The Third Commandment
By: Samantha Demogenes
Tags: Personal Essay

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

This is the third of the Ten Commandments. If you grew up Christian in the church, as I did, you’ve probably heard “Do not use the Lord’s name in vain” constantly thrown around. As a child, I was taught to believe that this meant avoiding phrases like “Oh My God” or the dreaded “Jesus Christ.” The Lord’s name was not to be used like that.

But as I grew up and began to get a better understanding of the world outside my little church bubble, I realized that my understanding of this commandment may be completely wrong. And I wasn’t the only one.

I grew up in Thousand Oaks, a relatively conservative town in Southern California. Going to church was something almost everyone did. For many years, my life revolved around the church. As a child, I would go to Sunday school every week. As I entered middle school and high school, I began to take more responsibility in the church. I would go to youth group every Wednesday and even became a leader for the middle schoolers, educating them on the teachings of the Bible, and how God had shaped me over the years.

There was never a camp, vacation bible school, or some kind of church event that I didn’t attend. I loved it, and it seemed as though the church could do not wrong. That is, however, until I started seeing cracks in the system.

When I was 14, I went on my first (and only) mission trip. It was a short trip, only one week, to San Francisco. A bunch of privileged, suburban high schoolers were going to the poor areas of the Tenderloin District, to talk about the word of God, and how He can get us through even the greatest struggles. Seems like a good idea, right?

The trip took place in June, the same time LGBTQ+ members and supporters took over the streets of San Francisco for the Pride Parade. Our mission trip and the pride parade conveniently overlapped. I vividly remember driving through hundreds of people celebrating pride, decked out in rainbow gear, hugging each other in a judgement free zone, and I thought it was the coolest thing. In a group of people who supposedly lives by the belief of “loving thy neighbor” it would only make sense for them to agree with me, right?

San Francisco Pride Parade

Later that night, as we discussed the events of the day, someone brought up the pride parade. I immediately said how cool it was, and how happy and carefree everyone seemed. The group of loving, accepting Christians, all seemed very uncomfortable by this. One of our leaders, Marisa, confidently said, “Well, it’s in the Bible that man should not lie with man, so what they are doing is wrong.”

Um, ok. Sure, there are verses in the Bible that say homosexuality is a sin. There are also verses in the Bible saying eating pork is a sin, wearing mismatching fabrics is a sin, disrespecting your parents is a sin. There are verses justifying slavery. Are we just not going to acknowledge those?

I looked at Marisa in confusion after she said that.

“So what, they’re just not supposed to get married?” I asked.

She nodded her head. And that was it. That was the end of the conversation. But that day was just the beginning of me uncovering just how hypocritical certain people in the church can be.

Over the years, my mindset toward the church drastically began to shift. If it wasn’t blatantly obvious, I am a raging liberal. I have a Kamala Harris sticker on my water bottle and I have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet notifications turned on so I never miss anything she says. I attended the first Women’s March, proudly screaming “My body, my choice” and I cried when Donald Trump won the election in 2016. I am a proud liberal, and the church doesn’t like that one bit.

I really started growing into my political views when I was about 17 years old. I knew from then that I will always care more about people than money, and I was confused as to why others did not feel the same way. I was really confused as to why the church didn’t feel the same way.

I will never forget the day I was on Facebook and saw not one, but two people from my church proudly talking about their stance on immigration. This was their country, and nobody had the right to be on their land if they weren’t here legally. It takes 20 years to get your green card? Oh well. You’re being ripped apart from your children, who are being thrown in cages? Tough luck. You’re not going to come here and steal OUR jobs!

What? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what Jesus preached? Jesus was all about helping people, no matter what their struggles were. There are verses in the Bible that specifically talk about immigration, including Leviticus 19:34, which states: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among us; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” Yet somehow, the same people who worship the Lord are going to turn around and say as a liberal, I am not honoring the Lord.

Over the last couple years, I cannot count the number of times I have seen these “proud Christians” try and use the Bible to justify their hateful actions. That ties me back to the third commandment: do not use the Lord’s name in vain. As I’ve grown older, I realized what that truly meant: do not use the Lord’s name to try and justify the hatred in your heart. Yet so many of these so-called “Christians” are doing just that.

I stopped going to church about three years ago. I couldn’t stand to be around narrow minded people who were so desperate to have their hate justified, that they would sink to the level of using Jesus’s name.

Jesus flipped tables, he helped the poor, he fed the hungry, and he loved everyone unconditionally. I will always love Jesus, but I have zero respect for these people who try to make him out to be something he’s not.

And quite frankly, if Jesus were alive today, I believe he would be a raging liberal.