Bearing Our Father’s Name

I remember my first visit to South Asia. Travelling around the various cities of the country, we visited church after church, house after house, conference after conference for a solid twelve days. Throughout those dusty days and humid evenings, I was introduced to many of my brothers and sisters whom I had never met. Some crowded into a tiny single-roomed shack to hear late night teaching of the word under a dim light, others packing a hotel conference room for some strategic planning sessions on how to reach their areas with the good news.

It was in the introductions to all these siblings of the faith, that I gained one of my first cultural insights. A brother would shake my hand vigorously and ask, “what is your name, brother?”

“Dónal”, I would reply. “And yours?”

“Ramesh Kumar” (Note: Just a generic name for illustrative purposes, the most common on the continent)

“Ramesh?”

“Ramesh Kumar“

This exchange happened with almost everyone. (Especially when I didn’t catch their name easily). My name sounded so short in comparison, as they proudly spoke forth their full name. My giving of my Christian name alone, without reference to my family name, seemed insincere, almost offensive, certainly striking, in a world where everyone proudly bore their family name. As I gradually realised this, I stopped using the shortened version of my first name, and even sometimes used my family name too. For us Westerners it is strange to use our surname, unless we want to be distinguished explicitly from someone else who shares our forename. But over here, and in many other countries, the emphasis of identity lies not in the name you bear as an individual, but in the name you bear as part of a family.

Now in our country of full-time service, it is an easy thing to remember to use my full name, as I share my first name with a teammate whom I am often with. But it was still a strange feeling recently, when opening a bank account, to have to put my father’s full name on all the forms.

“Why does that matter?!” my Western mind screams. “I am my own person!”

As I pondered this concept, Dee and I were reading through 1 Kings. In chapter 4 the list of Solomon’s overseers includes: Ben-Hur, Ben-deker, Ben-Hesed, Ben-abinadab, Ben-geber, as well as listing the fathers of all other overseers. This is not unique to 1 Kings, but the rendering of the names in this way made it stand out. These men did not have an identity of their own, in a sense. They were known as sons of another.

To be honest, while I understand that this concept is not only Biblical, but that it was common to most ancient cultures, as well as most majority world cultures today, I still struggle with it. I love my father dearly, I am thankful that he is still alive and that I can speak to him, and that my children enjoy his grandfatherly love, but I am not always proud of him. In fact, it pains me to say that I am often ashamed of him.

The painful but frank truth is this: I do not want to bear his name. I want people to deal with me on my own terms, without seeing me through the lens of my father, with his actions or beliefs. I want my father to be in a category where I can deal with him on one level, but where people deal with me without associating us. It is an uncomfortable name to bear at times.

Regardless of our situations, whether from a happy family home or a very broken one, this is something that I think most people face at one point or another. Some only for their identity-crisis-laden teenage years, some who have to carry incredibly heavy burdens through their whole lives. Sometimes it is a hard thing to love the family name that is ours.

As I’ve thought through this recently, having to fill in various forms which state my connection with my father, three graces have come to mind that help me when I am ashamed to bear my father’s name.

1. Christ is not ashamed to call us by the family name

I love how Psallos use this phrase in their song on Hebrews 2. As that chapter mentions:

“That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers”

The reality is that we have been adopted as sons through Jesus Christ. As we struggle with shame associated with our own family, we are constantly bombarded with this truth; Christ did not come to simply save individuals. He came to form a family. He came to bestow the right to be called children of God. We bear the name of our Father in heaven, because he wanted us.

This has so many implications for us. On the one hand, we have a huge responsibility. No wonder Christ taught his disciples to pray:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name”

Unholy creatures are being bestowed with the family name. To be sure, he is making them holy, growing us up into men and women who have shoulders well-formed to bear the weight of that name. But it is still a huge “risk” as it were. The thrice-holy, perfect God places the honour of the family name on those who will undoubtedly drag it through the mud time and time again. And yet, somehow, he is not ashamed to be associated with us. We ought to feel the weight of that responsibility and remember that we are not merely individuals with a heavenly pass in our pocket, but children in the family of God.

