Taking the Lords Name in Vain
Religion may be the biggest driver of human progress….and manipulation.
I’m not a religious person. That fact wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me. What may surprise all but those closest to me, however, is that I hold religion in pretty high regard.
I have tattoos and make blasphemous jokes. I proudly carry my Satanic Temple mug into the office (pre pandemic of course) and delight at the discomfort of others at the presence of the Baphomet in a project status meeting. I can’t remember the last time I was in a church building; so understand my internal contradiction when I say that Religion may be the biggest driver of human progress….and manipulation. It would be foolish to ignore as we confront some of our biggest collective challenges yet.
If we’re going to solve climate change, if we’re going to reconcile with our racist past, if we’re going to build economic systems that provide basic security and opportunity for a meaningful life to all people, we need to retake what religion stands for and eschew the ways in which it is being used to manipulate.
Working Together
Humans are incredible. Despite not being the strongest or fastest species, we have gone from creating and controlling fire to creating institutions of government, economic systems, and programs that put man on the moon. A human person pitted against a bear is likely going to lose. A group of humans against anything seems to be able to prevail. But how big of a group can we sustain?
Religion is essential for getting us to where we are because it created a shared story. It also created a shortcut to manipulating large groups.
Evolution has always favored groups that can work together. We can see this in the way that dolphins or orcas work as a team to find their meals. We see it in the way that primates live in troops and establish complex social structures. We see it in humans too. The tribe that could learn to work together to accomplish goals, accomplishes their goals. But we can only maintain a limited number of close personal relationships.
Living in hunter-gatherer tribes, we had fairly small groups. According to research done by Oxford anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, an individual can maintain 5 close personal relationships and roughly 45 working relationships. This is great for building a village. In order to build bigger institutions, we needed something bigger than personal relationships. Enter creative constructs.
Religion is essential for getting us to where we are because it created a shared story. While religions differs on the story particulars, the constructs share similar structures of answering questions related to why we’re here, what we should be working to accomplish while we’re here, and what behaviors are constructive or destructive to our shared goals. Two people who have never met can find common ground in religion and have a shared set of rules and objectives. Religion helped us cooperate in massive groups.
It also created a shortcut to manipulating large groups.
In the name of the lord
Religious leaders act in God’s name when they seek to council members of their congregations. In my upbringing in the Mormon church, leaders would council members to abstain from alcohol or idleness. The Bishop could ask that ward members volunteer to help a family facing tough times. They could act in God’s name because they could reference His words.
Which leads to the concept of taking one’s name in vain. In the Christian tradition, God famously commanded the Israelites to never take His name in vain. It was important enough to be number 3 in the big 10 that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai.
The context involves the Israelites preparing to enter the promised land. As bad luck would have it, people already lived in the promised land. These people were the Canaanites who had their own religious traditions and would exhort each other to follow the shared beliefs by following the teachings of Baal or Asherah.
In the observation that Canaanites were saying things in God’s name that he himself would not say, it was of upmost importance to make sure that the Israelites not do the same. Hence the commandment:
“Thou shalt not take the name of the lord thy god in vain” (Exodus 20:7)
Or as we say in the contemporary “Don’t be saying I said shit I didn’t say”
Modern Manipulation
It’s kinda funny to see how this commandment has been interpreted in modern times. When looking up other’s thoughts on the Exodus story, I was led down a rabbit hole that was both hilarious and sad. Searching for “acting in the lords name”, I found page after page of Christian discussion boards talking about “canceling” actors who had used the phrases “God dammit” or “Oh my God” while portraying a character.
The lively discussion centered around if it was ok if you were just acting and if this crossed the line of eternal damnation. There are points made about whether the actor can exploit the loophole in heaven’s bylaws if the most unholy of phrases was uttered as a character and not the person playing the character. It’s all so pure and well intentioned and, dare I say, naive.
There was no talk of political leaders claiming “God’s will” when proclaiming manifest destiny as reason enough to exterminate and relocate native people. Missing was the discussion around businesses refusing service to somebody and claiming it was because of “God’s law”. Most glaring in its absence is the condemning of the violent acts perpetuated in God’s name by the Klu Klux Klan. Remember those guys, with the hoods, famous for burning universally recognizable symbol of Christianity?
Like so many Christian teachings, this one has been corrupted completely away from its original moral-based meaning. Do we really think that a God would be so upset as to damn someone to hell over simply proclaiming “Oh my God” in a moment of surprise?
The Shining Light on the Hill
In October Senator Mike Lee of Utah invoked a beloved Mormon hero Captain Moroni and compared him to Donald Trump. For the unaware, Moroni is quite famous in Mormon theology. He’s the guy with the trumpet on top of the temple. He is the guy who presented Mormon founder Joseph Smith with the source material for the Book of Mormon. Growing up in Idaho and later living in Utah, I have met more people named Moroni than I have that share my own name.
To compare Donald Trump to a modern day Moroni was a blatant pandering to Lee’s religious base. While not speaking the words directly, Lee was claiming that in the same way that Moroni was called of the lord to do great works, Trump likewise was called of the Lord. In essence, Trump was acting in the Lords name.
