Setting faithful apart

Whether your faith tradition prohibits taking God's name in vain as either a commandment or a proscription, the choice to avoid sprinkling daily speech with words that in some way profane deity tends to set a person apart — if not among peers, then in one's own mind.

And that's the point, particularly among Christians, as Christ exemplified in the Lord's Prayer. Scriptorians note that Jesus' first acknowledgment after addressing God is the phrase, "hallowed be thy name" before continuing with his petition as a pattern for his followers. So reverence for God's name became the second or third commandment, depending on your brand of faith.

But scholars and ethicists say the improper use of God's name goes far beyond profanity, reaching deeply into a relationship with the divine that is not to be exploited for personal or political gain.

It's difficult to say which of the Ten Commandments is most often violated, but many would agree after spending a day at work, at school, at the mall or at the soccer field that the routine repetition of God's name in every context but a spiritual one has become so commonplace it's lost any meaning — except for those who cringe at hearing it.

For some, it's become akin to the ubiquitous use of the word "like" among teens: "Like, that was so bad!"

Yet history has long recorded prohibitions against speaking lightly or profanely of deity, even before Moses went to Sinai and came down with the Decalogue.

Some historians have argued that the Ten Commandments have some basis in ancient Egyptian beliefs and texts, including a set of ancient papyrus scrolls often referred to as The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which are believed to predate the biblical Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.

The scrolls contain rules pertaining to entrance into the afterlife, one of which has been interpreted "not have I cursed god."

So serious were the Israelites about avoiding the improper use of deity's name, "for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain," that various alternative names were employed, one of which is Yahweh, the pronunciation of four Hebrew characters symbolizing God's nature but avoiding the actual name.

Today, many Orthodox Jews still refrain from the actual spelling of deity, using instead "G-d."

And while Muslims don't adhere to the Ten Commandments, the Quran designates "Allah (as) the personal name of the One true God. Nothing else can be called Allah," and Islam "considers associating any deity or personality with God as a deadly sin," according to The Institute of Islamic Information and Education.