To what do I answer?

All idolatry is slavery, because to be kept by anything less than God is to be diminished. Wise and majestic elephants jingling bells for ringmasters. Lions pacing against the glass. Captive beauty is prostitution. In my aunt’s family, typical local Chinese, the daughters weren’t called by name, but by number. My dear aunt answers to “A-sup” or “Suppie” — Number Ten. While culturally common for that generation, what an illustration of diminishment. To be counted but not named. Collected.

To be named is to be distinguished, expressed as a unique value and glory. How different God’s kingdom is; the scriptures have constant promises of our names. Jesus is forever giving his people names, even affectionate nicknames like the "Sons of Thunder" (in my mind akin to "you wascally wabbits!"). After his resurrection in the garden, he says, “Mary!” and only then she recognized him. Just prior to Peter’s trial of testing, Jesus speaks with compassion and urgency, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail…” Talk about Jesus imparting personal value and belief in an individual. Our captors never do that.


In the book of Revelations, we’re told that a reward of the enduring is that each will receive a secret name on a white stone, known only to her or him and to God. I have forever loved that particular mysterious promise, and now I understand why it strikes me so deeply. There are times when He calls one by the title “Mine” but that is, as in Ezekiel 16, in the same breath in which he gives his solemn vow, an act of unwavering, personal extension. Because He is completely sufficient, he alone in all the universe can impart an untouchable, measureless value to us with no strings attached. We may add to his joy but never to his substance. His natural supremacy ensures our utter freedom.

By contrast, to worship a created thing is to, in effect, be pimped out, turning over our day's wage to feed, support and clothe that temporal entity and so reducing our glory to stuff we can taste, touch, see, maybe inscribe on a plaque on the boulevard. Yay? Good God, no!

The anger over these wounds of diminishment swells but there is no remedy in rage. At least it marks the space, the chasm and depth, because we were made for more, in the very image of the un-boxable God. The battle for this glory is as old as Eden, but most days, I sell my own self into disrespect, oohing and ahhing at the magicians sprinkling stardust in my eyes. Careers, cars, degrees, accomplishments, Likes. “Worship me and I will give you ALL THIS” was the third appeal of Satan to Jesus. But Jesus, said, “No, I know who I am — the LORD your God.” If only we, like Jesus, knew who we were, we would not sell ourselves into slavery, and, like wearers of Tolkien’s Ring of power, pay the cost, eaten away into hungry, thinness of being. But, as was recently pointed out to me, even Jesus himself needed the ministry of angels after that final assault on his identity, so intense is the warfare of deception against the children of God. Then what help is there for the likes of me?

Suddenly, I feel the simultaneous cringe and welcome for the nails of the Cross. I understand why it must be so. In this utmost physical expression of pain and payment, iron and blood, I now glimpse a time-stamped demonstration of a timeless love and commitment I can’t yet grasp. Who is this One who comes for us so, stopping at nothing? Thank you, Jesus, for prevailing in our debt. You touch bottom for us. And you teach me to call myself by name.

(the photo white rocks in the shape of a heart is fromlets-explore.net)