Trump. Donald “grab her by the pussy” Trump. This is the guy Lee was saying was a modern Moroni. They guy who coined the term “Shithole countries”. Even if you agree with his policies, it is a far stretch of the imagination to think this is a person who should be held in any type of moral esteem. Yet this is what Lee tried to do.
The backlash was swift even from his religious base. It was evident that Lee was making a quick reference to boost his political position. He was simply saying something “Christian-y” in hopes that other Christians would jump on board without evaluating intent. Even though he later apologized and said that he wasn’t meaning to compare Tump to Moroni as a religious leader, his argument for comparison quickly loses steam. Lee claimed wanting to state that they both didn’t seek power but gained it anyway. So of course Moroni was the first and obvious choice.
Missing though, was the backlash and shaming for using God as a political tool to score some easy support. If this doesn’t count as taking the Lord’s name in vain, God dammit, I don’t know what would!
This isn’t the first time and Lee isn’t alone claiming to act in the Lords name. It’s pervasive and it will ruin Christianity as a viable tool for creating the type of world the OG Christian would have intended.
And the Lord Thy God Sayeth
Which leads to Jesus himself. What did he teach and why aren’t Christians following his teachings? More importantly, how can progressives adopt actual Christian teachings to help build a platform based on a shared set of established morals?
Jesus’s most famous rally would have to have been the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew chapters 5–7. The sermon is the longest continuous discourse of Jesus. It is generally considered to contain the central tenets of Christian discipleship. Matthew 6 is particularly fitting when evaluating whether one is taking the Lord’s name in vein.
1Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. (Matthew 6:1–2)
Essentially, if you’re making a point to show how Christian you are, you’re doing it wrong. He continues in Matthew 7:
15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
…
21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7:15–23)
Here Jesus explicitly warns against people proclaiming to act in his name while not practicing what he taught; saying that by one’s fruits (or actions) you shall know them.
So what are those fruits? How do we doeth the will of the Lord? Well if Jesus is an example, then we have a pretty good idea.
There was that time he healed the leper. He just straight up did it because he could and it was the right thing to do. Notice there was no talk of a free market solution to leprosy or of pre-existing conditions. There was just compassion for a sick person and the desire to help.
There was the time he sat with and forgave the adulterous woman. He didn’t condemn her for not adhering to the current norms of sexual behavior. He didn’t have a work requirement policy. He just forgave her.
The fact is that Christ (literally or allegorically) set the example by loving others. Without condition and without thought as to his own reputation; even when that meant his own death. He taught love and practiced it in everything he did. He loved the poor, he loved the sinners, he loved the sick, he loved the children. The only people he seemed to hate were the hypocrites.
Progressive policies focus on these same values. We focus on providing healthcare for the sick. We focus on housing the homeless. We focus on treating all people with dignity through establishing wage and environmental protections. We focus on bettering ones life through access to good education for all regardless of their class or background. If we can do a better job of messaging these positions through the story of Christian morals, we will see progressive policy adoption.
Do Better
I wanted to write this piece to explore the idea of a moral progressive platform. Progressive policies are popular because they align with a generally accepted moral foundation.
There is so much room for a political party to adopt the moral teachings found in Christianity (or any religion for that matter) and there is a massive decrease in human suffering if leaders were to do so. True moral-based policy would also work to eliminate the suffering caused by extractive corporate profiteering. It would take honest efforts to house the homeless, feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and free those in prison.
I know many Christians. They are my friends and my family. Christians are good and earnest people. Individually they will go out of their way to help a neighbor. Individually they will recognize and eradicate their racial bias. Individually, the recognize the earth as God’s creation and the importance of being good stewards over it.
Unfortunately, we don’t need individual action for our shared collective problems. We need massive cooperation. We need a shared goal and shared guardrails for the actions that will get us to our goals. We need a collective story to guide collective action. Why not use the oldest and most widely shared story in our country?
Maybe that means telling the story of Genesis 2 where God “took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it” as a framing of taking care of our planet and choosing sustainable energy projects as our moral duty. Maybe it means following the example to feed the hungry by expanding unemployment benefits without necessitating a work requirement. Probably it means referencing Matthew 18 and connecting the economic conditions created by austerity politics as a cause for youth delinquency.
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6)
Where invoking religion is primarily being used in politics to cause fear and division, there is not only opportunity but a need for progressives to #takebackjesus.
References:
Exodus. (20:7). In King James Bible. Retrieved January 27, 2021 from https://biblehub.com/exodus/20-7.htm
Matthew. (6:1–7). In King James Bible. Retrieved January 27, 2021 from https://biblehub.com/matthew/6.htm
Matthew. (18:6). In King James Bible. Retrieved January 27, 2021 from https://biblehub.com/matthew/7.htm
Matthew. (18:6). In King James Bible. Retrieved January 27, 2021 from https://biblehub.com/matthew/18–6.htm