On the other hand, it is a liberating thing for those of us who struggle with shameful families. We have a new name that we bear. A glorious name. A name to which every knee will bow, and every tongue confess his position and worth. We share in his heritage. We are no longer defined by our physical families, but by our spiritual one. We can walk with head held high, confident in our position as sons and daughters of the King. We are born into his family not by flesh and blood, but by the will of God. He desires to have us, and he puts shame to shame in order to have us. Think of the prodigal’s father, “shamefully” picking up his garments and running through the village to embrace the son who had brought the whispers of the townsfolk to focus on their family. He has no time for shame. He despises it and grants honour in its place. This is where we stand.

And yet, in the tension between the responsibility and the liberty, there seems to be another application. The shame we feel may be real, it may be right even, but if God were to hold the same standard to family shame as we do to ours, where would we be?

The reality is that our families, and the individuals in them, are mixed bags; they are neither all bad nor all good. And the struggle to accept that is a topic for another time. But regardless, it means that their shame is not all-defining. Also, our new-found liberty gives us a dignity that cannot be taken away, and thus we are empowered to associate with the “shameful” of the world, just as God has with us, despising shame rather than exalting it. Let’s be honest, sometimes it is easier to deal with the shame of others, than our own families. Somehow, we feel it “sticks” a little less. I pray that I may learn to “shame” shame in my own family, as I understand the dignity I have as a child of whom God is not ashamed despite my failings.

2. Our Father gives us new families

“I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.” – Psalm 37:25

The Lord is no man’s debtor. He provides what his children need. And one thing that is a testimony to this fact is the provision of families for his children.

As I was wrestling through this topic, I received a phone call from a man that I call father. His son and daughter-in-law took in a young teenager from a broken home. They became my brother and sister, he and his wife my father and mother, and grandparents to my children. My kids actually refer to them by the title of Grandad N___ and Granny L___. This man calls me regularly, just to hear my voice, to encourage me, to pray for me and with me. Between his house and his sons house I spent three wonderful years, involved as much in ordinary family life as in the ministry of the local church that they welcomed me into. For someone from a home that was not pleasant, this was without doubt the most formative time in my life. I am not a big public crier, and yet in my many transitions, each time I have said goodbye to this family of mine, I have wept loudly, remembering the words of Psalm 68:6:

“You set the solitary in a home”.

Somehow God provides a new family, the church, to redefine who we are, to give us a better calling, to grant us a better name, and to bless us with a better heritage to pass on to the next generation.

3. The Great Author redeems family trees

This one will have to stay here as a little cliffhanger to be fleshed out in the future.

I have discovered in recent years a wonderful truth about my own family, and I have seen this happen with another person in a similar situation. With a bit of digging into the past it has been a joy to find that the name I bear has not always been one that might bring me shame. In fact, the lineage to which I belong has a history that has many believers, has ministers of the gospel in the same lands in which I now live, and has people who owe their spiritual lives to my ancestors.

I once thought that the Lord had begun a new work in me and two of my siblings. That we were the “blip” in the line as it were. What I found was that the “blip” was instead the shameful bits. God’s faithfulness had been in my history decades and generations before I was born. I am part of a greater story that God is writing through my family. Of course, it still comes second in importance to the new family that I have been brought into, but nonetheless it is a praise-worthy thing.

I am blessed to have found well-documented material to discover this, not everyone will have that. But I do wonder in eternity whether it will not be a very common story; that families, or indeed entire people groups to which we belong, may have been part of the family of God in a past age. I have a sneaking suspicion that the great Author of stories will have a grand one to tell around the table at the wedding banquet. A story that has no missing chapters or loose ends, but faithfulness through a thousand generations.

How this looks may not be the same for everyone, but I have seen this happen in enough people’s lives that I stand amazed at how God redeems our family trees. This removes some of the shame we feel, without allowing place for pride at trying to establish a good name for our family ourselves. It is the work of God.

I hope that my processing of family shame is something that will challenge the attitudes we have towards our own families. For some it will be much greater than others. But our Father lifts up our heads and grants us a new name, he strips us of shame, he trusts us with his name, he grants us earthly spiritual families, and even shows incredible faithfulness to our physical family lines.

I pray that we may all become more like the wonderful people of South Asia; unafraid, and unashamed to bear the family name, in both a spiritual and physical sense, as we draw close to our heavenly Father.