When I met Christina, she couldn’t pronounce my surname. I was from another culture, another language, and my name was almost impossible for her American tongue to figure out at first. Should that have offended me? Of course not! Yet why do we think our perfect Father is offended when we struggle to say His name in the correct spelling or pronunciation? Many have gone as far as to say that if we pronounce His name wrong, He won’t hear or answer our prayers. There are various pronunciations that have been adopted for His name, even our current pronunciations might be slightly off as scholars disagree all the time, but the name we do know we should honor, especially through our actions.
The reality is, God is more merciful and understanding than any man could ever even be. He is more concerned with whether we represent His name well than whether we can pronounce and spell it perfectly well.
