"Dear Gussy!"
As a child, when I heard this phrase fall from my mother's lips, I knew it was time to make myself scarce. My sweet Southern Baptist mother would never let such words escape from her mouth unless she was very, very angry. We had finally worked her last nerve when this expletive came out of her mouth. (Her milder backup swear word was "fiddlesticks" – which usually translated into, "I'm getting a little frustrated" and usually was nothing to make haste over.)
Using God's name in vain was forbidden in my Southern Baptist household. We were admonished never to even use the milder forms of swearing like "Gosh," "Golly," or "Darn." "Shucks" was even too close to for my mother's sensitive ears. I have never, in all her 82 years, heard her damn anyone, though I can imagine she's been tempted a time or two to verbalize such a wish on some people in her life. My brother and I eschewed her favorite swear words. You wouldn't catch either of us saying "Dear Gussy" in front of our friends. We'd be pilloried by our peers worse than we already were for being the kids of a preacher.
My brother would later join the Navy and learn to swear just like a sailor. I, as a budding writer, read book after book to learn the exotic art of cussing and taking God's name in vain. Stephen King is especially instructive in this endeavor. I recall buying a George Carlin album once as a teenager in the post Tipper Gore era. I had to tear the profanity warning label off the album cover and don my enormous brown Koss earphones (that today would look as though I were at the shooting range or on a flight deck) to even listen to the album for fear that my mother would know that I was even listening to such language.
But, as Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler, Jr. rightly pointed out in a recent interview, when we're forbidden in the Ten Commandments from taking God's name in vain, it's not just outlawing such phrases as "God damn," or "Oh, my God!"
For Israel, they knew, first and foremost, not to speak falsely about God. It's not just using God's name in an inappropriate way; it is ascribing to his name what is not true about him. And we can do this by our worship. We can do this in conversation. We can say, "God did this or God did that," and if it's not scriptural, we have just taken his name in vain.
Then, Mohler just couldn't help himself – he had to go there:
Liberal theology is taking God's name in vain.
Dear Gussy, I hate it when conservatives just give into the temptation to take that kind of easy potshot. But, Brother Mohler, we're also instructed not to bear false witness against another brother or sister, as you do in this interview. Liberal theology does not take God's name in vain.
If anything, the weakness of liberal theology is that it is loth to ascribe God to just about anything. If anything, we don't use God enough in our arguments and doctrines (such as they are).
Conservatives, on the other hand, invoke God for everything – hurricanes (God's punishment for evildoers like homosexuals), epidemics like AIDS (again, punishing homosexuals mainly), political wins (Mike Huckabee says it was God who performed the miracle of overturning Prop 8), or ordaining the assassination of foreign leaders (which he only told Pat Robertson about, btw). Liberals like to invoke God on things like helping the poor, alleviating poverty, and enacting health care that will help everyone, including the least of these.
Liberals also like to talk about God when they mention societal outcasts like gays and lesbians. This is what gets stuck in Mohler's craw especially. This is apparently where he sees "liberal theology" taking God's name in vain. But, the Bible, while condemning all forms of sex that use or abuse one another, clearly states that anyone who has love, has God (1 John 4:7). The "liberal theology" of welcoming all of God's children in love into God's realm cleaves as close to biblical edict as any conservative theology could ever aspire to do.
Instead of taking potshots across the bow at one another, though, I often wish liberals and conservatives could join together on the areas where they agree and put aside theological differences long enough to make a difference in the world. A quick gander at the list of beliefs the Southern Baptists proclaim (or have proclaimed in the past) shows a lot of room for common ground including:
The environment: The Southern Baptists acknowledged in 1990 that they are called to be faithful stewards of the earth.
The impoverished: The denomination pledged back in 1972 to "support federal welfare reform legislation" to help the poor.
Violence: Also in the 1970s, Baptists supported an end to violence, "not only physical acts of violence but also psychological violence such as racism, chauvinism, and economic discrimination."
Women: Back in 1983, the denomination even passed a resolution that urged "all employers, including those Southern Baptist churches, institutions, and agencies which employ women, to seek fairness for women in compensation, benefits, and opportunities for advancement."
A lot of that sounds like "liberal theology," yet, I doubt Mohler would say these Southern Baptists of the past were taking God's name in vain in any of these resolutions. Mohler looks to the Ten Commandments to give people guidance on God's will, but perhaps he doesn't have to look that far back to help people become better citizens in both this world and the next. He only need look back a few decades at his denomination's own statements.
We in the liberal Christian camp, instead of taking shots back at Mohler, may do well to simply remind him, and others like him, of their own rich liberal history.
