Names

So for the past year and a half or so I have been interested in names. I guess the fascination started for me when Leslie and I wrestled through trying to decide what to name Eden. How do you give a little person a word that she or he will hear to describe them for the rest of their lives? Someone, somewhere once made the mistake of Gertrude, and we didn’t want to repeat that.

You have to worry about nicknames, what the name might rhyme with, or how it might impact their psychological development. So we steered away from the clever ideas (my apologies to my pal Brady Bunch) and settled on Eden.

This may seem trivial, but it really is a central thought in the Scriptures. After all, God’s first task to humanity is to name the world around them. The Jewish people thought of names as the essence of a person. This is why if you wanted to know the emotional state of a Hebrew woman in the Old Testament, you just had to look at what she named her children. There are kids named in the O.T. the equivalent of “I’m depressed” which has to feel a bit disappointing to the kid.

This theme is especially prominent in the book of Genesis. Almost every chapter the storyteller is telling us who is named what, and why.

But in Genesis 11, a different concern creeps in.

The builders of Babel’s tower are interested not just in their names, but in making their names great. So they build, and God does his whole Jenga thing, and their building project falls apart. In trying to make a name for themselves, they actually become more disconnected from each other.

But the real apex of this theme is in found in the story of a guy named Jacob (meaning heel-grabber or liar). When we meet Jacob, he’s doing a good job at living up to his name. His brother actually says after being betrayed by him, “is he not rightly named Jacob?” Jacob had stolen his brother blessing, he had tried to be more than he was, and found out that just made him exactly more like himself.

Just like the builders of Babel.

In Genesis 32, Jacob is alone, and so the story tells us a man wrestled with him till daybreak. As if that was a perfectly ordinary thing that happens to people when they are left alone.

But this is not your average wrestling match. Jacob finds out later that he is wrestling with God. He gets God in a headlock, like you do, and asks for a blessing.

But his wrestling partner doesn’t say what do you want? He asks “what is your name.” Jacob tells him, and then the man renames him. He calls him Israel.* But Jacob wants to know who this guy is. Who are you to give me a new name?

But the guy doesn’t answer Jacob. Not yet.

It’s a few chapters later that Jacob finds out what was really going on. God comes to Jacob again and tells him that his name is now Israel. And the very next words are “I am God Almighty.”

Jacob gets his answer, and his new name.

The implications of this story are both subtle and profound. We spend most of our lives trying to live up to who others say we are. If you know that others expect you to be somebody, chances are you will pursue that identity, if the people around you have written you off, chances are you will as well.

But Jacob asks the one question many of us fail to. Who are you to give me this name? What gives you the right, mystery WWF man, to say this about me?

The Book of Revelation has a ton of allusions to the book of Genesis, mainly because on many levels it’s a book about a fresh start, about a new Creation. And in the beginning of Revelation we’re told that in God’s reality, God’s plan is to give us each a white stone with a new name.

The end of the story of God is all of us finally know who we really are.

Because if we’re made in God’s image, maybe he’s the only one who knows really knows who we are in the first place.

*If I was Jacob, I would ask for a more normal sounding name like Steve or Gary.