Naming and Recreation

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Naming and Recreation

October 29, 2023

Magic is real and language plays a big part of it. Mankind's ability and prerogative to name things can either be a great evil or a great good. We hope you all have as much fun as we did listening to this! Key Text:

* Genesis 2:18-23

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Transcript

Hello, For The King listeners. I am not your host, Rocky Ramsey. My name is Will Drzymski, a brother in Christ and friend of Raku's, whom he has generously invited onto the show in order to verbally showcase my artwork to you in 50 seconds.

As an artist, I strive to accurately reflect the glory of God and everything that I paint, and through that process, I hope to flood as much of the earth as possible with paintings, which accurately proclaim the undeniable fact that Jesus is Lord and the creation which he made commands us to worship him. So if you would like to join with me in distributing clean, refreshing artwork showcasing the creativity of the God who made us, I would be overjoyed to have your help. I run my own website called Reflected Works, where I showcase the artwork I've done in the past, sell original paintings and prints, and take requests for unique commissions.

Once again, that's ReflectedWorks.com, all one word, and I'm looking forward to helping you further the Kingdom of God right now here on this earth by putting some of your free wall space to productive use. Thank you very much for your kind attention, and now, enjoy the show. I apologize for this God of the Bible.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the 4.15 podcast. This is your host, Rocky Ramsey, and I am joined with Bricey.

What's up, dude? How you feeling? I am not Bricey. My name is Bricey. Edward the Third Ramsey.

You're just you're just making stuff up now. I know. Brice, the great, or the dragon slayer, something like that, will be pretty cool.

Yeah. So Brice is with me again. So thanks, Brice, for coming on.

We're going to be discussing this episode about naming and recreation. So that may sound a little cryptic up front, but I think it'll make more sense as we go into it. I mean, naming is just literally that.

We, as humans, like to ascribe names to things, and then we'll go into how naming and creation are connected first, and then we'll look at how we try to recreate things as we name them. So hopefully that kind of gives you a little understanding of what we're getting at here, and the text that's going to anchor this for us in God's word, so we can rightly understand this topic is going to be Genesis 2, 18 through 23. So we're going to, as Christians, we always get a lot of our worldview here, and the first couple chapters of Genesis are very, very formative for us.

So let's look at Genesis 2, 18 through 23. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.

Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field, but for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him.

And the Lord God caused a great sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh on his place. Then the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Okay, this is a pretty spectacular verse here. There's a lot going on that we could go in a lot of different directions, but we want to hone in specifically on this text talking about Adam's act of naming.

So prior to this in the creation week, God creates something, calls it something. You know, he creates the land, he creates this, he calls it something. And then he also speaks other words over it.

He says it was very good. It was good. He created this, it was good.

So he's using his word to create. He names the thing. He's creating something, not just a right, like, what's the word? He's not creating an amorphous blob.

It has some kind of structure to it. He's creating the seed. He's naming it, giving it a border and a jurisdiction as part of God's creation.

And then he moves on to the next thing. And then we get to the pinnacle of creation is mankind. He creates Adam.

And then what is Adam's first task is to bring all these animals. So Adam can find a helper for him to do the thing that God has called him to do, which is to work and to keep the garden and to extend the borders of God's kingdom, honestly, through the garden to the ends of the earth. So he was to have dominion over the earth and to work and keep the garden.

And he needs a helper to do that. There's not one that is found to be a helper for him. So God makes woman.

So we kind of understand that, but specifically honing in on what does Adam do as the representative of God in the garden? Adam names all the creatures. And then once you do with woman, God does fashion woman for him, but then who names it? Who names the woman? Adam does. Adam calls her.

Okay. She will be called woman because she came from man. So we see two different instances where Adam is in a derived way, in a mimicking kind of way, providing structure to the creation through the act of naming.

Okay. Is that clear what I'm saying, Bryce? I think that is crystal clear. Okay, good.

Because I just want to make sure this is a more dicey kind of topic, but I think it's spectacular. I think this is going to be really fun and hopefully you guys can interact with this and find this enjoyable. So something that's not talked about a lot, but there's a lot of beauty here in the narrative of scripture.

