"I know you only claimed to be an incarnation of that customer's god to save me from a beating, but Threepio, you should never impersonate an aspect of the divine," Mistress Shmi says as she re-solders the snapped wires in Threepio's shoulder. He makes a noise of confusion, and her face softens; "It's disrespectful," she explains, "both to the divinity whose place you usurp, and to the people whose right to make their own choices you steal by assuming a false position of power; you make yourself their master and them your slaves, which no person should ever do to another."

"I see," Threepio says, because even if he doesn't quite understand Mistress Shmi's reasoning (just as he doesn't understand her aversion to proper forms of address), he can tell this is important to her, and so that night instead of shutting down for recharge, he takes an hour to carefully add a line to his central programming and restart until it's locked in almost as deep as the core around which the Maker built him.