Throughout my life, I have heard people say that the Third of the Ten Commandments is hard to understand because nobody really knows what "take the name of the LORD thy God in vain" means. Some people think that it means to use the word "God" inappropriately, as in a part of a foul-mouthed rant (such as "god damn it"). Others are so afraid of offending their god that they won't even spell "God" with an o, and some scholars and Bible translators have replaced the proper name and/or title of God with "Hashem," which means simply "The Name." Still others, like the Fundamentalist Christians I used to hang out with, believe it refers to any and all foul words, such as "shit" or "fuck" or "damn." A few have even taken this idea so far to the extreme that saying "darn" or "dang" counts as "taking the name of the Lord in vain," because those words are "minced oaths," which are adaptations to make the words less offensive ("darn" and "dang" are both adaptations of the word "damn;" and "gee whizz" is actually an adaptation of "Jesus Christ" which is sometimes used in a manner similar to "Goddamnit").

All of these things tend to focus on the words a person speaks, and not on the intent of the person speaking them... or more importantly, their actions.

Take the fundies of the United States, for example. Many right-wing Christians will say that gay people can't go to heaven because of an obscure verse in Leviticus which says that a man lying with another man as he lies with a woman is an abomination to God. But what they neglect to mention is that the man they claim to honor, Jesus Christ, never mentioned homosexuality, and when it came down to brass tacks, he let a woman who was caught in the act of adultery go free without condemning her. In fact, Jesus never condemned people for their sexuality. His condemnation was always directed at people who used their influence to oppress others, and toward those who held themselves to a different standard than they held everybody else to. He called those people "hypocrites," which was a name given to Greek stage actors because they were one person on the stage and a completely different person off the stage... just like the religious elite of his day who condemned him for healing people on the Sabbath day while they themselves would readily have helped their neighbor pull an ox out of a hole in the ground on the Sabbath.

If I may be so bold, the people Jesus condemned repeatedly in his rants were much closer to the definition of the Third Commandment than the random teenager saying "Jesus Fucking Christ" when he stubs his toe on a curb while trying to cross a busy intersection. They were the so-called religious leaders of their day. They claimed that they were the representatives of God to the people, and yet as his self-proclaimed representatives, they represented only themselves and not the God who furiously fumed at anyone who would oppress the poor. They were so focused on the letter of the law that the intentions of those laws were completely lost to them... and irrelevant to them as well. I believe that this type of behavior exemplifies the "taking of the Lord's name in vain" that so many people in this day and age claim is an "unclear" message in the Old Testament.

When Jesus was preaching to the people, he always made one thing abundantly clear: he was his father's son because he did the will of his father. When many people started following him to see more miracles and more spectacle so that they could go back home and brag to their friends that they had walked with the Messiah, he turned to them and said that they were "of [their] father the devil, and the works of [their] father [they would] do, for he was a liar from the beginning, and the father of lies." Who a person bows down in front of isn't their God, but rather the one whose commandments they obey. Jesus himself said that "if you love me, keep my commandments." He didn't say "get saved, go to church, read your bible, and pray." He said "keep my commandments," which are crystal clear in the Gospels... and which are all but nonexistent in the practice of many Christians.

The same, I might add, is true for many Jews, many Muslims, and many members of other faiths. They use the names of their deities to justify things their deities themselves would never condone and in many cases would in fact actively condemn. Using your god's name in vain is in the same line of thought as the commandment against bearing false witness against your neighbor. Telling yourself, "I follow Jesus" while you and a gang of baseball bat-wielding thugs beat a gay man to death in an alley is taking the name of Jesus Christ in vain, just like the hypocritical religious leaders of Jesus' day told themselves and everyone else they were God's representatives to the ancient Jewish people even while they oppressed the poor in direct defiance of his commandments. People who misrepresent their gods are liars, agents of the enemies of the gods they outwardly claim to follow. This, I believe, is what Moses meant when he said "thou shalt take the name of the LORD thy God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain." Given the severity of the commandment, I find it very difficult to believe that Moses was referring to a random ill-chosen word spoken in frustration by a person who has just stubbed their toe, or a gamer who just ragequit Team Fortress 2 after his team got steamrolled for the tenth time in a half hour. The severity of the commandment suggests a capital offense, such as the crime of Treason - of aiding and abetting the ruler's enemies.

If Jesus commanded his followers to love their neighbor, and then you go out and claim you follow Jesus but hate your neighbor, you are taking Jesus' name in vain, because you are claiming to follow him and yet you are aiding and abetting his enemies through your own deceptive behavior. This, I believe, is what constitutes "taking god's name in vain," because it sabotages your god's own purposes. A carpenter working on a roof and hitting the wrong nail with his hammer isn't going to get on God's shit list for a poor choice in words while crying out in pain. But a person who claims to follow God and then goes right out and does the work of his "God's" enemies definitely will.