You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain: White. European. Christian.
The great insight of the Biblical narrative is the vision of a Just and Free society. The challenge is to create structure to provide order while not limiting the generative capacity of creativity.
Order serves justice but creativity is a function of freedom. Within the stable structure of a well-ordered society, people communicate, spawn ideas, and take risks in the service of others. Service is rewarded by a grateful community and grants power to those who serve.
In a free society, the servant becomes strong and gains advantage over the weak. The weak acquiesce to the strong in exchange for security. With this breakdown of equality comes the loss of justice.
Over time power concentrates. Justice breaks down and undermines the freedom of other creative actors who do not yet possess power, who are eager to serve but are unable to serve due to the injustice that has emerged.
Injustice hurts us all.
Privilege is the concentration of power. A free country eventually becomes a privileged country that no longer knows freedom.
Why are American prisons filled with people of color? Does melanin predispose one to law-breaking? Or does injustice predispose one to impose limits on people of color?
The myth of privilege is that success is earned. But in truth, being in the right place, at the right time, with the right education, with the right opportunity, supported by the right people, with the right resources within reach — plays heavily into success.
And, being born into privilege does not make a person more creative or more capable of making a meaningful contribution to his or her community. It just makes them more privileged. Donald Jr., Erik, and Ivanka have greater freedom than most. Just as Donald Sr. had greater freedom than the children of his generation. The children of Donald Jr., Erik, and Ivanka will have even greater freedom still.
At this moment power is concentrating in the Trump family at an alarming rate and it is being subsidized by American taxpayers. The result is a loss of freedom to many more Americans.
The proper role of government is to limit the power of the strong in order to invite the freedom of creative people who lack privilege. When the GOP promotes smaller government, they are not increasing freedom. They are hardening the iron chains of all those who lack privilege.
The coal miners of West Virginia and the industrial workers of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, have elected a man and a Republican Party who has no interest in freeing them.
The GOP will strip them of healthcare. They will limit their access to education. They will cut away their social safety net. All while increasing the value of their own investments.
It is a great irony of history: In the Land of the Free, slavery abounds. And the GOP and this President is doing it all in the name of God, supported by people who in claiming to be God’s people, take God’s name in vain.
To take the Lord’s name in vain does not mean: "Don’t cuss.” It means to represent as God’s intent, that which God deplores. It means to claim God’s authority for that which God rejects.
At the center of Trump-Bannon-Sessions Nationalism is a view of history that privileges White European Christianity as the secret sauce of American greatness. To Make America Great Again means to make American Whiter, more European, and more Christian.
This is what is behind the deportations, the Moslem ban, and the strengthening of police power over minority communities.
But this vision of America, though White and European, is not “Christian”, if by Christian one intends to point to a community that does not “take the name of the Lord you God in vain”.
That so many American Evangelical Christians support this program is alarming. It is a sign that they have gone off the rails and that they are unlikely to return without anguish.
The third commandment comes with a warning.
". . . for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”
Let us pray. . . .