The Name Change

While jogging at the gym the other day, I was watching ESPN and noticed that Samantha Steele changed her name to Samantha Ponder.

To bring you up to speed: Samantha is a sports caster who covers mostly college sports on ESPN.  In the news last fall, she had a whirlwind romance with Christian Ponder, quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings, and they married towards the end of the season in a private ceremony.  I had often wonder (well, not really) if she would change her name since she has already made a name for herself in the world of sports news.

I made a comment on Facebook which goes like this:

Later on during the day, I was talking to a co-worker about a project and he gave me a new title (which every week he gives me some kind of new title; i.e. JCat is a current one, Ninja Cat, etc.)  Then, it just dawned on me that somehow these two connected about name changing.


When Abram became Abraham

In Genesis 17, God made a covenant with Abraham:

⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ⁵ No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶ I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you."

In this case, God wanted to make a covenant (promise) to Abraham that he will be father of many nations.  God was going to do great things through Abraham that God prompted a name change.

When Saul became Paul

Often times in the Bible, we see that names of people changes according to an event.  Paul of the New Testament was no exception.  If you don't know Paul, he was once a jealous Jew who persecuted Christians.  He ordered the martyr of Stephen (Acts 7).  But something drastic happened.  God literally hit him with a frying-pan (or a bright light) and asked him, "Why are you persecuting me?" In Acts 9, you see that then-Saul became blind by the Lord and was left blind for 3 days.  A conversion happened in Saul and he came to the Lord.  Several chapters later, you see Saul (who became Paul in this chapter) was hanging out with Barnabas.  God changed his name to the famous Paul who we know who wrote most of the New Testament.

And when not to change your name... (Story of Daniel)

It didn't say explicitly in the Bible but in the first chapter of the book of Daniel, Daniel did not want to defile himself with the wine and food that the king was going to give him and Azariah, Mishael, and Hananiah (aka Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego).  I think along with the food and wine, Daniel did not want to change his name either as this is an identity he had with the Lord.

My point... 

As I approach a stage in my life where I had made a name for myself in the engineering world, I often think, "What if I do get married?  What do I do with my name?"

I think I have a complicated name in the world, for starters.

Josephine is the English name my dad had given me.  He also purposely made it my first name, even though I was born in Hong Kong but he knew I was going to be raised in the U.S.  Most friends who are born in Hong Kong just have a Chinese name.  They later chose an English name for themselves but it is actually not a legal name.  Josephine is legitimately my legal first name.  I have a birth certificate to prove it.

Shuk Yee is the Chinese name my dad had given me.  It is also my middle name.

Chan, of course, is my current last name.

Many of my friends have different rules when getting married.  Some drop their middle name, scoot their maiden name to the middle, and adopt their husband's last name.  Others will drop their maiden name and scoot the husband's name as their new last name.  And now you see THE problem...

If I were to drop my middle name, that wouldn't make sense.  Many Chinese friends call me by my Chinese name.  If I drop my last/maiden name, then when adopting my husband's last name (whatever it might be), it might look strange.  I now have a English first name, a Chinese middle name and , which could be English, Polish, French, Spanish, what have you.  Then people will wonder, "So, what is this middle name?  It looks strange."  People will just be confused.  And a deeper personal struggle is that I will lose my Chinese identity if I were to drop any of the two names.

Names can bring about and define your identity.  God changed the names of Abraham and Paul; he want them to identify themselves as something great and special, that they will do great things for the Lord, and to put away the past of what they used to be.  But then you have Daniel.  Sometimes, you don't want to change your name because you already have that identity with God.

Even God has a lot of names: Jehovah Jireh, Lord, Yaweh, Jesus, Holy Spirit.  
Even Jesus had many titles: Messiah, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor

No matter what your decision is for your name, know that when we become Christians, we put our old self away and become a new being.  God's original plan for us is to have a relationship with us, and that our identity is in Christ.  A spiritual name change occurs.  We are all bride of Christ.  A wife drops her name to change her last name to her husband's name, she become an identity of her husband.  Just like this wife, we as bride of Christ drop our "last name" and adopt a new last name in Christ.

