OMG or the Tetragrammaton?

The ancient Hebrews had a name for God that was unpronounceable. They called it the “tetragrammaton” because it has 4 consonants in a row with no vowels. We would transliterate that name to Yahweh. The idea was, this name of God is so holy, so revered, so other, that it should not ever be uttered.

A little while back I wrote a post taking the stance that swearing is wrong for the Christ-follower. It was not a popular position, but I think it is a biblical idea. Words have power, and how we use words is more important than we realize. The two types of swearing are obscenities and profanities. They both sound like what they are. One is about using words that our current culture deems obscene, the other is about using the name of God in a way that is profane. Profanity is whenever we misuse the name of God. In all the words of our vocabulary, none are as sacred or important as the names of God.

I fear that the letters OMG have now replaced our reverence for the name of God. In a recent Nightline, a 14 year old girl said that OMG doesn’t even mean “Oh my God” anymore. She said that it now is simply understood as “Wow, really?” That’s probably true, as words will often drift. But it also tells us something about how far we are moving away from the reverence of God’s name. When we saturate the name of God with a texting acronym, it begins to lose its meaning.

Another girl in the Nightline interview, Meghan- 15, said: “I think originally the term ‘Oh My God’ was probably a really heavy term…but if you say a word enough times it will lose its meaning.” Also true. It’s called “semantic satiation.” (Thank you Wikipedia!) When you misuse or overuse a word, it starts to lose its meaning.

Of course all of this is really a matter of the heart. Jesus said that “out of the heart the mouth speaks.” How we speak God’s name comes from the posture of our heart towards him.

So how’s your heart?