A “Reformed Musing”  By Marian Van Til

   It’s amazing what you can read in the Bible! It’s astounding how the Bible portrays God – and us. Most of today’s major-media reporters on the world’s ills and injustices, and perceived ills and injustices, apparently aren’t very aware of what’s in that Book. If they were they might come up with a way to defend book banning. And fast. The Bible’s message and the God who presents it and reveals himself in it are increasingly offensive to modern “post-Christian” sensibilities.

   The Bible is dangerous, but not, as some are arguing, for excessive militance, exclusivity or teachings against homosexual acts – though the “danger” I’m thinking of is certainly related to how we live our lives, in private and in public.

   The Bible is dangerous because it introduces us to, then lets us get to know intimately and be called by the name of, the God and Savior of the universe. And, as C.S. Lewis put it in child-simple but allegory-like terms in his first Narnian Chronicle, “Aslan is not a tame lion.” You can’t expect to meet Aslan while wandering through the woods one day, all nonchalant, without the encounter both thrilling you and scaring the daylights out of you, then radically changing the rest of your life. You can’t expect to meet the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and  Christ who bled for us, without being shaken to the core by the confrontation.

If not, why not?

   If our Bible reading and our meeting God in every Bible book hasn’t penetrated us in that profound manner – if it hasn’t made us pull up stakes like Abram to travel to a land unfamiliar (perhaps not only spiritually); if it hasn’t forced us to wrestle with God as Jacob did (limping ever after as permanent reminder of that encounter); if it hasn’t startled us with a Damascus Road conversion like bloodthirsty Saul’s; if it hasn’t resulted in us getting a new name like each of those biblical men on whom God placed his hand – then we need to ask ourselves why not.

   Where God is, there is his Spirit: the Spirit sometimes referred to in the New Testament as the Spirit of Christ; the Spirit who stirs that kind of fundamental change, who instructs us (Neh. 9:20), who dogs us (Ps. 139: 7), who gives us wisdom and power (Is. 11:2), who puts words in our mouths when our lives depend on them (Is. 59:21; Matt. 22:43; Mark 13:11), who reveals the truth (John 16:13) and who gives us life (John 6:63).   

New names signify  

   A new name, in God’s parlance, signifies a new life, a radical about-face, a being born again (a phrase many people are leery of, though Jesus uses it). A name, in the Bible, is not just a tag attached to us human beings so that our children can be told apart or so that we’re not confused with somebody else. A name reveals the fundamental human self, character, core being, heart. And when God stirs big changes in our lives so there’s no turning back, we each need a new name to signify it.

   So childless Abram becomes Abraham, father of many nations and in whom, through his divine descendent Jesus, all the nations of earth are blessed. So contentious, conniving Jacob becomes Israel, struggler with God. And Saul, perhaps named for the Israelites’ first king (who started out so well but whose self-obsession caused the kingdom to be wrested from him) becomes Paul. Paul: “small” or “humble.” Paul learned instantly that he wasn’t the admirable and righteous keeper of God’s law that he thought he was. It’s interesting that Saul was on the way to Damascus when Jesus appeared with the (literally) blinding question, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Centuries earlier, Damascus had evidenced David’s royal power in Israel but then became “a heap of ruins” because it had “forgotten God their Savior” (Is. 17:1, 10). Saul was heading in the direction of those unfaithful, spiritually blind ancestors of his when Jesus called him up short, then turned him into the most fearless and articulate of defenders of Christ’s name. 

   While our culture doesn’t put much stock anymore in choosing names that reveal character and have familial significance, if we live as steadfast servants of the LORD we do have new names, both familial and personal: our familial name is Children of God, sons and daughters of the Most High. And when we have overcome and Christ’s Kingdom is consummated at last, Christ will indelibly “write” God’s name on us (Rev. 3:12). That God’s people would be called by a new name was already prophesied by Isaiah (62:2).

   But our victorious Christ has also chosen for each child of his a new name that will be known only to each person who receives it (Rev. 2:17). We will join the others from every tribe, nation and language who will gather before his throne – a vast host. But he also knows each of us individual as deeply and personally as it is possible to be known, and he will name us each accordingly.

Mom won that one

    Though my parents did not give any of their five children a directly biblical name, I have a sister Sharon whose name I imagine my parents may have linked to the rose of Sharon, the beautifully flowering hibiscus. Since the NIV Bible came out, long after my sister was born and after my parents’ time, the one biblical reference to this “rose,” in the Song of Solomon, notes that it was probably a crocus. (Oh well, crocuses are beautiful too, and in North America are wonderful harbingers of spring.)

   I myself narrowly missed being given a name which would have had apt significance, since it was revealed in my early childhood that I had musical talent. My dad wanted to name me Miriam because Moses and Aaron’s sister Miriam played the tambourine and danced and sang the wonderful psalm of praise recorded in Exodus 15 after God led the Israelites safely through the Red Sea. But my practical mother objected. She pointed out that later Miriam proved to be whiny, wilful and disobedient, and because of it she suffered leprosy as a judgement from God. (I admit that, as a child, being whiny, wilful and disobedient also would have applied to me at least some of the time.) Fortunately, though, my mother prevailed in my naming. So Miriam became Marian.

A lovely, affecting act

   Much later, when I was a teenager and was  left to care for my father after my mother died, he chose another biblical name for me, and used it now and then at home: Hephzibah: “My delight is in her.” At the time I laughed at the sound of that Hebrew name, even while taking note, as my dad did, that the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin had a sister named Hephzibah. Yet I think that that very personal and biblical naming by my father was the single most lovely, affecting thing he ever said or did for me; he wasn’t the type to easily express love in words. He meant the name both as a declaration of his own delight in me as his daughter and as a prayer that my life would always be one of which my heavenly Father could say: My delight is in her.

   When you give your child that kind of name in that kind of spirit, even if only for private use, how can it not have repercussions? Some of those repercussions may even be dangerous, dangerous in the way Aslan is not a tame lion and God a God who wrestles with us and wins, sometimes leaving us limping even as he leaves his grace behind as well.

   Hephzibah has echoed through my life for nearly 40 years in ways that my father would know little of (he died four years after my mother did, when I was 20). Sometimes it’s been hard to see God’s delight in me; and there have been a few periods when that delight must have turned to sorrow. But God’s delight in us is wonderfully reciprocal and allows us to delight in him in turn. A few exquisite blossoms which obedience produces (urged to growth by the early prayers of godly parents) eventually become a garden of delight, through God’s grace and Spirit. And that name, with its meaning – my delight is in her – sinks deep into the now fertile soil.

Our new name

   Isaiah 62, a chapter the New International Version entitles “Zion’s New Name,” tells the story. My dad knew what he was talking about. One day all who confess him will be called Hephzibah:

3 You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD’s hand,

   a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

4 No longer will they call you Deserted,

   or name your land Desolate.

   But you will be called Hephzibah,

   and your land Beulah;

   for the LORD will take delight in you,

   and your land will be married.

And at the end of the chapter:          

11The LORD has made proclamation

   to the ends of the earth:                

   “Say to the Daughter of Zion,

   ‘See, your Savior comes!

   See, his reward is with him,

   and his recompense accompanies him.’”

12 They will be called the Holy People,

   the Redeemed of the LORD;    

   and you will be called Sought After,

   the City No Longer Deserted. 

This is a slightly modified version of an article that appeared in Christian Courier, July 16, 2007, in Marian Van Til’s monthly column “From the 11th Province.”