Conversatio Divina

Part 6 of 18

Misnaming Our Neighbors

Power, Justice, and What Our Assumptions Mean

Mark Labberton

Naming is deeper than labeling. It includes the labels we give to things and people, but it is primarily a matter of the heart. Names are given in the heart and then embodied in words and actions. Names are first and foremost expressions of relationship. Embedded in our words and actions are the names we give to and receive from others. Gestures of value, nods of recognition, glances of curiosity, looks of compassion and signs of paying attention build up one another. Alternatively, when negative words and actions combine, naming can strip or even threaten a person’s life. 

As human beings we unavoidably name. Everywhere we go, we name. Everything we encounter, we name. Responding to the world around us means we will frame what we see in certain ways, and when we do so, we will be implicitly or explicitly naming whatever or whomever we encounter by attention, attitude, words, responses and actions. What happens when people in our world, individually and collectively, have no small army of faithful truth tellers from whom to hear and learn and practice their real names? What happens when people are alone, or worse, when they are trapped in systems or relationships through which their names are garbled, fractured, twisted or lost? 

Our human capacity to name comes as a divine gift and vocation that reflects our being made in the image of God (Genesis 1). Part of the human crisis, however, is that out of our hearts we misname our neighbors, ourselves and God. No one is spared the devastating consequences.

01.  Daily Injustice

Everywhere injustice thrives, people are misnamed. Injustice occurs daily by simple and complex acts of misnaming. Injustice breeds in and spreads through these poisonous distortions. Naming attaches to our outside even as it makes claims about our inside. In most cases we simply assume that the names we give are the right ones, and they go deep enough to assign in our hearts the further implication of whether, therefore, that person is relevant or irrelevant to us, a threat or a tease, entertainment or a distraction. On and on the list goes. Our emotional intelligence and our moral visions will cause variation in this speedy and ubiquitous process. When we stop and consider things, most of us realize we don’t know another’s heart, we don’t stand inside another’s experience, we truly do not know or see another as they really are. But all the time we act as if we do. Although we don’t know the whole story of a person or group of people, we blithely ascribe analysis, blame, responsibility, failure, disdain, worth. 

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can tear our heart out. On the personal, social and global scale, naming occurs with relentless power. By our names we are defined and shaped, for good and for bad, with justice and injustice. By naming we grant and take away life. Yet most days and most times, this is so imbedded in the rhythm of life that we have little awareness of what is happening and its potency. Everywhere injustice is found, misnaming contributes to and sustains the lie, the destruction. 

What is needed to change this is more than improved labeling. Naming is a matter of the heart; it happens everywhere all the time.

02.  A Flair

It took less than five seconds for the young man who came into the coffee shop that afternoon to start being named. It had been a fairly quiet place and then, with flair and a flurry, with long, dyed-black hair—the front third of which was bleached very blond—and wearing jeans, a decorated white down vest and flip-flops, and carrying a red-and-white-striped fabric shoulder bag, he strode to the counter to ask the baristas in a loud and exaggerated voice if they were accepting applications. 

“Hey, you guys, I am here!” he grinningly announced as he raised and lowered his palms several times on the countertop. “So, I really need a job,” he sang. “Can I work here? I really have lots of bills and I need to make some money. I suppose I could sell my body, but maybe I should sell coffee instead. This is a coffee place, right? Ooo, I like your earrings,” he said, holding up his fingers in front of his pursed lips for a moment before he went on. “So, what do you think? I don’t really like coffee. But they said next door at the pizza place that it would take a really, really long time to get a job there, so I decided to come over here.” 

“Well,” the junior manager said, “we want people to work here who like what we sell.” In a few more minutes, after some  kind words of discouragement from the barista referring him to some other place nearby, he was off, loudly announcing into the air that he was, in any case, “Sooo excited.” 

There is not a chance he goes unnamed by those he meets. Is the primary impetus in his story his own self-naming that he enacts, or is he performing names others have given him? He is clearly aware of a public of some sort, and he has the need or desire to play to them. An inelegant dandy would be one way of naming or describing him. A cultivated flair and style of speech and dress meant to leave an impression. And he does. Out of his heart come all kinds of signs of distinction, need, hunger, confidence, insecurity, longing. 

