My family and I went to my parents house for Christmas this year. It was a great celebration and we all had a wonderful time. There was one thing that stood out to me though. My son received a unique gift. It was a custom made LEGO base. The design was great with sides and handles on it. It could even be used in the car on a long trip. As my son was admiring his newly acquired paragon of LEGO stability, he noticed that his name was inscribed on one of the sides. This, of course, made it even more valuable to him.
Our Christmas continued. More presents were opened, cookies and fudge were consumed in large quantities, bedtime came late, and soon it was time to head home. On the drive I began thinking about that gift. Why did my son get more excited when he saw his name carved into his gift? What is it about, not only being given a gift, but also seeing your name already permanently inscribed on it? Then my thoughts turned toward other things that we label as our property. Why do we put our name on things we own? Is it prideful? Then I began to think about Christmas.
Christmas has Christ's name in it. Christian also has Christ in it. We often hear the phrase "keep Christ in Christmas" but I have never heard "keep Christ in Christian." As a Christian I bear the name of Christ. With this thought comes the questions from before about the reason for putting our name on something.
First of all, and probably the most obvious, it shows ownership. We want people to know that something belongs to us so we stamp it with the one thing that identifies it as ours, our name. We monogram shirts, we put "this book belongs to" stickers in our books, we engrave watches and jewelry, and we even customize our computers and phones with our namesake. Ownership is certainly the main reason for putting our name on something.
"This is a representation of me" is another reason we tag things with our name. Of course when you think of "tagging" you think Facebook. We could scroll through endless albums and see all the people that have been tagged in photos. We may even have to change our security settings so that if we are tagged in a photo we have to approve it before it is visible by the general public. But we can also tag ourselves in photos that other people post. We may want people to recognize us in a picture. So, if their memory is not serving them well, a little tag with our name on it pops up when they hover over our picture with their cursor. "It's me!"
There are other reasons we want to be represented by putting our name on something. Branding (think Ralph Lauren), political reasons ("vote for ____" yard signs), familial association (Fishbine's Jewelers). Our name connects our business to our family, our product to our personal high standards, our money to our legacy, our standards to our integrity, our policies to our fidelity, etc.
Another reason we put our name on something is to give our approval. A label or sticker saying, "This product was inspected by Brandt" would show that I looked the product over and gave it my approval. Motion picture studios put their names on movies even though they may not have made it, but they approve of its content and produce the show.
This circles back to having the name of Christ stamped on me as a Christian. Do I belong to Him? Is that what my life shows? Would people look at my life, my actions, my choices and see that I belong to Christ?
Am I a good representation of Christ? Do I display His values? Do I portray Christ's legacy? When people hover over me trying to identify me does "Christ" pop up in the tag?
Does Christ approve of me?
Acts 11:26 tells us that the disciples were called christians first at Antioch. Many commentaries agree that this was not a name that was chosen by the disciples. No they "were given the name" by people who looked at them and started to call them "christian." I will save the in-depth study of that for another time, but a simple definition of "christian" is "of Christ." Someone who belongs to Christ, who represents him, and who is approved by him.
How are you tagged?
