The Offense Of Blasphemy

Say "oh my god" or "god damnit" around evangelicals after identifying as a Christian, and they will usually look at you as if you have just committed a grave sin.  Some call it the offense of blasphemy, a very serious charge within the context of Christianity.  Blasphemy is categorized as a capital offense in Mosaic Law (I will address this more below), and it is both possible to demonstrate that these phrases are not what the Bible means by blasphemy and that there would be no Biblical evidence that this is sinful even if it was not clear on what blasphemy is.  Like with malice, lust, or adultery, evangelicals misunderstand blasphemy to be far more than a very specific sin, falsely equating irrelevant things with blasphemy just as they do with other sins like lust.

Verbal expressions like "god," "oh my god," and even "god fucking damnit" are not even necessarily referring to God, the actual uncaused cause, so this automatically undermines the idea that the phrases trivialize or attack God at the start.  They could easily be used as cultural wording for surprise, frustration, or anger without anyone thinking about or meaning to refer to any deity, much less the specific chief deity of the Bible called Yahweh.  It does not matter that they are used alongside profanity or as the equivalent of expletives because profanity itself is nonsinful on the Biblical framework of ethics.  If this is not blasphemy, how could one tell from the Bible itself what the Bible condemns when it prohibits blasphemy and even demand the execution of those guilty of it?

In Leviticus 24, the account of a man executed for blasphemy reveals precisely what this offense is: it is not using a generic term for deity like profanity, but actively, intentionally cursing God.  The story of two men fighting mentions how one of them "blasphemed the Name with a curse" (Leviticus 24:11), with a later verse quoting Yahweh as saying "'If anyone curses his God, he will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord will be put to death'" (24:15-16).  Uttering "oh my god" or "god damnit" does not even begin to approach the actual malice or selfishness of cursing God, and yet this is what so many people, from typical evangelical imbeciles like Ray Comfort to plenty of casual Christians, say they think blasphemy is.  At the very least, they think such phrases qualify as blasphemy, even if there are worse forms of it.

It is very likely that such Christians have never thought very deeply about the ramifications of any idea in or about Mosaic Law, including its particular handling of blasphemy.  Do they actually think, contrary to what the Bible actually says, that Leviticus 24 says to kill people for exclaiming "oh my god" or some other such phrase?  If that is blasphemy, this this would be true, but it is so clearly erroneous upon direct examination that only a fool would ever think otherwise.  Moreover, if God's moral nature does not change (Malachi 3:6), then the execution law for blasphemy is universally obligatory on the Christian worldview no matter what Christians wish was the case.  These Christians would probably not be so hasty to just assume that "oh my god" amounts to blasphemy if they actually understood this!

Their folly here is comparable to trivializing rape or racism by mistaking (or knowingly misusing words) lesser or irrelevant offenses for rape or racism except for a major difference.  Lesser sexual assaults and even the most minor forms of racism are evil on the Biblical worldview, and yet saying "oh my god" or similar phrases is not.  Because it does logically follow from the idea that cursing God is an extreme sin that saying "god damnit" or "oh my god" is evil, this not even a case like extrapolating from the Bible's condemnation of alcoholism to conceptual overlap with drug abuse, neither of which is the same as condemning alcohol or drug use themselves.  In other words, uttering "oh my god" is not even sinful by extrapolation from what the Bible does condemn because assumptions and fallacies would still be used in the process.