"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all . . . . Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one."
Matthew 5:33-37 (NIV)
Why
do so many of us say things like “by God” or “I swear by all that’s
holy” or “Jeeeeezus Kuuriist!”?
Why do we invoke God to damn others?
Of course part of it is habit.
Starting in my early teens I developed a mouth around my friends that
rarely produced a sentence without profanity.
But where did the habit come from?
I think there’s more to it than simply saying, “I learned it from
others”.
Sometimes
we are trying to impress others with our reliability and sincerity.
In doing so we are trying to convince others of what we are saying and
thereby attempting to get our own way.
It’s a form of manipulation.
In other cases we display our contempt of something or someone and
punctuate our anger about something, once again attempting to steer an outcome
in my direction.
We are trying to override the will or judgment of the other person rather
than leaving that person free to judge or decide on his or her own.
Additionally taking the name of the Lord in vain uses God’s name
without respect
and love for Him.
As Dallas Willard points out, “it is an inherently wrong approach to
other human beings”
The
antidote?
Jesus tells us that one of the crucial practices we need to adopt in
order to experience the happy life of the Kingdom of God is to let our yes be
yes and our no be no.
I am not to seek to manipulate outcomes or
to override the will of others.
Jesus tells us to state what we want with as much simplicity,
transparency, honesty, kindness, and desire to respect the freedom of the other
as possible.
Am I more interested in honoring the other than I am in getting what I
want? Am
I willing to accept an outcome that I don’t want.
Am I willing actually to trust that God is involved when I don’t try to
manipulate the result that I want?
Lord,
help me to be attentive to my motives when I am in conversation with others.
Help me to be transparent, no hidden agenda, no manipulation of others.
Most of all, Lord, help me to place my life in your hands.
Help me to trust that it is actually, safe, best and part of flourishing
in the Kingdom of God to just let my “yes” be “yes” and my “no” be
“no”.
Amen
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I think most states have eliminated or modified the oath required of those who testify in court: "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God." (Actually posed in the form of a question to which the response was "I do".) I think most of us felt that eliminating it or removing God from the oath was simply anti-God. But if I read this correctly, it actually aligned with Jesus' teaching.
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