I Have A Name Part 1

 

It was my first time in a psychiatric facility,

And medical Internship was bound to be interesting. Being just a new visitor there(thankfully), I met with the good doctor in charge and received the official tour from a staff nurse: offices, cafeteria, group sessions, all as one would expect, then she stopped by one of therapeutic rooms, allowing me to peek inside.

Everyone in the room seemed engaged in some activity:board games, television, and conversation but then there was her –— middle-aged, sun-reddened skin, shoulder length dirty blond hair; she was sadly involved in the business of looking at nothing in particular.

"That's "Rosie" ", my guide began with a smile "she has an interesting story, she is one of our Greyhound therapy cases".

Apparently aware that I was ignorant of the reference, she grew more serious in her elaboration: "That's when the family puts the patient on a bus one-way and says 'forget who we are' "


"People do that?", the words escaped my younger lips.

"Yep, we have a few", was the response, "she doesn't remember where she got on, her family or her real name"


My heart broke and continued to break for her in the coming weeks. Any activity in which "Rosie" took part was a sad one. There were brief moments when she seemed able to cope but eventually the enormity of her life's confusion would drop heavily upon her and she would be right back where I found her, close to tears.


I had never thought about it this way before, but what would be the point of moving forward without a sense of identity? What use is amusement or recreation if you did not have an iota's reckoning of who you were?


Identity is our most basic human requirement, for it determines what we do. Little boys harass little girls precisely for the reason that "they" belong to a group other than from that which they (the boys) have identified themselves. And the teacher can only step in to discourage such horse play because she has identified herself as the one responsible for the students' well being.


But surely there is more to this whole identity thing when looking at it from Heaven downward, though in order to be in a place of clear reception, we must strip down some misconceptions.


How do you define yourself?


"The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."
-1 Samuel 16:7

"Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian... slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all."
-Colossians 3:11


Identity is defined as "sameness of essential or generic character in different instances", so for example, say I had this red ball and I take my red ball to church and it is still a red ball, I take it to the park, it is still a red ball, and even if I had the inclination to travel with it to Antarctica and it retains it's "sameness" –— guess what it would be?
The "sameness" of it "in different instances" is it's identity.


So are we then defined by color or appearance: black man, white woman? To that I answer a resounding "No"–— you ARE NOT a red ball.


In our society, to define oneself as a color is to identify with a race, and to identify with a race is to embrace a set culture. You hear it from comedians all the time:

"So, a black, Hispanic and Asian guy sit down at a restaurant; the black guy orders fried chicken, the Hispanic guy orders a taco and the Asian orders rice with chopsticks..."
Good, bad or indifferent, you see what I mean.


The idea has been to align ourselves, with those who look like us and are therefore somehow like us, but that baloney does not cut no matter how you slice it.
Not only can alliances like these be disastrous but they are wholly based on a lie.


Discover the "Essential"


"This is the family tree of the human race: When God created the human race, he made it godlike, with a nature akin to God. He created both male and female and blessed them, the whole human race."
-Genesis 5:1-2, The Message


First implication:
As supported by the findings of the Human Genome Project, the only part of your visual make-up identifiable underneath a microscope is whether you are male or female. Sorry, there are no Asian, Latin or Euro genes, just genes; culture and our social constructs are what have separated us. Any observable external differences in humans can be attributed to geography, diet, climate and Genesis 9-11.


If you were to attend a scientific conference and the speaker began his presentation this way:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to consider the gray hammerhead shark and how it whips through the ocean, the gray mouse scurrying about your kitchen when you are not home, the gray seal barking in the arctic and finally the mighty gray elephant stomping along the jungles of India. Now please note this: they are all the same because they are gray"


I can guarantee that you would either find the nearest exit or wait for the rest of the joke, but what you could not do is blindly buy into the fact that these creatures were all the same simply because they were gray –— categorization by race is just as ludicrous.


People of the same "race" are likely to more genetically different to each other than someone of another "race"


Race just does not exist.


Genetics tells us that the most different human beings on the planet differ in their DNA by less than 4%. It also confirms that the amazing genetic similarity between each of us is due to the fact (get this) that we are all descended from one original strand of DNA.


Our identity is the definition of who we are.


Therefore, as far as physicality goes, our appearances do not, and therefore can not define us. And a word to the wise concerning size: is there ever a real reason to mention it? Can one not be thin, portly and chiseled in the same lifetime? If this condition is so temporary, I can find no legitimacy in being defined in this manner either.


If anything is to define us, it must be our internal reality as defined by God's truth, the problem is then that many of ours have been confused and frustrated. So let us return to the original definitions

Enter Adam & Eve: Man & Womb-man


The Second implication (of Gen. 5:1-2):


God only made you either one of two ways: male or female, nothing more, less or mixed.


