Welcome to Breakpoint. Before we talk about the power of what's in a name, would you remember

at the Colson Center and these Breakpoint commentaries in your year-end giving, we exist

because of the supportive listeners like you? Now, for the Colson Center, here's Breakpoint.

A powerful, surprising, yet subtle theme throughout the Gospels, especially in the birth

narratives, is the power of names. Over the last several decades, philosophers and social

scientists have proposed that identity is fluid, that words no longer are a stable way of knowing

reality. And so, in modern culture, words are thought to mask or construct reality rather

than to reveal it. Truth is considered to be unknowable, identity has been reduced to

a project of self-creation. Names then are considered purely practical, maybe decorative

things. That's why, although it's difficult to track, there's evidence that suggests

that more people today are changing their names than ever before. Now, the power to name

and to be named is, and scripture uniquely granted to image bearers. Scriptures full

of examples of naming children, naming families, naming friends, naming lovers, naming enemies,

and even naming ourselves. Adam names Eve, Moses names Joshua, Nebuchadnezzar's chief

of the Unix names Shadrach Meshach and Abendigo. And the depths of her grief, Naomi renames

herself. Humans also name things like cities and stuff and animals. Today, we approach language

especially names and pronouns with the assumption that we and we alone have a right to define

reality. This ignores how much of the world is actually given to us, including the relationships

into which we are born and that make up so much of who we will become. In other words,

it's just not accurate to say that identity is constructed. It is, to a significant degree,

received. In fact, for the vast majority of people, their name is the second gift they

were given by their parents after only life itself. Contemporary rabbi Benjamin Black describes

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