We live in world filled to overflowing with words and names for everything. Brand recognition is a major goal of omnipresent advertising—much of which is misleading. So in our culture, talk is cheap. We figure politicians and others routinely lie or evade the truth. Words are emptied of their ability to convey truth and the power of that which a word—or a name—properly signifies.

Not so in the experience of the Semitics who first heard this commandment. In a world that was largely silent and deeply "archetypal", to speak a god's name was to conjure up the powers of that god. And those powers were often capricious, so that unless the speaker of the name was very careful, bad things might happen. Monotheism became an awesome achievement but that only underscored the need for the fear of the Lord. Now instead many gods, there was only one, but that God ruled the Universe. Watch out! So deep was the belief in the power of the name that our Hebrew ancestors in the faith decided the best way to deal with the problem was to never speak God's name! So impressive was this decision not to speak the sacred name, that uncertainty as to what was the name for God still exists. Scholars now believe that "Jehovah" is an incorrect translation of the Hebrew, and that the proper name is "Yahweh". To this day many Jewish writers will not even spell out the English word for God, and will write it this way: G—d.

That's all background, but I think it helps us understand that this commandment is about a lot more than the concern with cursing and superstition. It has to do with honoring God as God. It has to do with living in a way that acknowledges that God is the Power and the Glory, not us. And even more, living in a way that says every breath we take, and all our energy is part of the sustaining power of the Creator. In other words, we are totally dependent on God for everything.

But the great sin of the modern era has been and continues to be this: even religious people (like us?) talk about God, use God's name, say we believe in God, and yet live as practical atheists. We often act as though God doesn't matter. And that is the real problem. For we should be so head-over-heels in love with God that our every moment is, as Luther suggests, a matter of "prayer, praise and thanksgiving." Or, as ancient one once said, "The awareness of God should be with us like a toothache."