silly banter; God won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.

There is no argument here about the intent of the commandment—do not call on God unless you really mean it; and sure as thunder, don’t make God a piece of casual epithets. 

OMG!! Are we ever in really big trouble!

We have certainly moved a long, long way from the Hebrew theologians responsible for our Old Testament. So holy did they regard the name of God, YHWH (the name God gave Moses to use), that they demanded that when it appeared in scripture, it would automatically be read as Adonai (LORD, in English). No one would attempt to intone God’s name, for even the name is so holy and so pure that it would simply incinerate the human speaker. Remember that these are the same theologians who advised the priest to have a chain on his ankle when he went behind the curtain into the Holy of Holies on Rosh Hashanah lest God decide to keep him! (No, I have no idea how the priests holding the other end of the chain were supposed to haul their compadre back should God get feisty…) 

Such an assertion of the abject holiness—the abject otherness—of God is almost alien to us in the OMG culture of 2014. 

Are we any better for it?

The ending phrase of the Second Commandment is a curse, promising holy wrath upon the heads of anyone fool enough to toy with God. But in our world, such speaking is a piece and parcel of fairy tales and late night preachers stuck on the far end of the AM dial. Truth be told, God has been tamed by our time and place. There is that whole OMG thing. We all know what it stands for, and we all know how little anyone saying it considers God at all while speaking. It’s just an introductory clause, a transition—an indication of surprise, astonishment, or enthusiasm. No one seems terribly afraid of divine fury burning them to a crisp at every utterance. “God” is just another word.

So, back to my question—are we any better for it?

As I read the Bible, I find something intriguing—far from the fiery maelstroms promised by those far end AM dial preachers, God seems much more subtle in the implementation of judgment. As I read through story after story of the wandering faithful, the benighted outsiders, and the other human beings who fall into disobedience, rejection of God, or simply lose interest, God tends to leave them to it. The consequence is far more profound than the maelstrom—absence takes hold, takes root, and hollows the offender. They wind up in the wilderness, wandering lost, hopeless, and afraid. Israel literally traipsed around in the desert for forty years, then suffered the existential scarring of the Exile, another wilderness. Jesus met one lost soul after another, condemned to some sort of emotional, spiritual, or even community wilderness. The absence of God resulted in an absence of direction, purpose, focus, connection, solace, support, and on and on. 

The immediate response from our enlightened time is that we sure don’t feel like we are in any wilderness. We do just fine, thank you. 

Denial is a hard nut to crack.

Here is a sampling from an ordinary day in ordinary time—the news programs are all brimming with one story of outrage, suffering, misdirection, and confusion after another; it is why everyone is on the edge of their seats in antipathic anticipation of Election Day because no one knows what times are going to come; it is why ISIS wreaks havoc and we do not really know what we are supposed to do; it is why more and more children suffer from anxiety, depression, and constant worry; it is why more and more parents become helicopters trying to wall their children inside a mighty fortress, yet fearing nothing will truly offer protection; and it is why congregations storm away from denominational ties, lost in a wilderness of outrage at presumed affronts to sensibility, missing the redeeming, reconciling presence of Christ. 

Maybe God has pulled back, waiting for us to come to our senses, just like another father in another story told by Jesus. The Younger Son is left to himself when he denounces Dad and everyone else. Dad doesn’t chase him down, plead with him, or hit him with righteous indignation—he just lets him go. He knows what will happen. He waits.

God really isn’t a vengeful tyrant—God is an absolute ruler, but not angrily. God knows us well enough to know that we learn by experience. We have to be allowed to run on the lead for a while, taste freedom and its consequences. In so doing, we find ourselves. In so doing, too, we find God with us. Returning to the prevalence of wilderness in the Word, it is fascinating that it is nearly always a place of purification, edification, and an awakening to holiness. The wanderers return better than they left. 

Nothing has changed.

We can use our experience here and now to assess who and what we have become. In doing that, we can awaken to our need for God and God’s grace each day. In doing that, we can recapture the sheer holiness of God. 

God is much more than an epithet or a placeholder. God is God. God is our hope and salvation. 

Consider that before you next invoke the name of the Lord.

God awaits. 

Maybe that will turn the OMG into the “O my God” faithful proclamation of the Psalmist, the prophet, and Christ himself.