Tags: liberal theology, profanity
What most strikes me about Mohler's statement is the standard he invokes for deciding whether attributing something to God takes God's name in vain or not: "...if it's not scriptural, we have just taken his name in vain."
There are several problems with this standard, the first having to do with ambiguity. What does it mean to say that something is "scriptural"? Do we look to the emergent themes of scripture or to isolated texts?
Liberal theologians are inclined to favor the former, even at the cost of setting aside the most straightforward sense of isolated texts. Is this unscriptural? Only if you beg the question in favor of preferring the latter understanding of "scriptural."
The deeper problem, it seems to me, lies with the implications of consistently attributing what is "scriptural" to God. There is much that the writers of Scripture attributed to God that I can only look at with moral horror.
For example, when I think of God striking poor Uzzah dead because he reflexively tried to stop the Ark from falling to the ground without permission (2 Samuel 6:6-8), I cannot help but think less of a God who would do such a thing. Perhaps my moral sensibilities are off track, but they have an immediacy and power that rings of truth, whereas the scriptural passage at issue seems to be an interpretation of events having more to do with the superstitious ideas of the ancient author(s) than with the transcendent God of love breaking through the veil of space and time to reveal a divine truth. Why should I think that my supposedly God-given conscience, which is at odds with this text, is less revelatory than this passage?
Well, the fact is that I don't. While my conscience is often confused, sometimes things shine out with a blazing clarity that cannot be denied, as if the very voice of God were resonating within my soul.
I could perhaps engage in a pretense of ignoring this resonant divine voice in favor of this biblical passage that I cannot possibly believe is revelatory; but the best I could hope to achieve is to convince myself that God is LESS GOOD than I had previously held God to be.
And so I must choose: accept the literal sense of this biblical passage AND THINK LESS OF GOD, or reject the literal sense of this passage (taking my cue instead from the stories of those who, unwashed and unbidden, touched Jesus and were healed rather than struck dead) in order to stick to my faith in God's moral perfection.
It seems to me that anything that I attribute to God that leads me to think less of God amounts to taking God's name in vain...even if it is "scriptural." We might disagree about what is good and right, and we might get our moral judgments wrong--but it seems to me that so long as we sincerely follow our conscience and attribute to God only what our best judgment declares to be good and right, God will forgive us our errors, and we will not have taken God's name in vain.
But if we attribute to God what we sincerely find to be morally abominable, we have taken God's name in vain even if it is scriptural...even if, by chance, it happens to be correct.
Eric, what excellent points you make. Thank you for your contribution here. I wholeheartedly agree. What Mohler and others like him do is specifically avoid thinking through the scriptures as you've done here.
As my Southern Baptist mama told me when I announced my entry into seminary: "Why do you want to go and mess yourself up like that?"
Questions "mess up" what my mom and Mohler believe to be a perfectly good theology. Asking if God acts morally in the Bible is a bridge too far for them. Of course God acts morally - even if we don't like it because God is God and can do no wrong, now go play and stop asking these silly questions!
I loved your book, btw. I'm recommending it to anyone who will listen, and many who won't.
To me that is the most important question of all because it is the story of my life. The questions were there for decades. It was very hard to get in a position to ever ask any of the questions, and it was hard to deal with the misdirection in any responses. Then came Bush and everything changed. Now the question is simple, how can you vote for Bush and claim God? The answer is simple too, "Shut up." Now religion reveals their hatred, and none of the old questions matter anymore.
Candace,
You remind him of Baptist liberal history, but you also remind him of the conservative present by bringing up the invocations of Huckabee and Robertson. Can you work with him on liberal causes that he believed in 30 years ago while he currently believes the world must be destroyed, hopefully in our lifetime, and those who believe different must suffer? Ask him if he thinks the Left Behind books are of God, or if they are actually doing moral damage to the people in his congregation.
That's the problem with dreams, Jim. Often they turn out just to be pipe dreams. I doubt Mohler would do anything a lesbian pastor suggests, but I can always yearn to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with him can't I? :)
That is why I recommended you ask him the Left Behind question.
At least we are able to ask these questions, and search for answers without being condemned or worse. Progress, I think...
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You are a much more polite girl then I, Candace ;)
I would love to remind him of 1845,vote to maintain slavery , separation from Baptists and other lovely factoids of their history.
I bet the name of God was often repeated back then. They later apologised for ungodliness and shameful roots of SB.
So he will eventually grow up and learn that love is what makes you a Chistian,not just words.
Creative demagoguery is a powerful PR tool, but the bottom line remains : It's not what you say , it's what you do and how you do it( with love to all God's children).
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