A personal name, not an assigned role, is our passbook into reality. It is also our continuing orientation in reality. Anything other than our name—title, job description, number, role—is less than a name. Apart from the name that marks us as uniquely created and personally addressed, we slide into fantasies that are out of touch with the world as it is and so we live ineffectively, irresponsibly. Or we live by the stereotypes in which other people cast us that are out of touch with the uniqueness in which God has created us, and so live diminished into boredom, the brightness leaking away.
