A Nickname for God

To call me pedantic is received with honor...most of the time. I acknowledge that often in conversations—especially with my wife—the need for accuracy is distracting and overlooks the gist of the conversation. In case you don’t know what a pedant is, it can be explained with this example: someone might yell, “A 3-horned rhino is charging down the street, goring people!” And the pedant will say, “You mean a 2-horned rhino...”

In almost all of my blogs, I’ve refused to use the name Jesus, as a bastardization of the Latin J-E-S-V-S, which is IESUS in English. In Latin, it might have been pronounced similar to today’s Spanish Jesus (hay-sues). The Latin form comes the translation of the Greek Iesous for the Hebrew or Aramaic Y’shua or Isa. It’s the latter forms that I prefer to use. It’s what His mother, siblings, neighbors, disciples, fans/admirers...and enemies would have called Him. The modern-day “Jesus” is like a nickname...sort of like calling Mikhail Misha, or Edward Teddy or Scott Scooter. If the person is okay with the nickname, then by all means call him/her by that name.

I don’t go by a nickname myself. I view it as disrespectful unless that person is in a close relationship, like my wife calling me ‘honey’ or ‘hus-butt’.

When you use Christ’s nickname, are you indicating intimacy or just following the crowd?

Hearers of the Word...

One of the main ways we have in the past 400 years to understand the heart and mind of God is reading scripture. Too often we might project our own heart and mind onto His words. In our daily life, when we’re asked to consider how someone else might feel, we project onto them our own feelings. If we see someone speeding, the first speculation as to the reason tells us more about why we would exceed the speed limit than why that other driver is speeding. There can be 18 different reasons why that person is speeding.

And so when we are faced with troublesome passages like the end of Job—“who is this that questions My wisdom...?—or a short passage in which Christ questions His disciples—“do you still not understand?”—several times, we will project how we’d feel in that situation. I’d feel frustrated, impatient, annoyed, flummoxed, befuddled, doubtful in my selection of disciples, etc. Almost all of us would read the passage of Matthew 16.5-12 similar to this, if even more strident in tone:

Yet we are taught that Christ is full of the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Those character traits will govern our tone of voice differently. Also, we’re taught that  God is love, Christ is God and “love is patient and kind...[not] rude...is not irritable, and keeps no record of being wronged...never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful...” So now the challenge is this: knowing Christ’s character, read those words in His voice of patience, kindness, hopefulness...

I’m not a good enough actor to pull it off, and I would seriously have to remove a lot of myself to only let love, patience and hope shine through the questions. But Christ said those words in that way...and that’s how we need to hear them.

If you can recite that passage with Christ’s tone of voice, record a short video and send it to me.

Job’s Village

I grew up on Air Force Bases, moving every few years. I went to lots of schools. Sometimes changing schools mid-year because we moved from off-base to on-base. I learned to make friends quickly, but I also learned to leave friends behind. One of the benefits of moving often is that if you somehow got a bad reputation—cheat, liar, wimp, whatever—in a few years you’d have a chance to start over. I contrast that with an employee in my company in a small-ish city. Other employees warned me about him because of things that happened in his younger days. He was no-good; he’d never be good at anything. In this town, the adage was true: people never change. It seemed to be true in his current position. After learning more about him—from him—we found a position that seemed better suited...and he thrived...and his reputation started to change.

Likewise, I recently watched a mini-documentary called Godspeed. It reminded me of this employee because one of the points of the documentary is that in a village, everyone knows everyone: the exceptional, the good, the bad, the ugly. It was true of Christ that everyone would know Him—not just of Him, but directly know Him—His mother, father, siblings, grandfather, grandmother, great-grandfather, etc. with all their virtues and warts. They would know that ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’ and that the sins of the father carry on for generations. If His reputation was blown, He would never recover. And this is the significance of “He grew in wisdom and stature in the eyes of God and men” in the single brief passage related to those years between His birth and His ministry.

Revisit the story of Job and focus on the three friends that are trying to get Job to confess to a great sin that would have caused God to punish him. First, they’re operating from the worldview that bad things are a result of God’s disfavor and a sign of punishment; this worldview also states that good things are a sign of God’s favor—as was true for most of the ancient world, and still true of our worldview today in many ways. Since they know Job’s virtues and warts, this punishment seems untoward, unusual, not deserved...therefore, there must be some great secret sin that warrants God’s great punishment. “Confess, Job,” they say, “and live.”

His reply: “I have nothing to confess. And yet you accuse me without any fear of the Almighty.” This last sentiment is an interesting one in that we are taught through Moses, as one of the great commandments, not to bear false witness—not to accuse— against another. His friends know him and yet wonder if he’s hiding a secret sin still. Somehow Job has grown up in this village with a different worldview of God. In this community, he has developed a different theology, contrary to his childhood and generational pressures.

And then we have God’s response. He’s angry with the friends and affirms that Job has spoken correctly about Him. Job’s worldview is accurate; his friends that he’s known his whole life and have a different worldview are not right.

And so this is an amazing aspect of Job’s story. He was a maverick in his village. He found a straight path that veered from the others. And in a village where there are no secrets, his friends assumed there must be when they look at the ‘evidence’ of Job’s circumstances. Today, we can have secrets because most of us live, work and worship in three different communities. Know one person really knows us. Job’s wife doesn’t accuse him. She doesn’t hint at a secret sin. In her own grief, she encourages him to just surrender to the inevitable as quickly as possible. How much do we hide from our spouses and other close family as well? How much do we reveal? For me to share a bit of feeling—fear, doubt—feels like a floodgate. And so I would struggle living in a village. You might too if you’re not willing to be vulnerable in your faith community.