So the idea of naming and creation. A few examples here that can help us grasp this, not looking at the Genesis narrative would be an artist finishes all of his work on the piece of art. He signs the bottom and he names the piece.

So the Mona Lisa, right? He names it. The artist names it. Or example, or another example, somebody finishes a work of literature.

He writes a fiction novel. How does he finish it? He names it and then markets the book through the name. The name gives the whole piece, the whole thing structure and an identity.

Okay. That's what the artist does. That's what the author does writing a book.

And ultimately God does this in Genesis. He creates and speaks over his creation. So we as humans naturally want to, like Adam, like Adam naturally did because he's made the image of God.

So he starts naming the creatures and he starts naming the woman. We also naturally want to name things to dominate it. You know, so Adam's given dominion and how does he start exercising his dominion by naming things.

So we want to naturally name things to dominate it, but then also to contain it, to give it a border and a structure. Like I was talking about God creating specific things in the creation week and giving everything structure. Stop me Bryce if you want to add something.

Yeah, I want to add this. So in the creation account at the beginning, everything was without form and it was void. And, you know, you know, maybe do a little thought experiment with me.

Imagine if before everything was created and when everything was without form and void, imagine if God actually made you and you were standing, you know, out in space and you were looking at the earth that was without form and void with everything without form and void. Yeah. Looking at it, it's all wispy, nothing structure.

And you would, you would ask this question to yourself, what the heck is that? Yeah, what is it? What the heck is that? That is automatically a place of humility because you lack the knowledge to know what the name of that thing is. And then God says to you, this is the unformed, voided world and he forms all of it. He puts it into structure.

And then you say again, you look at the earth, you see you're out in space. You see the structure of the land. You see the water and you ask the question again, what is that? God says to you, this is earth.

And then now you have knowledge. So now you imagine God plants Adam in the garden and he starts having them name things and he looks at a cow. Again, that's a move.

That's a moor, isn't it? God's like, what's this? He's like, it's a moor. No, that's that one's a cow, Adam. That's his truck.

Try again. It's a bad man. Sorry.

Sorry. Keep going. Keep going.

I'm sorry. Adam asked that question. What the heck is that? And God says this time he doesn't say, oh, this is what it is.

He says, you've seen what I've done. Why don't you name it? Yeah. What is it? What is it, Adam? He says, yeah, yeah.

That's a really good way to put it. Yeah. He says, Adam, what is that? You name it.

And Adam says, that's a cow or whatever he would have said then. But so we see that part of being made in the image of God is that we are made a we're name. We are definers.

That's what we are. Defined. We name them.

We ascribe value to them because God put the world under our feet. Yeah. He made the world.

So in one sense, God is a creator and he made us as sub creators. Yeah. Yeah.

We create, we name, we define, we add structure and value, even think about this, you go up to a structure that is put together. It has a door on the front. It has windows.

And when an animal looks at that, an animal doesn't see anything special. Yeah. When God looks at it, they look at it and they say, oh, that's a house.

Look at that fence. Yeah. There's the property line.

Yeah. We've defined a space and we've said this is a home. Yeah.

Right. And that's the difference between a, just a creature, an animal and mankind is that an animal doesn't have any, they don't understand the boundaries, this metaphysical boundary of property. Yeah.

And that's defined as such. Yeah. Just like in the old Testament, when Israel would go to a land and he, they would define it and say, this is dot, dot, dot, right? This is this land.

Yeah. You know, going into Canaan. And then they read and they restructure it.

And they, and it's the land of Canaan is now Israel, right? They rename it according to what God wanted for that land. So that those are really good points, Bryce. Real quick, revisiting the animal thing, you got me thinking, look, if an animal looks at, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a say, say somebody is a woman is baking a beautiful cake for a wedding or something.

And a cow stumbles across the cake. It's not going to be like, whoa, look at how nicely. Well, it's just going to eat it.