Out of the hearts of those in the café, in the conservative as well as hippie mountains near Santa Cruz, south of San Francisco, came names of various kinds, no doubt. I looked around, all the people in the café had at least turned their attention in his direction and presumably had sized him up and assigned some inner name to what was unfolding before them. It would not be difficult to imagine a wide range of epithets that might be assigned to him, and with each would come some corresponding sense of assessment, evaluation, humor, disdain, regard or disgust. The treatment this young man receives in the world is affected by his sense of self, which is both publicly framed and self-imposed. Whatever the issues of his inner life, they would seem to be of a piece with his outer life. The lens by which he sees is a projected image. What is fed back to him are similar images confirming that he sees truly, yet so much that is important about him is not visible and seems inaccessible. His sense of treatment in the world might seem entirely just (he gets what he expects and asks for in affection and rejection), but it might also seem entirely like an unjust charade and the tale of a truly unknown, unseen victim.

03.  True Naming

One of the most profound marks of justice is the naming of the truth about the victim, the injustice, the perpetrator, the law, the consequences. Of course, discerning the right names about such things can be difficult. But more often the only real difficulty is the lack of will and resources to do so. Power is on the side of the misnamers. David, a young man in Nairobi arrested, maimed and imprisoned on false charges, had people with power saying who David was and what he had done. They were lies, but David was without a voice. He was held under an unnamed, false, capital offense he was not guilty of. He had no control of when or why or how his case would proceed. He would be tried in a language he did not know and, if convicted, he would be killed. At the last moment David was appropriately represented in court by the International Justice Mission and was eventually released. The corrupt police were jailed because of their unjust abuse. True names attached to the right people meant true justice. When the brick kiln owner in India is finally named as the enslaving, abusive, illegal perpetrator he is, light shines in the darkness. Human value demands human accountability. The one who abused the power to name is now named by the law and its judiciary. This is justice, and it is good news. 

When the powerless AIDS widow hears the judge pronounce that her house is being restored to her and her children after it had been grabbed by the extended family, justice has renamed her. The weight of the law has stood with her, blessed her and restored to her the means of life for today and for tomorrow. This is justice, and it is good news. 

When the little girl is rescued from the Asian brothel and given aftercare and schooling, and her captors are tried and sentenced, she really understands that her name has gone from “no one” to “treasure.” This is justice, and it is good news. 

Justice renames the forgotten as the remembered, the widow as the loved and the oppressed as the treasured. Naming gives life misnaming has taken away. The Bible shows that this is what is in the heart of God. It’s what the prophets say is God’s passion: “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:16–17). “See,” Jesus said, “I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). When we truly name one another, we are reflecting the God we worship. 

04.  Spiritual Exercises

Recall one of the most significant experiences of misnaming in your life or in someone else’s life (known to you personally or whom you have known of in some way). what happened? what was the impact? why? how do you feel about that experience? what does it lead you to conclude about the power of misnaming? 

Notice today the social naming going on around you in various settings. what were some of the names? what caused them to be assigned? how fair or unfair is that to any of the individuals involved? have you ever been socially misnamed in a way that caused a crisis for you? why? what was it? how did you respond? 

What names do you wish you were given by someone—or what is something you think currently misnames you? what name do you currently use toward someone that you think you need to change in order to name justly and truly? how can you do that? what will help you practice that? 

05.  Confession of Sin

Gracious God, our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo;
Forgive what we tremble to name, what our bodies can no longer bear;
Forgive us for lives unadjusted to the order of your love, for hearts out of rhythm with the pulse of your compassion, for tongues unaccustomed to the shape of confession;
Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open us to a future in which we can be changed, and refashion our expectations to your will, that we may grow in grace, and be shaped in your image.

The Presbyterian Book of Common Worship (Adapted) 

Footnotes

Mark Labberton is the Lloyd John Ogilvie chair for preaching and director of the Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute for Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Previously Labberton served as senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, Berkeley, California, for sixteen years. Labberton received his doctorate in theology from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England. He is also a senior fellow of the International Justice Mission. He has published articles in Leadership Journal and Radix magazines.