Tell me what concept of God you have, and I will tell you who you are.

Editor’s note: A Spanish version of this piece was first published in El Nuevo Día (https://www.elnuevodia.com/opinion/con-acento-propio/dime-que-concepto-de-dios-tienes-y-te-dire-quien-eres/)

Translated by: Rubén David Bonilla Ramos
Edited by: Erica Saunders

From early on in the Old Testament, the name of God is unpronounceable: YHWH. Adding to this, the commandment “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” means that no one referred to God by name but as the Most High, Almighty, and more.

However, this did not prevent nations from rising against others, killing men, women, children, opening the wombs of pregnant women, occupying their lands, all in the name of God. The same God who commanded, “Thou shalt not kill.” This is because they overlooked that the Scriptures invite us to study them, not just read them, to discern where the treasure of God's revelation is and where human clay lies.

The God whom Jesus calls Abba, or Daddy, is another God. A God of goodness, peace, justice, compassionate, merciful, siding with the most vulnerable in society, restoring physical and spiritual health. This God expressed favor for impoverished people, ate and drank with them, and said that they would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the religious.

However, since the early days of the primitive church, there began the abuse and corruption of that God's name and, consequently, the weakening of the Gospel's testimony. Emperor Constantine, to ensure the triumph of his empire through monolithic peace, made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, convened the first Ecumenical Council of the Church in 325, and on his deathbed, “converted” to Christianity. The Crusades against the “infidels,” claiming “Thus God wills it,” inaugurated centuries of taking God's name in vain.

What hits us to the core as Puerto Ricans, was the invasion of our Caribbean, which came hand in hand with the declaration that God had given these territories to European peoples and that converting to Christianity meant donating their lands, disposing of their gold, resigning themselves to the violation of their women, and submitting to overseas cultures. The extermination of the original peoples and the dehumanization of the people kidnapped and enslaved from Africa were carried out in the name of God.

In God we Trust and God Bless America, the God bless you at the beginning or end of political speeches, politicians self-identifying as Catholic-Protestants, are examples of using God's name to gain acceptance, secure votes, and followers. Moreover, this is aggravated when religious leadership blesses the actions of corrupt governments, persisting in using God's name in vain, ignoring that praying by lightly laying hands on someone makes us accomplices to their evil deeds (1 Timothy 5:22).

In the 1970s, in Chile, dictator Augusto Pinochet came to power with a Te Deum (“To you, God”) offered by a church. In 2005, Pat Robertson, host of the religious TV program “Club 700,” asked the United States to assassinate the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, because “God wills it.” Earlier, Robertson gained international notoriety in 1982 when he closely associated with Guatemalan dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt, who, through a coup, repealed the Constitution, imposed burdensome taxes on the people, closed the legislative body, and implemented a pure and hard military regime. During a sermon addressed to Reagan's “paladins,” Robertson called Somoza's ex-guards “Army of God.”

Ríos Montt became president of Guatemala through a coup. He used messianic language to announce he would fight the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, namely hunger, misery, ignorance, and subversion. To convince them, the general assured that the “good Christian” was one who held the Bible in one hand and a machine gun in the other.

In Brazil, Jair “Messiah” Bolsonaro's election was also baptized in the name of God. He defended military dictatorships, instituted torture as a legitimate practice, violated all human rights of marginalized communities, and was rebaptized in the waters of the Jordan River by an evangelical pastor. 68% of the 40 million evangelicals in Brazil voted for him, on the command of their pastors, after a “revelation from God.”

We want to make it clear that naming God is a form of manipulation that works because God's name represents the most absolute truth.

In Puerto Rico, they also use religion in electoral campaigns. Some, explicitly, pray, proclaim themselves as good Christians, assure that God will put them in power. Others, more subtly, give thanks to God, distribute blessings to their electorate, celebrate forty days of fasting and prayer, verbalize biblical texts to try to demonstrate their exegetical skills, and the most astute visit churches, kneel, raise their hands, and ask for authorized hands to be laid on them.

Playing with God's name to convince the electorate or to soften the facts when caught in cases of corruption is nothing but using God's name for deception. Responding to this trickery with credulity, from magical thinking, and not from a deep critical look, consonant with the God revealed in Jesus Christ, is the breeding ground corruption needs to continue enveloping us and to perpetuate mass manipulation.

Naive thinking treats lords as gods, who do not come to power to govern but to reign; not to serve but to serve themselves handsomely.

Let's test the spirits, whether they are of God or not, because there are many false prophets (1 John 4:1) and then “tell me what concept of God you have, and I will tell you who you are.”