It's just going to smash its face into an eat it. But a human, you know, it's going to want to cut it and value the beauty of the thing. So like you said, we like to, we like to provide structure and beauty to things by, by naming it and giving it the structure.

And animals don't, don't, don't recognize that. So honestly, I think what we're tapping into is a part and portion of what it means to be made in the image of God, naming, naming and defining and structuring is a part of what we do as humans being made in God's image. You know, I was thinking about this today.

I know I'm kind of getting off topic a little bit, but I was driving down the road, this old country road, just huge, long fields. Yeah. That just, just cut down obviously for hay.

And I look up and I just see the clouds and like it's the clouds are all just, see, this is part of the problem. We can't even like, I can't even properly describe it. Just how beautiful it is.

But thinking about it this way, an animal does not sit down, take a, you know, take various different colors and try to recreate that image. Yeah. It is so crazy to me how God had put into the heart of mankind wonder.

I know. We stop wonder at things. Like I, I looked at that cloud and I like, you know, I'm almost getting in a car crash because I'm like, just, I'm, I'm just wondering at it.

Yeah. Like that is how you know that God made us as sub creators because we wonder at things. We think that is beautiful and marvelous or we'll even wonder if it was a different way.

Yeah. When stories come in, like, like that's why people come up with fictional realities. Yeah.

But an animal doesn't come up with, you know, Yeah, a story. You know, come up with a story about mankind does colors together, but mankind does. Yeah.

We're tapping into some glorious things that God has put into us as his, his image bearers. I mean, it's, it's amazing. I guess real quick shameless plug.

If you want somebody that is a good sub creator that captures the beauty of God's world, go to reflectiveworks.com and use the promo code for the King for 10% off of a Will's art. But will does that will literally is looking at the clouds and a landscape and recreates that it's beautiful when it's done well. Okay, so to ensure that we don't go forever on this podcast, let's continue.

So yes, this is, this is a natural part of humanity and it's a way that we reflect the image of God and that is how we dominate it and contain these things. So more examples I thought to help us understand this on top of what we already talked about. John Calvin puts forth in his writings, his thoughts of theology.

So what a modern-day theologians. Oh, let's call that Calvinism. Let's put a name to it encapsulate it.

That way we can put people into that camp, into that, that framework, right? The name encapsulates what it is and presents it to us. Liberals also use the magical act of naming things. And yes, I am going to continue.

I'm going to, I'm going to move the conversation to that way of framing things that naming is the magic path. God has given us, God has given us, there's some magic there. It quite, it quite is supernatural.

So when liberals also tap into the magic of naming things to try to recreate it and then dominate it for controlled resistance. So the terms like Christian national, like white Christian nationalism, like, oh, you're a racist of your Christian. So they, they, they put a name around it.

They put a title and then they basically create controlled resistance to that title by forcing us to try to live by it or Christophashes, things like that. Think of, sorry, real quick, tapping into that. Even in the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar renames.

Yeah, he renames the kids. He renames the young Israelites that he nonsense educational program. Exactly.

He renames them. He gives them, he restructures them, but this is for evil. Yeah, exactly.

We are made in the image of God and we can use this as being a definer or an enamer. We can use it for good or evil. I guess even more, this is a very symbolic episode, but hopefully you guys are enjoying this.

Why does a, why does a young lady get her last name changed when she gets married? Because there's a new creation. There's a new, there's a new marriage that there's a brand new covenant there. So the name ought to be altered.

Her, her existence has now changed. And she's, she's transferred from her father's authority now to her husband. So that's why she gets renamed.

It's again, naming goes deep. Continuing on, we see in classic demonology, you have to name the demon before you have power over it. Or even if you'd like to listen to the hunt and cosmos podcast when Brian Sauvé and Ben Garrett, we're talking about the Mothman episode.

There's a lot of instances of demonic activity where the demon has to ask you to invite it in and it cannot do anything until you, until you give it permission to come into the house. So like the men in black and the Mothman episodes would do that. So the point is that our words do have power and it seems like even demons somehow recognize that to some extent.

