Jakob

One of the craziest responsibilities I’ve ever undertaken was the naming of my son. Think about it, this is the one thing that will be spoken over him throughout his entire life. Sure, he might pick up a nickname here or there and I suppose he could even change his name completely someday if he desired but chances are this will be how he is identified forever.

There are many factors one must consider when choosing a name; some are more superficial than others but they all will affect our decision. How does it look? How does it sound? What are some possible nicknames? What associations do we have with it? What does it mean?

I think this last variable is probably the most emphasized, at least that’s the conclusion I came to after speaking with many friends who have recently gone through this process. We long to bestow a name on our child that possesses strength, denotes beauty and intrinsically breeds…….coolness. So we flip through book after book, skimming thousands of pages to find the perfect name that embodies everything we long for in our child – everything we long for in ourselves.

The unfortunate thing is that we place the most emphasis on an area that is going to be completely lost on the vast majority – the child included! Who really knows what the meaning of Jason or Rebekah is? Some perhaps, but most haven’t a clue.

I think the reason why names were so powerful throughout history was because the average person knew that with which it was associated. In other words, it was a word still relevant within their culture. This is witnessed to over and over again throughout Old Testament scripture. Almost every time a child was born the narrative would go something like, “I will name him Benjamin for he is the son of my right hand” and then if you look way down at the bottom of the page you’ll find a footnote stating, “the Hebrew word for ‘right hand’ sounds very similar to the name Benjamin”.

Every time that boy heard his name it confirmed the identity his father longed for him to have. Over and over again he would be told, “You are the child of your father’s right hand”. If he wasn’t born “the child of his father’s right hand” he would soon become it because it was spoken over him again and again and again. This is what we’ve lost. The name George has no meaning to the one who bears it. It is simply a word…something in place of “hey you”.

However, there is a new trend coming forth that is reviving this practice. The ‘it’ thing to do now is to give your child a verb/noun as a middle name. Something like: Honor, Courage, Truth, or Armchair. However odd this may be to our palate this is a step in the right direction. Let us recapture the importance of the name and drag it kicking and screaming into a culturally relevant setting.

Yet for those of you who really are annoyed at the influx of names such as Charity, Singer and Lamp I’m afraid that it may get worse before it gets better. We’re still in the middle name stage. It could be quite some time before the average parent bumps these up to first name status. After all, it would take a strong child to live up to the name Apple and maybe we’re not quite ready for that – I guess time will tell.

Many people have asked me why we chose the name Jakob and I am sure they are quite genuinely curious. After all, why would anyone choose a name that is most often defined as: “deceiver or supplanter”?

When deciding the name of our child we took all the above listed factors into consideration: we liked the way it looked (once we changed the ‘c’ to a ‘k’), we loved the sound of it, and we didn’t know anyone who had used this name (oddly enough because it has become hugely popular over the last few years). Even with the negative definition we decided to go ahead and use it because one factor outweighed all of these seemingly trivial issues and that was its association.

‘Jacob’ was the second born son of Isaac and Rebekah…by mere seconds. From the womb itself he strived to be what he wasn’t – first. All throughout his life he wanted to be noticed and loved. So much so, that he was willing to lie, cheat and steal. But the beauty of this story, this man’s life even, is that no matter how far he went or how much he screwed up God was still there. And I don’t mean in that fluffy “Christian-ese” God is with you junk…I mean he physically wrestled with him face-to-face. God took this man labeled a deceiver from birth and blessed him beyond all logical reason. He became the father of the house of Israel and the line of the Messiah. One of God’s actual names in scripture is “the God of Jacob”. God so closely associates Himself with Jacob that He names Himself after him and wrote it in scripture to remember for all time!

Why would God do this? Is it because Jacob was a holy man? A righteous man? Or because he prayed, never sinned and always tithed? NO – It was because God is a faithful God! He promised and He delivered. There was nothing Jacob could have done to turn God away because He loved Jacob unconditionally and was determined to fulfill his promise to Abraham (Jacob’s grandfather).

So one might say,  “Oh, you named him after a biblical character then”, but it’s so much more! We didn’t name him after a person. We named him after what that person represented. A concept more beautiful than one could conceive: we named him after the union of God and man. We wanted his name to encapsulate the desperate ends God will go to in order to bless and love His children. That He uses the least expected to start a revolution and change the world.

But even in the midst of all this meaning and beauty doubt can creep in. I was thinking a few weeks ago about the story of Jacob and it crossed my mind that perhaps we should have named him Israel. After all, that is the mantle given to Jacob the overcomer, not Jacob the deceiver. Maybe we should have focused on the positive aspects of the story and fast-forwarded to the end of his life: Israel the patriarch. It was at that moment God struck me down with one simple statement, “man can create a Jacob but only God can create an Israel”. And with that came peace. It is ours to prepare him, ours to raise him up, to direct him, to expose him but it is only by God that he may be changed.

So I’ll do my best to lead you son but only so far. There is a day coming when you must wrestle with God alone – and I pray that you do wrestle. Don’t just lie down or run away but you hold on tight and refuse to let go until He blesses you. It is then and only then, that a Jakob can become an Israel.

So what’s in a name…everything!