For God’s Sake

“For God’s Sake Johnny, pull up those pants.”

Maybe I have been watching too many 80s and 90s shows but this phrase strikes me as an odd one. It has been labeled to me as a swear. Of course, scripture doesn’t bode well for those who misuse the the name of God, but I want to examine this phrase a little closer, according to some words of Jesus.

Jesus taught us to pray (Matt 6) and in turn to hallow the name of God. As Jesus prays to the Heavenly Father, he states, hallowed be your name. To hallow the name of God is to set it apart as holy. To hold it up in high regard. But what of this name? What does it matter about God’s name, it’s His character and being that matters after all.

Within scripture a name means so much more. Living in a culture where children a named to sound unique and not get picked on at school, we don’t initially get what this phrase from Jesus means. The name meant the very character of the person. Naming a child meant labelling his or her character. Jacob, from birth, was known as the trickster. It’s what his name meant and it held up. He tricked his brother into giving up his birthright. Hollowing the name of God is holding Gods character as holy and set apart. Which, if we call ourselves Christians, means we bear the name of God and need to keep it holy in our lives. Which for me is absolute surrender to God.

So back to our phrase, “For God’s Sake.” It’s known as cursing when in fact it should be redeemed as a phrase meant to bring awareness to how we bear the name of God. Our issue is we use the phrase when we are fed up with something, usually that something is moralistic. So Johnny pulling up his pants is for Gods sake because its a matter of Gods name being smeared.

But what if “for God’s sake” was less of a moralistic phrase and one of surrender. What if it meant, I give up everything in this day to God. If I wake up in the morning and exclaimed, “for God’s sake,” it would be to remind myself for whom I live. An odd thought from an odd phrase.

Of course this is a flippant phrase that is simple jargon in our society, but here it goes: For God’s sake Christians, hallow his name.

 

“I’m sitting in…

“I’m sitting in the shadow of the sacred and strolling through the splendor of the supernatural without the slightest sense of what surrounds me.”

Dr. Steve Stephens likes his alliteration. Maybe it’s because of his name, but what matters here is the use of antithetical verbs with its corresponding nouns. Here’s what I mean: “Sitting” and “strolling” are leisure themed verbs while the nouns, “shadow of the sacred” and “splendor of the supernatural” are fairly intense descriptions of God. Stevens fleshes out the reality that we live in the ordinary not realizing that God is right there. He states earlier that our faith is often godless, but the reality of God around us is astounding.  He wants us to see that almighty, all intimate God is here with us and we live as though he doesn’t exist. Powerful lesson for christians as well as everyone else.