And yet, there are title. In an email with my co-worker, he said, "With all these titles, how do you juggle being such a heavy weight?"

I answered with some humor but ended it like this, "It's only a title, I'm still Josephine."

Then it really hit me that a title may just be a title.  My our identity is in our own names.  We may be mothers, sisters, wives.  Or fathers, brothers, husbands.  We could be CEOs, Presidents, or Managers.  But these titles do not change who we really are.  Just as God has many titles/names, His nature is the same. Just as Jesus had many titles, Jesus is still Jesus.

So, in answering my own question, I'm still Josephine, whatever last name I have.

God's Righteousness

On Facebook, I recently posted an update that says:

There were many lessons on sheep over the course of this past year, so in seeing another sheep lesson... You start to think, "Everything is running together."  Specifically, this lesson for the kids centers around the story of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7).  In summary, Jesus taught the audience about a shepherd and his one hundred sheep.  If one goes missing, doesn't that shepherd go find it?  If a shepherd finds a lost sheep, doesn't he rejoice over finding his sheep?  If a sinner repents, if God finds the bad guys (the lost), doesn't heaven rejoice in a New Believer?  Why yes!

So, after that updated, a string of conversation followed, to which a friend suggested I teach the kids in Chinese and I immediately thought of this Chinese character:

義

This is the Chinese character for "righteous" or "righteousness".  In a simple Chinese explanation, it is just being morally good, or right.  Many years ago, when I was in college, I was introduced to a book The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language.  In the book, the author theorizes that after the Tower of Babel, and after God has spread the people to different countries, confusing their language, each language and culture has some parts or story about God, Creation and of course, Jesus.  For the Chinese language, some of the Chinese character can be broken down to many little characters that tells a story, and there are a handful of characters that if you break it apart, you start to see these root "words" (characters) that make up the bigger picture. A lot of the bigger picture points to the original stories or even prophesies of the Bible.  To be honest, after reading bits and pieces of the book, as well as one or two chapters in its entirety, the author doesn't really explain his theories too well.  But the overall idea is very plausible and I think I can take his ideas and run with the explanation as I will describe the word "righteousness" in the following.

With this particular character, righteousness (義), it is made up of two Chinese characters, 羊 (sheep), and 我 (me), and where the "sheep" is above "me".  And within the character, 我 (me), there are yet two other characters, 手 (hand) and 戈 (blade), side-by-side.  From the book Discovery of Genesis, the author explains that this character might demonstrate our general act of worship in order to become right with God (after the first few pages of Chapter 8 of the book, he goes on a bunny trail...).  I believe that the hand holds the blade, which describes "me", who sacrifice a lamb or sheep for worshipping of God.  You see this act of worship a lot in the Old Testament.  Many of the Jews throughout the OT and even today perform sacrifices of animals as a form of worship.

But it's interesting to note the the character "sheep" is above "me" in the word righteousness.  Although this may mean of early days of people sacrificing sheep to God, it's also a hidden prophesy that in the Gospels, eventually our sins will sacrifice the perfect Lamb of God, who is already righteous.  God is over me, my sins!  No more do we have to sacrifice our animals for worship; God has already done it!  Why?  Because God is righteous and just.  

Interestingly enough, my own name, 陳淑儀 (Chan Shuk Yee), the last character is a form of the character righteousness.  When a "stick person" is added on the left side, it gives that character the ability to be used in a name.  You often see this in the Chinese language, when a character is "humanized" so that it can be used in given names.  

There are many characters in the Chinese language that follows this story-telling.  Maybe to give you a homework, here is the character for "boat":

船

The first character of the right means "vessel", the one that looks like this 八 is eight and the one that looks like this 口 is mouth.  Think Genesis and floods.  :)