Is saying OMG or words like "geez" still taking the Lord's name in vain?

Nor is it only Jews then, but professing Christians now, that show themselves as indifferent to the Lord's authority as if He had never thus solemnly uttered His mind. Among Protestants there is some little care to avoid profanity by adopting light and foolish exclamations, or by repeating heathen terms derived from their Greek or Latin reading, forgetting that if the idols are nothing, the demons behind them are real and evil. Romanists are much less scrupulous. It is sad to think how perverts go farther in excuse for their blasphemous phrases than those born and bred in their vain superstitions.

Take the following proof from the late Cardinal Newman's "Lectures on certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church": "Listen to their conversation; listen to the conversation of any multitude, or any private party; what strange oaths mingle with it! God's heart, and God's eyes, and God's wounds, and God's blood: you cry out, 'How profane!' Doubtless; but do you not see that the special profaneness above Protestant oaths lies, not in the words but simply in the speaker, and is the necessary result of that insight into the invisible world which you have not? You use the vague words, 'Providence,' or 'the Deity,' or 'good luck,' or 'nature'; where we, whether now or of old, realise the Creator in His living works, instruments, and personal manifestations, and speak of the 'Sacred Heart,' or 'the Mother of Mercies,' or 'our Lady of Walsingham,' or 'St. George for Merry England,' or 'loving St. Francis,' or 'dear St. Philip.' Your people would be as varied and fertile in their adjurations and invocations as a Catholic populace, if they believed as we" (Ninth Lecture, p. 232).

If one were to swear by the temple, he was actually swearing by the living God who dwelt in the temple. Men think lightly too of swearing by heaven, and many use the words, "heavens" as an ejaculation, but heaven is God's throne, and such swearing involves swearing by Him who sits upon the throne. All of these things indicate a deficient recognition of the supreme honor to which God is entitled.

The third commandment forbids taking God's name in vain (v.11). This may be done seriously or flippantly. One may seriously swear by God that he will do a certain thing, and then not do it. People are so irresponsible that such things become commonplace to the point of then using God's name flippantly, so that they don't care how offensively they talk. But God is not mocked: He will execute judgment on all who are ungodly, not only for their ungodly deeds, but for "all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him" (Jude 15).

(4) He proceeds now to another matter, in which again what was tolerated under the law is now forbidden in the new morality which He is enforcing. "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths," plainly speaks of vowing. There had been great abuse of it, as Israel's history makes manifest: men not hesitating to vow recklessly to God at the dictate of their pride and passion and self-will, to find themselves then entangled by what seemed now their duty. Careless profanity had come in at the heels of this, and God's name been profaned by light appeals to it on every occasion; modified by conscience or the lack of it, by every kind of circumlocution and indirect expression of what they dared not openly give utterance to.

The Lord sweeps into His prohibition all these evasions of the third commandment, putting them into the same category, with that which was once permitted. Man's utter weakness, so fully and simply demonstrated by his inability even to change the color of a hair, is made (at least in part) the basis of the prohibition. God might swear, for He could accomplish, and knew, too, all the consequences of that to which He pledged Himself. Beautifully we find Him doing it when seeking to assure the soul of His creature, so ready to doubt the perfect faithfulness even of his God. "Wherefore God, willing to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things" — His word being really as certain as His oath, but not so to man ― "wherein it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us" (Heb. 6:13-18).

"Hallowed be Thy Name": cf. Lev. 24:16, by misuse of which the Jews come to treat Yahveh (Jehovah) as taboo, and to employ it in the Temple services only, but in those of the synagogues Adonay (Lord) alone: see references in Schürer, div. ii., vols. 1, 2. In common life they spoke of "the Name" (Aramaic: Shema) (Dalman, p. 149 f.). In the Tosefta "Sanhedrin" (xii. 25) we have, "He that pronounces the Tetragrammaton has no part in the future world." Cf. Joseph. "Antiqq.," ii. 276.

It appears the Jews had a special reverence for the name, Jehovah, so much so that they would not allow the name to pass their lips. They substituted for it Elohim or Adonai, according to the vowel points by which it was accompanied. Smith’s Concise Dictionary of the Bible affirms that the true pronunciation of the name, Jehovah, by which God was made known to the Hebrews, has been entirely lost through the Jews scrupulously avoiding its use. Would that we, Christians, showed more reverence when we take the sacred name of God upon our lips!

Oh! in our frequent use of the name of the Lord do we realize what it means to the Father? Is it a mere formula or the habitual rounding-off of a petition?

But there is another way in which we may glorify God, or do Him great dishonour; not by our activity but by our speech. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. As our Lord added, "The good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things; and the wicked man out of the wicked treasure bringeth forth wicked things. But I say unto you, that every idle word which men shall say, they shall render an account of it in judgment-day; for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned" (Matt. 12:35-37). On scarce anything are men, and even Christians, more distant practically from the mind of God than on the use and in the licence claimed for the tongue. On the other hand who does not know the dead and gloomy and resentful silence when the name of the Lord Jesus is brought into any general company? It matters not how reverent be the spirit in which it is uttered, or how apt the application, or how necessary and conclusive for the truth's sake: man cannot forgive it. The name is inopportune save from a pulpit; it is an offence to the world, high or low, which cast Him out and crucified Him. Notwithstanding the desperate effort to make out that all is changed for so many ages, and that the adornment of the tomb, the picture, or the sculptor, proves the heart's homage in our day, the implacable enmity underneath does not fail to betray itself; and God is not deceived by a vain show. With the heart it is believed unto righteousness, and with mouth confession is made unto salvation. God will have His Son honoured as Himself where He was rejected; and those who honour Him by hearing His words and believing Him Who sent Him have life eternal; while those who disbelieve Him must perish, their ways being as bad as their words to His dishonour.

In Ephesians 5:3-6 we have serious instructions about our Christian behavior and conversation. Making puns with the Word of God is a hateful and sinful habit. Slang expressions are most unbecoming in a Christian. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt (Col. 4:6).

As sinning with the tongue is throughout denounced, so here in particular the lack of reverence. For though the oaths in question refer to the creature rather than to God, though they may affect care for His name by substituting other forms for His; who entitles men to adopt anything of the sort in daily intercourse? He is the Judge, Who has assured us that of every idle word that men speak they shall give account in the day that comes; "for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned."

Indeed on the mount, in the great series of discourses of which the first Gospel gives the summary, the Lord had pronounced on the same wrong. "Again, ye have heard that it was said to those of old time, Thou shalt not perjure thyself, but shalt perform to Jehovah thy vows; but I say to thee, Swear not at all: neither by the heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. No more shalt thou swear by thy head; for thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your word be yea, yea; nay, nay; for that which is more cometh of evil" (or, the evil one). The self-same duty is enforced as in this Epistle.