I will reiterate this point: every human being on planet earth falls into two categories and have either been created male or female (designed for procreation with the other), and therefore it is not something one has to try to be, it is what one is.


"Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."
-Genesis 2:22-23


The word "woman" literally means 'womb-man', "for she [Eve] was taken out of man", so though a woman is essentially man's opposite, as far as her defining qualities are concerned, she is still like man in that she was derived from him.


I once had a psychology professor that taught the men that in order to be more "sensitive" they had to "get in touch with their feminine sides" and the women were to do vice-versa in order to be more commanding. What malarkey!


Unfortunately, as many are, my professor was mistaken, for she was driven from the realization that both qualities share the same source.


Identity is not something you do, it is something you are.


When a man watches a beautifully executed film and a particularly bitter portion of it moves him to tears, he is no less of a man, because, in fact, what allows him to express such deep emotion is his 'maleness' in the first place.


When a woman undergoes strenuous training for her next boxing match, what allows her the ferocity to both fight and endure pain are the strength qualities derived from her creation from man. Being found less 'girly' by her peers may hurt her feelings, but she is no less of a female, for she has been created a womb-man.


This truth is evident in the two major hormones present in humanity: testosterone and estrogen. Both are present in men and women though each sex disproportionately favors one over the other. If either gender were to experience a chemical imbalance (a man with imbalanced estrogen, or a woman with imbalanced testosterone), the result would predictably be disease and likely death.


Earthly action does not override celestial creation.


The only reason society believes that gender is something to be attained is the same reason it decries the sovereignty of God: it has replaced His creation with their own.


Picture "Perfect"


Once the ticket is torn, the popcorn is procured and the seat is saved, what follows in the movie theater experience is the entertainment. And a large part of what you are to be entertained by is the current perception (or better yet, perversion) of how men and women are to behave and relate to one another. The result is typically a display of persons as two-dimensional as the screen on which they are viewed –— allow me to introduce the "perfect" man and the "perfect" woman.


As far as I can decipher from this education, the "perfect" woman serves as a fashionable statue without a single blemish and exists as to be a vacuum for her mate's liquid capital. Too gorgeous for her own good she breeds intimidation and seems fated to wed her least favorite yet most persistent and masochistic admirer. She is the Proverbs 32 woman.


Her equal, the "perfect" man is personally responsible for driving up the sales of power tools, liquor and gym memberships. He owns all toys and gets all respect. His rage is legendary: cross him if you no longer wish to live. His wallet remains as full as his bed –— always, yet he abstains from disease and offspring . That is just not " how he rolls".


It is by these false standards many of us have been discredited, categorized as less-than our gender.


The glorification of such fantastical creatures as the "perfect" man and woman is widely tolerated because as the mythological siren, they play to the seduction of our carnality, taking on just enough humanity as to seem attainable. Yet to follow their call is to invite the fate of those bewitched by the sirens of old: sailors pursuing the beautiful song to their end upon the treachery of watery cliffs.


The most dangerous implication of gender being something one must earn is: one may not earn it. In fact, I believe that is what we are currently seeing being played out in our court houses, cities and communities: men that think they do not deserve to be male and women that believe they have not reached the quota to be female. When this occurs, the individual finds himself with little choice left but to live in constant defeat or deny their creation and re-identify with the other –— this too is a lie.


But there is inspiration. There is HOPE.

Real

They were larger than life itself; real men and women that carved the world into the image of the Creator, but they would not be what you would expect.


Among them:


Real Men


Jacob: cook(Gen 25:29) + romantic(Gen 29:16-18): Patriarch of God's people


David: singer(2Sam 1:17-27) + poet(the Psalms): Conqueror of Nations


Solomon: speaker(1 Kings 4:33-34) + bourgeois(1 Kings 10:26-28) intellectual: A King With no Equal(1Kings3:13)


Real Women
Jael: hospitable wife(Judges 4:18)+ homemaker: Honored Assassin (Judges 4:21/5:24)


Ruth: day-laborer(Ruth 2:3-6)+ faithful daughter(Ruth 1:16-18): Mother to a Dynasty(Ruth 4:17)


Deborah: military leader(Judges 4:7) + prophetess(Judges 4:4)+ judge (Judges 4:5): Legend (Judges 5)


They were not "fragile" or "sissies" nor were they "tom-boys" or "butch", such definitions would have been beneath them for only their God could define them –— the only one that could peek into their hearts.


May it be so with each of us.


These people were born no more special that you or I, what made them legendary was the Hand that held them. In this we find our identity, in this we find our highest calling, that we would be human instruments of power by the wielding of the Almighty.


Friends, their God is our God! The Spirit that dwelt within them dwells within us! Their call to illuminate this planet in God's glorious image and make His Kingdom come is one of the few reasons we are still given breath! May every thought, movement and respiration be to His Glory. Amen.


In Him,

Jean-Marc

...To Be Continued in Part 2