Bible Text: Leviticus 19:12 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living |
Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:12
What can bring God down to your level? There are two ways you can do this: One way is by debasing Him, or trivializing Him, dragging Him down to where you are. The other way is to invite Him to come to your aid, touching you where you are. The first way is to profane Him; the second way is to pray to Him. Both really do the same thing but do it different ways.
When folks use profanity, they invoke God’s name in ordinary conversation. It is done today so often and so frequently that most people don’t even think about it any more than they think to breathe. They say, “Oh God,” as an interjection much as another person might say, “Oh, no.” “Were you praying or using profanity?” I asked one youth who was sprinkling God’s name in his conversation the way I would use salt and pepper on my eggs at breakfast. “Oh,” he said, “I never think about what I’m saying. It’s just an expression.”
Our English word profane comes from two Latin words (are you ready for a brief lesson in semantics?) pro meaning “before” and fanus which means “temple.” It’s the idea of going into the temple and dragging out something, which is considered holy or consecrated, pulling it into the street. In time the word came to mean “serving to debase or defile what is holy,” says the Miriam Webster Dictionary. The name of God was so holy to the ancient scribes who copied the scrolls, which we know as the Bible today, that if they miscopied one of the names for God, that scroll was given ceremonial burial—not simply crumpled and tossed.
Using profanity wasn’t the only way that God was profaned, says the writers of Scripture. In the text recorded in Amos 2:7, God says that when a “father and a son use the same girl…[they] profane my name.” A passing thought. Have you ever wondered why people don’t profane Mohammed’s name, or the name of Buddha, or the name of celebrities or world leaders? But profaning the Almighty, whether it be by trivializing His name or by making a mockery of that which is pure and holy, drags Him from the temple just as surely as if you would invade a pagan temple and parade an idol through the streets.
Another way to bring God to your level is through prayer. Here God responds to your invitation. The attitude is totally different. Instead of defiance, which is the attitude of profanity, helplessness is the attitude of prayer. It is the cry of a child raising his weak voice to his father, the petition of a hurting heart to a Sovereign who has the power, the love and compassion to reach down to your pain, your loneliness, or your need and respond in love.
Whether you strive to bring God to your level through prayer or through profanity is largely determined by your attitude towards God, by your understanding of who He is. You have to decide whether you want to take a cheap shot at Him because you are angry or just indifferent to who He is, or acknowledge that He is indeed the Almighty and that you are His child as you pray to Him. In either case you bring God down to your level, or at least you presume to.
A closing thought. If you went into a pagan temple—Indiana Jones style—in a jungle somewhere, and dragged the villager’s god out into the street, they would probably skin you alive, right? Strange, isn’t it, though, how we allow the same thing with a holy and true God, and seldom, if ever, raise our eyebrows when our contemporaries defile God’s name? We say nothing in protest and register no offence. Some things just don’t make sense, do they?
Resource reading: Leviticus 19
