All the Names I’ve Been Called
I’ve been called a lot of names through the years.
You don’t need to hear and I don’t need to remember the ugly ones.
Names carry weight with us humans. Maybe because it was one of our first activities with our Father. Adam named the animals and in naming each one, it became clear that it wouldn’t be good for Adam to be alone. (Genesis 2:19-20) When God created a woman to be with Adam, his first act was to give her a name. (Genesis 2:22-24)
There is power in a name, if we yield power to it. My grandfather called me Useless and I gave that name power for decades after he had died. A Greater Name broke that power but that’s a story I’ve told before. This post is about stories I haven’t shared until now.
Along with many of you, I’m wrestling with names right now. Names I’m being called. Names to call myself. What name would Jesus have me use?
One part of my soul shrugs it off, like who cares? Isn’t there serious work to be done? Call me whatever you like. Remember the comic, Bill Saluga? “You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay . . .” Why can’t that be our story and we just move on? Maybe it can. But . . .
In the sixties, I was just a Christian. I loved Jesus. I believed the Bible. I was baptized and attended church. I was a Christian.
In the seventies, people would ask if I was a “born-again” Christian. This seemed an important modifier to them. Apparently, I thought, some Christians are not born-again. I wasn’t sure how that worked but I’d read my Bible and I’d read Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, so sure, I was a born-again Christian, if that helped them distinguish me in some way, but I began to be wary of litmus tests because of it.
That was also the decade where I considered myself a Jesus freak. I lived on the opposite coast of all that was happening with the Jesus movement and, being afraid of my own shadow, I wasn’t likely to hitch a ride in that direction but I could identify with the flower children who loved Jesus.
In front of older, more serious Christians, I called myself a born-again Christian but to my friends, I was a Jesus freak. There were so few ways I was cool as a teenager and following Jesus didn’t help. But, when we made the cover of Time magazine, I happily called myself a Jesus girl and that worked for a long time.
In the nineties, I was past the age where it was cute to call myself a “girl” so I returned to being a Christian. I dropped the born-again because the writer in me resists redundancy. Plus, as a young mom, I didn’t have time for nonsense.
I was in my early thirties before anyone told me I was an evangelical. I’d followed Jesus for at least thirty years without that information but the man who informed me of my status had great authority to do so.
He just happened to be my seatmate on a connector flight across country and he just happened to work for Billy Graham. We were flying to the same conference and I received an education en route. I’d come to accept
Jesus at the age of 4 when I heard Rev. Graham’s altar call during a televised crusade. This man explained that I was an evangelical and filled me in on many powerful and inspiring stories of what he’d witnessed following Rev. Graham around the world.
I didn’t have much call back in Rhode Island to announce that I was evangelical and didn’t use it as an introduction because, again, the redundancy factor but when people on the news were talking about evangelicals, I knew they meant people like me. During the first decade of the century, I began to see clearer why people needed to distinguish Christians from other Christians. I had a growing awareness that not every quacking bird was a genuine duck, so I often introduced myself as a Jesus follower.
This was a time when it became popular to explain we didn’t follow a religion, we had a relationship with Jesus. This made it awkward to check off any box on forms like at the 
hospital. Many of us crossed off RELIGION and penned in RELATIONSHIP: JESUS. I can’t imagine this did more than cause some eye-rolls in record-keeping.
Does the name matter? I don’t know but I think the conversation about the name matters very much. The conversation is about explaining what is so different about living life following Jesus. It’s not a message that fits inside one name except His.
How quickly life changed from 2011 to 2021! At the start of that decade, I explained to a state worker that a family in my care was evangelical Christian. The worker guffawed. “What kind of whacko, fringe-group is that?” he asked. Later that day, I received his emailed apology.
2016, I’m in an interview for a job I’m considering when the interviewer says, “I notice you’re a Christian writer. Are you evangelical Christian?” I nod. “How do you plan to keep your faith from affecting your work here?” I know what he’s asking but I don’t subscribe to that narrative so I reply: “Are you planning to ask me to commit fraud or lie? My faith will definitely interfere with that.” I don’t take that job.
Flash forward to 2021. I’m sitting in a room with someone who informs me I should have recused myself from overseeing people because just knowing I’m an evangelical Christian struck fear in people. “It really didn’t,” I reply,
but my reply isn’t necessary because my situation was determined without my input. You know, based on me being evangelical and all. I’m supposed to understand the complete horror that name implies. I know what I’ve heard in the headlines but when I replace that with the faces of fellow Jesus-followers, I believe the faces, not the media, hungry for viewers and clicks.
Another writer calls and tells me she’s probably not an evangelical any longer. “Have you lost faith in Jesus?” I ask. “No. I’ve lost faith in people who are happy being evangelical right now,” she replies, “So, I’m making an announcement.”
“Is that necessary? That’s getting weird like gender reveal reels, isn’t it?”
“It’s important.”
“I’m not sure that it’s going to offer you the protection you’re hoping for.”
“Whatever.”
My friend Doug calls himself a “radical affirmationist” based on 2 Corinthians 19-20 and suggests I do the same but I think that’s a long way to go to introduce myself to a seatmate on a plane. I revert to Jesus-follower. But the conversation hasn’t ended, has it?
What’s in a name? Does it matter? Does it matter in Somalia? In China? In North Korea? In Uganda? We’re not the center of the universe. Does what we call ourselves matter? It does. It doesn’t. It does.
The name of Jesus matters. Following Him matters. Living a life that reflects Jesus matters. What we call that? What are your thoughts?
Maybe it’s good to move away from the short-hand of a quick name or title to explain everything. Maybe it’s better to take the long way into a deeper conversation. Maybe we take ourselves less seriously but take Jesus more seriously than ever because let me tell you, I’ve sat in a room knowing I was viewed as a danger, an enemy, someone to be dispensed with, someone to be avoided association with at all costs because of my faith. I lost stuff in that room. Quietly. Behind closed doors.
Whatever I am called, I stand with Jesus. Whatever comes with that is not my call. At the end of the day, He’s the only one who gets to name me because I’m His. He calls me friend. He calls me daughter. He calls me redeemed. He calls me to follow. Jesus follower, I am.
What do we call ourselves now? What's in the name Christian anyway? https://t.co/TB8mnNt5pA #Jesus #EvangelicalChristian
— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) September 19, 2023
