When examined, or just because it’s weird on its own.

Example: Beat a dead horse

  1. You whip a horse to go faster
  2. It dies from being whipped too much
  3. You still want the horse to go faster
  4. You continue to whip it
  • tetris11@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 days ago

    Taking God’s name in vain

    1. You invoke God on some topic you’re wrong about.
    2. God appears and sees your worthless comment.
    3. ???
    4. God punishes you, or he backs away, or he learns to not listen to you anymore in boy cries wolf type situation? Its really not clear what the repercussions are.
    • wuphysics87@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      11 days ago

      That’s one that always bothered me too. When I say “Jesus fucking Christ” I mean it. Which is it’s own weird ism when you think about it…

    • CuriousRefugee@lemmy.ml
      0·
      11 days ago

      No, no, it was originally “Taking God’s name in vein,” as saying the name of God out loud would allow Him into your blood. If you say the name of God, you allow him to inhabit your blood, gain your power, and become even more mighty. The ancient Hebrews feared God gaining too much power, as He would be able to destroy the world. Then Christians figured out that if they took Communion and instead drank the blood of Christ, they could reverse the Hebrew God’s power and slowly increase their own until they could ascend to the heavens and do battle with the Almighty, empowered by His blood in their veins, rather than weakened by taking His name in vein. In this seventeen-part essay, I will describe how we can defeat God by

    • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      I thought it was stating that something is God’s will for your own purposes. AFAIK it’s not just using terms for God as a curse.

    • stray@pawb.social
      0·
      9 days ago

      I think the idea was that he could be invoked by his name, but they couldn’t have people going around saying “Jehova” (or whatever) randomly without any cool powers happening, so they made up the rule to discourage people poking holes in their flimsy story.