In late 1995, my family and I visited a lock-in in Dothan, Alabama. Before managing to stay up almost the entire night playing sports and generally being slap-happy (as I tend to be when I stay up all night long, as has been known to happen on occasion), the minister at the event gave a sermon that almost certainly included a detailed discussion of a single verse, Exodus 23:13, that is tucked into a larger discussion of the Sabbath law [1]. Exodus 23:13 reads: “And in all that I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth.” In the middle of talking about the importance of God’s Sabbath day, out of the blue, there comes a warning about the names of other gods. As I remember it from the sermon message, this warning was mainly used as a way of avoiding the use of pagan gods and goddesses in the names of the days of the week or the names of months.
And indeed, this is one, and probably the main, interpretation of this verse in its proper context. After all, the way in which we divide our time is of the utmost importance. To have days and months dedicated to heathen gods, or to pagan emperors who wished to be viewed as gods, is to keep a space for such beings in our hearts. To be sure, there is often no intent to worship, but rather we keep those names because of habit and tradition, because we do not feel comfortable with easy change in such fundamental matters even after generations of having paid little heed. Even today, for example, pagan gods like Thor and Loki remain popular as superheroes, and the realm of Asgard remains interesting in film long after the Norse gods have ceased to be worshiped except by a few. The same is true of Greek mythic heroes like Hercules, which an entire recent book I read [2] spent a great deal of time talking about the relationship between Hercules’ travels and the Celtic world.
Yet there are profound ways in which the ways and worship of the heathen remain in our consciousness in startling ways, relating to the subject of geomancy, by which people seek to bring earth into agreement with a certain (often deeply mistaken) view of heaven. For example, when I lived in Los Angeles, our congregation would often have combined holy day services in Anaheim with the neighboring congregation to the south. To get there, we would often have to pass by the city of Commerce along I-5 going south. This particular city saw fit to have a massive and conspicuous building reminiscent of ancient Babylon, which always struck me as somewhat perverse. The persistence of symbols and architecture is a reminder of a persistence of a certain mindset that wishes to carry on particular religious and cultural programs, which are often highly inimical to the ways of God. Our city names, the way our buildings are laid out, the look of public spaces, the iconography of music and money and comic books and movies, all of this often has serious religious undertones. The names and ways of pagan gods are always on our lips, often unwittingly so.
How is this to be corrected? How do we honor those who have come before without allowing for the persistence of their wicked and mistaken ways. To what level of oblivion do we consign the misdeeds of the past, if for no other reason than to live a life as unburdened by it as possible even if we seek to draw strength and encouragement from it as well. Our relationship to the past is complicated. How do we keep the good things and toss out the bad? How do we cease to be subtly influenced by the rebelliousness against God that so many of the ways of the past exhibited without forgetting the sort of people that lived in the past and their connection to us? These are not easy and straightforward matters, but we have a long way to go before we are obedient to this verse. For to keep a name alive on our lips is to keep the being attached to that name in our hearts. We ought to be very aware of those we are letting into our hearts, for once there, they tend not to easily leave.
[1] See, for example:
[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/book-review-the-discovery-of-middle-earth/
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