In the Torah portion Vaet’hanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11), we read the Ten Commandments, one of them being, “You shall not swear falsely by the name of the LORD you God; for the LORD will not clear one who swears falsely by His name.” (5:11, Jewish Publication Society edition)
This has been translated into “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD in vain,” which has often been a fancy phrase meaning, “No, swearing or cursing,” traditionally meaning “No talking dirty.” So what DOES that mean?
In earlier ages, swearing meant any outburst speaking of God or the Saints, such as for example, “By Saint Peter’s foot!” or “By God’s right hand!” like that. In later centuries, it grew to mean anything related to sex or sex organs; in Victorian times, the simple word “leg” was shocking.
I think that “not using the LORD’s name in vain” actually means “don’t use God’s name as a reason to oppress or rob vulnerable people.” Many times in history, powerful elites have used the Almighty as an excuse for their oppression of others: the theology of John Calvin, which said some people were destined for Heaven and some others for Hell, and their prosperity on Earth would decide where they would go; the pre-Civil War-South, where the southern churches developed an entire theology around White supremacy and the enslavement of African-Americans; Henry Ward Beecher, the great abolitionist preacher, who, during the reign of the corporate “robber barons” of the late 19th Century, preached that God had decided it would be so (https://theberkshireedge.com/connections-survival-of-the-wealthiest/); the religious right movement, which used their idea of “Christianity” to oppress LGBTQ people just trying to live their lives, and women who want to control their own bodies; to the TV evangelists who beg money from their followers to add to their already millionaire lifestyles.
You want bad words? How about those racial insult words that good “Christian” people bandied about, adding to their contempt for those “inferior” people? Or terms of verbal abuse thrown at helpless people, which do as much damage to their psyches as a fist does to their bodies? Words DO have power, and people HAVE been damaged emotionally by such words-you know which ones I mean, because I don’t want to use them.
To me, calling the sexually-oriented “Bad words”-fuck shit ass cock, you know the rest-comes from the traditional sex-phobia that came out of the Victorian era, where descent people didn’t discuss something everyone was doing anyway. Words, and how they’re defined, are powerful; they can be used to tear people down, or raise them up; they’re not just noises out of your mouths, and that ain’t no bullshit.
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