Some nimrod called into the Junkies' radio show on Monday to complain about one of their number's use of the phrase "god dammit" as taking the LORD's name in vain. It gave me reason to ruminate on the topic and it strikes me as odd that Christians so often are ignorant of their own Scriptures.

The first misunderstanding is that the name that can be taken in vain is anything other than the tetragrammaton, which we don't even know how to pronounce because biblical Hebrew didn't have the little vowel/aspiration marks that modern Hebrew does. 'God' is not the name we are to avoid taking in vain.

The second misunderstanding is that uttering an imprecatory phrase is what constitutes taking the name in vain. In Ecclesiastes 5 we learn that you take the LORD's name in vain when you swear an oath to him and don't pay it back.

The third misunderstanding which the nimrod caller did not bring up , but which is common among nimrods in general is tied to misunderstanding #2. Only followers of the LORD can take his name in vain - "the LORD, thy god". One could retort that the LORD is everyone's god, but that does not jibe with the usage of that phrase anywhere in the Old Testament. The Philistines worshipped Dagon and the incident with the statue and the ark make it quite clear that the LORD was Israel's god, but not the Philistines'.