What's in a Name?

Tons of stuff is the answer. My favourite Counsellor is Dr. Phil. Why? Because he can fix in 10 minutes what it would take Jerry Springer an hour to create. You can order a pizza from Dominoes and solve all of your families dysfunction before the cheese is fully melted in the oven. You're fixed 5 full minutes before Oprah makes you cry. This guy is microwave magic.

Here's the rub. Dr. Phil talks about how we all have this inner dialogue, a discussion we have with ourselves about ourselves. It's a dialogue which reinforces our belief about ourselves. If I tell myself over and over I am unable to achieve something then chances are I won't be able to because I've already defeated myself. That's basically how it works. Don't worry, we all do it. If you start answering yourself outloud? Then you need to be worried.

So what names do we carry? If you hung around Jesus you'd know the Pharisees went around labelling His friends and the people he hung with as "sinners". If you hang out with some of the people who say they hang out with Jesus today, you might carry that name too...although, in many cases there aren't too many sinners hanging out with that crowd. It's more like they were self-inflicted on the sinners.

For some reason we always begin the God story in Genesis 3. Starting with THE FALL, we recognize we're ALL sinners and we need salvation. Jesus is the ONLY way to salvation therefore we need Jesus. Bang on, but only part of the story...The last part is true, and so is the first part, but it's the wrong starting point.

God always starts with life and creation. He is first our Creator who breathed His life into our nostrils, and when we began to sputter those first breaths He stood back, backhanded slapped the Holy Spirit in the arm (if he has an arm) and said, "This is good" (interpretive license forcing a modern day male anthropomorphism here). My NZ friend, Dr. Mark Strom, taught us the last thing God put into His temple (Us-1Cor.3:16) was His image, a female and male image (Gen1:26). The image of God bears His glory, and while we may have fallen and sinned, we haven't lost that which makes us truly human, the image of God. Lots of other stuff here, but my point is this...

Begin with life, the image and glory of God, His created good people, and it makes sense why Jesus died for us, even though we sinned. Begin with Genesis 3, and the name, "sinners" and it is a total mystery why He would do it. People need to start carrying that name around, and come to understand who they are in the eyes of God.

Maybe if we lept off of that platform first we could lead people to Christ. Then it wouldn't take us an hour to undo all of the harm that some people inflict in 10 minutes...

cheers,
rZ