Skip to main content

What’s Your Name?


  Ulysses Simpson Grant became known as unconditional surrender Grant for his refusal to accept any other terms of surrender. The nickname worked so well since it fit right in with his initials of U.S.  The only problem those were not his initials, at least not the one he was born with.


  Grant was actually born Hiram Ulysses but when he applied for acceptance into West Point the congressman who supported the boy’s application submitted erroneously his name as Ulysses Simpson (his mother Hannah’s maiden name) Grant.  When Grant arrived he tried to correct the error, but he soon learned a humbling fact of a soldier; when the army calls you by a name it becomes your name whether it really is or not.

  As Christians, I think we face a similar dilemma. The name Christian is one that should have a certain distinction, a name that makes us of Christ.  Yet over the years, that name has been hijacked by those of the world.  It’s been warped into lots of different terms; a varied group of people with loosely related beliefs, a political agenda or set of dogmas. You might see people saying that a certain opinion or ideology is unchristian, even when the items being discussed has no real connection to true Biblical Christianity. You hear a claim that no Christian can support <fill in the blank>, when the blank is has no Biblical connection.  For some Christian can mean anything from judgmental, to social backward, to religious, to leaning to one side of the political spectrum.

  So what makes us a Christian? Is it the world’s definition or Christ’s?

  Like Grant I don’t know if we ever can take back the name but there is one thing we can do is life our lives in a way to negates the monikers people lay on it

Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name.
1st Peter 4:15-16

True Christians need to exemplify Christ. They should follow his teaching, have him at the head of his church, live by the principles he espoused. Rather than try to drag Christ into our agenda, we should see Him as the one that makes our agenda.

  Don’t let the world tell you what it means to be a Christian, let Jesus the Christ!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

  Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so.  Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English.  Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome.  Wouldn’t you feel good?   You shouldn’t.  As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590.   You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with.   Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Master Your Self

  In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt.  He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!)  Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest.  Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt!   Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way.  He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal.  As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself.  He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors.   But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gift You Give Yourself

    I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me.   There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15).  I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven.  So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives.  When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.
Post a Comment
Read more