Jacob

I have had conversations with my married friends about how they named their kids. 

While many wanted to honor family names, others were interested in popular or unique names. They were all cautious about giving their child a name that could be used as grounds for bullying. Growing up is hard enough; and going to the playground can become a nightmare once the other kids start learning how to rhyme. No parent wants their kid's name matched with an insult. 

So I have respect for parents who really try to be thoughtful about naming their kids. 

I don't know if there is anything worse than having a name that brings you shame. Shame is pervasive and as Brene Brown says: "...is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough." Shame convinces us that we are the sum of all of our mistakes and nothing more. Shame is the emotion that causes us to hide from God, ourselves, our loved ones and the world. Again, I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to have a name that brings you shame. As always, there is a story in the scriptures that speaks to this - a guy whose name was meant, in part, to shame him.

Jacob's story starts at Genesis 25. A son to elderly parents (happens a lot in this book) and a twin - the second born. The name Jacob can be translated "heel", "heel-catcher", "supplanter", or "leg-puller." In some ways, it makes sense because as the story reads, he was born holding the heel of his brother Esau, the first born twin. But the story continues that he is his mother's favorite, and Esau is his father's favorite. That dynamic is significant in most ancient-world cultures. 

But there’s more.

Esau was the hunter, but Jacob was the quiet homebody who knew how to cook. The gender roles were specific in this society; so in a sense the first few verses of Jacob's story indicate that something isn't quite right about him. And the fact that his name is Jacob tells us that he doesn't just do odd and out of the ordinary things; his very personhood is odd and out of the ordinary.

PAUSE

Can you imagine some stranger saying to you in passing, "Wow, your heel looks awesome!" That would be weird to me. Or someone saying to you, "hey way to go catching those heels!" I don't think I could even say thank you to that.

Also, the word "supplanter" does not have great synonyms: Back-up, replacement, stand-in, substitute. 

And maybe, just maybe, in our culture it isn't the worst thing to be told you know how to 'pull someone's leg', but I don't want to be named that.

Y'all - Jacob's parents essentially named him Heel. His brother called him Stand-in. He had to introduce himself as Leg-puller. Let that sink in.

UNPAUSE

Jacob's name points to many unfortunate moments on his journey. He steals his brother's birth-rite and his mom told him to do it. He then runs away and sleeps alone in the desert. He meets the girl of his dreams and has to work 7 years to marry her, only to then marry her sister by mistake and have to work another 7 years and then another 7; and then the wife he loves can't have kids and it just goes from bad to worse. And while Jacob makes his share of mistakes, I wonder if so much of his story is framed by the name he was given. I wonder if Jacob ever said to himself, "My name is Substitute and that tells me all I need to know about the value of my existence."

Maybe we weren't given a name with an awkward meaning, but we were called something that stuck inside our psyche. Some of us were called names growing up that still haunt us deep into our adult lives. I must confess that in some of my darkest moments I have said, "My mom might as well had named me Failure cuz that's who I am." Whether it's the name we were given or the name we received, I really don't think there is anything worse than having a name that brings you shame.

I am grateful that God changes Jacob's name. In Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with an angel and receives a new name: Israel. The new name can be translated "one who wrestles with God." One day I'll blog about all the cool stuff I see in his new name; but I think we can all agree that we'd rather be introduced as "God-wrestler" than "Heel-catcher!" Jacob is called Israel later in life - after many joys and struggles, ups and downs, fits and starts. 

Maybe God was calling him Israel all along? Maybe Jacob spent too many years resisting God, and could only get his new (read "real") name when he showed up for a holy encounter. Who knows why the old name stuck for so long. But the good news is that eventually, our true value emerges from even the most shameful of situations. Of many things in the Jacob-Israel story, we learn that while shame is pervasive, it does not have to be permanent. God has given each of us a name that speaks to our belovedness, our intrinsic value and our original goodness. It's a name that breaks the power of shame and transforms the narrative we've accepted. 

It's a name that will call us to be our true selves, the person we were always meant to be.-- 

For the Sake of the World, 

Derrick Scott III