I recently read a very thought provoking blog entry over at Knowing and Doing about the power of a name. Names are funny things. On one hand they, as the post points out, allow us to conceptualize and discuss ideas more freely and more concisely. On the other hand they run the risk of trivializing the richness of diversity by grouping together concepts that, whilst similar, have a uniqueness that is part of their beauty.
A case in point. Around our church it is currently fashionable to define personalities in terms of the four temperaments Sanguine, Melancholy, Choleric and Phlegmatic. For instance my personality tests as Melancholy/Phlegmatic. People can be heard to remark in the foyer “Oh he’s a melancholy phleg” as if that will define how someone will react to a wide variety of situations. Personality types can give you an idea about a person but it is not until you really get to know someone and all their God given distinctiveness that you realize that describing someone just on the basis of one form of personality testing (there are probably hundreds), especially one that is based on Hippocrates assessments of the relative abundances of the four humors in the body: phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and blood, fails to capture the person.
Names also allow us to feel comfortable with things that God would like to deal with. Phrases like “I’m just a …..” or “I’m …” label things and allow us to accept them when they are not in God’s plan for our lives and are inherently sinful. Sometimes we need to get beyond the names that have been spoken into our lives by ourself and others and ask God how He sees us and how we can see ourselves through His eyes. It is only then that we begin to live as the people He created us to be.
