What's In A Name?

In the bible we read that the pharisees were criticized for paying attention to traditions and were more interested in being critical than understanding the real nature of the scriptures or the nature of God. This attitude concerns me as a Christian because I find myself surrounded by talk of technicalities and criticism of the denominational world. There is no doubt that when GOD specifies what HE wants that us mere mortals who are ants in his sight must make sure we "get it right". So the question is: How do we experience the love of Christ while maintaining a healthy dose of Godly fear so that we don't stray into post modernism or denominationalism?

Understanding that I feel this struggle you may now appreciate the first question on my quest to bring about clarity on many issues while examining my motives carefully to make sure they aren't based in pharasee-ism. The first of these missions we'll call the church naming reformation movement.

How trivial right? A name? Come on. Talk about modern day pharisees! Maybe not.

Names were very important in the bible. Each one had meaning and more often than not the bible let's us know the meaning. God even changed peoples names to better fit his plan for them or reflect some overall purpose. In the case of the church, Jesus purchased the church with his own blood. It's His. He is the head.

We are so concerned with identity theft today and I think Jesus might be feeling the same pain. What analogy could be more applicable? The overall church is the church of Christ...like as in logically it is his...and those within it are Christians. But good luck finding churches that even come close to claiming to be the possession of Jesus. Some have another man's name on them like "Mormon" or "Luther". Many are moving towards catchy up beat names like "Victory" or "The Rock". We have robbed Jesus of his own church by stealing it's identity.

You don't appreciate it when your bank account suffers loss due to identity theft. Your hard earned money is stolen. Just imagine how Jesus feels about his purchase being stolen and the identity changed. His purchase required days of torture and death. You'd think the least we could do is leave his name on what he bought.

In some ways the idea of church identity theft is rather handy. If his name isn't on it, it really has been stolen. There's a new guy in control. If you are attending a church that has the nerve to remove Jesus from the name of the church he bought, they'll have the nerve to do anything.

Call me a pharisee, but at least Jesus will recognize the name on the sign as his. There's a lot more to being a Christian than the sign out front, but can we start with getting that part right?

Jett Quotes

Days of the Week
We asked Jett to name the days of the week. It started off right. "Sunday.....Monday.....tomorrow....last week."

Halo Trash Talk
One of the funniest things that may wind up biting me is that Jett picks up on trash talk on XBox Live. We were playing last night and Jett saw an opponent coming up to me and he exclaimed, "Smoke'm dad". I guess that's not too bad.

Men's Room

A trip to the mall is where we begin our story. Jett and I visit the men's room and find that it's fairly full...but we find a spot. I have to go into a stall which leaves Jett right outside my door facing the wall so he can do his thing too. Jett has always been incapable of being quiet in the men's room which for those of you who don't know, men don't really talk to each other in the men's room. Some of his usual very loud questions are, "Are you done yet? Where's mama?" and the best "what are you doing?". So anyway it's very quiet even though there are 6 guys in there. Some time passes and I'm not done yet which means he's patiently waiting right outside the stall door. I'm amazed he hasn't said anything yet. Then in the midst of pure silence he says with a bathroom echo, "I love you dad". And from stall #3 with the closed door and sitting virtually side by side with 4 other men with only a thin wall between us I said, "I love you too, buddy".