A few days ago, I was reading some literature and came across a section where the name of God had been written with a small letter g. My first reaction was to recoil in horror and I asked myself, “How can a person write God’s name with a small g?” And as I sat there wondering about the gross disrespect for God that this particular writer had displayed, I remembered an incident that once made a great impression in my mind.

That incident happened a few years ago at the height of HIV/AIDS stigma in Kenya. I was sitting in a barber shop and watched as clients came to have their hair trimmed. I noticed that a few came with their own shaving equipment in order to avoid infection from the barber’s equipment which was used to cut the hair of every client. And I thought to myself, “That is excellent!” And then at some point, the barber was disinfecting his hair cutting equipment and said in exasperation, “A person will come with shaving equipment to avoid HIV infection in the day, and then will have unprotected sex with a person he hardly knows in the evening!”

And so as I looked at the name of God spelled with a small letter g, I realized that we spend a lifetime being careful not to miss a single capital G while writing God’s name, and never give much thought about breaking the Bible’s Ten Commandments with impunity. I believe that if God was to start looking at His book of judgment right now, out of the people who would not qualify for a heavenly reward, none would be there because he or she failed to write God’s name with a capital G.