Hallowed be thy name

I help with the youth ministries at our church, and yesterday they began praying slowly through the Lord’s Prayer, starting with the very first two lines, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” We were challenged by the youth minister to take time in our small groups to pray those two lines, to ask what those words mean, and to take them with us as a challenge for the week.

It’s fun in a group of of 8th and 9th grade boys to ask such questions as, “Where is Heaven?” or, “What’s the word hallowed mean?” More or less, here’s how the conversation went:

• Me: Where’s Heaven?
• Youth: In the sky?
  No, it’s in earth?
  No, that doesn’t make sense.
  Isn’t it just wherever God is? That’s what I was taught. Heaven is wherever God is and Hell is wherever God isn’t.
  But God’s everywhere, so there couldn’t be hell then…..

You get the idea. And then:

• Me: What does hallowed mean?
• Youth: Holy
• Me: What does holy mean?
• Youth: Sacred
• Me: What does sacred mean?
• Youth: (Silence)
• Me: How do you keep something sacred?
• Youth: You worship it.
• Me: What’s the opposite of keeping something holy?
• Youth: (After a bit of prodding). To take it in vain.

And that’s where we ended up, with a discussion on how we keep God’s name holy instead of taking it in vain. Of course a lot of our conversation centered on having a foul mouth and using bad words, but I pushed them to think deeper.

Is keeping God’s name holy really only about not yelling cuss words when you hit your thumb?

I think what is more damaging to God’s name isn’t my occasional outburst, although those should be guarded against as well as we can, but what’s most damaging to God’s holy name is my attaching God’s name to things that aren’t holy.

To illustrate this, I asked them who fought the civil war; which side was Christian; and which side took God’s name in vain? While the south had much more to be ashamed of with slavery, to some extent both sides took God’s name in vain.

That’s why I have such a beef with people like Franklin Graham. After Trump’s victory, he’s said such absurdities as to claim that it wasn’t Russia that interfered in our election but it was the hand of God.

Now, have whatever political leanings you may have; follow whatever convictions you feel as you vote, but to attach God’s name to your candidate’s victory is troublesome at best. So now you’re going to tell the person who can’t afford their cancer treatments because Trump repealed the Affordable Care Act that it was God’s hand that made that possible? You’re going to go into the small immigrant church, made up largely of undocumented migrant workers who now live in even more fear of deportation and tell them it’s because it was God’s hand at work? Are you going to tell your Palestinian brothers and sisters that they will lose even more land, be even more harassed, and live even more oppressed because God elected someone who opposes a two-state solution? Or how about your African-American brothers and sisters who are almost nearly unanimous in their conviction that a Trump presidency is a step back for their rights and dignity. Will you tell them God wants it that way?

Because by claiming that God helped elect Trump that’s basically what you are doing.

To me, that does much more damage to God’s name. Maybe it would be good if every day we started out by praying, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by thy name,” and then trying to make that a reality.