Godless Wonder

I read somewhere about this topic that "taking the lord's name" means, essentially, being married to Jesus, so "don't take the lord's name in vain," I guess means don't get married to Jesus, then cheat on him?

Megusic

this is how my supervisor explained to her 3y.o. why he couldn't say "oh my god!" or exclaim, "jesus!/jesus christ!": if you say that when you are mad, it is like you are blaming the bad thing that happend on god or jesus, and it isn't theif fault: they are good, and want to help you, so it isn't fair to blame them when something goes wrong.

the next week in church he repeatedly exclaimed: "he just said a bad word!!"

Mr. B

My understanding of taking the lord's name in vain is that you should only be mentioning his name for a religious purpose, like in prayer. Things like Goddammit are definitely taboo. Obviously, his name is too magical to be spoken by mere human beings unless they're praising him.

On the other hand, this commandment doesn't proscribe most of the more common swear words. Assuming you're a Christian who thinks that the ten commandments are the be-all and end-all (such as all the idiots who wax ecstatic about having the commandments displayed in public places), hearing those words shouldn't bother you. Although I wouldn't be surprised to see them come up with a biblical citation that they'd interpret as saying, for example, that you can't say "shit."