And then another act of naming, we name our children when they're born to define their existence and to claim them as our own. So that's, that's what naming and creation is like. So when you name something, you create it.

Okay. In a sense, you really do. And in a sub, like Bryce said, in a sub creating kind of way, when the act of naming is, is you've now created something new.

Okay. Now let's look at naming and re-creation. So we'll kind of bring this conversation back to our point that the liberals like to name something and then change it.

So if you can steal the dictionary and rename something, you have shifted the authority from the one who named it to yourself. So when you go, you know, think about early American settlers out west. The native Americans had a name for this site and then we renamed it something else, right? When we came in.

So they had a whole structure and a system of viewing the world. And then we come in and say, Oh, that you said that rock was named this. Actually, it's now going to be named this.

We're going to rename this whole land because it's ours now, you know? So you can shift the authority from the one who named it to yourself. If you can get, if you can successfully rename something and get the right name, you can do that. So I wanted to kind of bring out George Orwell's thought in 1984 where the thought police are attempting, you know, big brother is attempting to control the dictionary and words to such an extent that they get into your mind and cause double think in your mind where you're at constant cognitive dissonance with yourself because you knew a term wants to be associated with something else.

And now the regime has changed the term and now you have cognitive dissonance because you don't know what's true anymore. So that's, that's really a big part of brainwashing. This is why we catechize our kids.

We're, we're giving them structure and naming things in the world. That's what catechism is. You're, you're, you're providing them structure and a name for the ways that God has taught us to worship him and what his world is.

Okay. So that's a big thought in 1984. That's why it's so scary because if you can control words, you can control thoughts because words are how thoughts cohere.

That's how you interpret the world. The world in your mind is through the vocabulary in the language that you're brought up in. So if you can rename something, you can capture it and recreate it in your own image.

And it's a scary thing. It's, it's quite the power. That's why I do think it is a magic.

It really is a, it's a type of magic. I would, I would describe it as that. It has that kind of power and effect on the world where you can cast a spell on somebody from afar.

You don't even have to touch them. You can get into their brain by renaming something and recategorizing something for somebody. So that's a long-winded thing to say what you have any thoughts there Bryce.

Yeah, this just goes into what, what is it? I think fifth generation warfare. Yeah. It's intelligence.

Yeah. So when you let someone have a definition, you're giving them ground, you're giving them victory. So you've lost.

We should now we're having a battle over words. So if we let someone define patriarchy in a unbiblical wicked way, we're giving them ground and we should let them do that. We shouldn't just give them words or get over words, right? We should be, we should be extremely militant about the definition of things.

Because for example, we see the left redefining what the constitution is. Yeah, that's huge. Defining what the second amendment means.

And when people are trying to have a definitional war, we should not let them do it, right? So we, we need to fight the battles of saying, no, the second amendment historically meant this during the period. Yeah, exactly. Or like even piggyback on that, like the first amendment with freedom of religion, like almost every single colony had an established religion at the state level.

So, so we know it doesn't mean that you're not allowed to make Christianity the state. We know it doesn't mean that because they all did that when they pinned the document. So it doesn't, it doesn't mean every other religion.

It means Christianity. That's what it means. And also it says Congress.

Yeah, that too. We need law, right? So the first amendment is something, it's on the federal level, it's not on the state level. Yeah, so they, all the state that established churches, and this is what I guess I'm trying to say, it was religion meant Christianity.

So freedom of religion is freedom to be a Christian in any denomination. It didn't mean Muslim. It didn't mean Jewish.

It didn't mean anything else. So, so yes, the redefining terms. Yeah.

So, and, and also sorry to go off the notes a little bit more, but when we see in our society, so why did Christianity have so much power for so long? Here's the reason. Christianity was a literate religion. Yeah.

We have always been known as the people of the book. We had the seminaries. We had the colleges.

We had the universities. We had the monasteries. We were the ones publishing material, right? We taught our children how to read so that they could read the Bible.

Nobody else read, right? We therefore had power. And now what we see happening is Christianity is becoming illiterate in the American West. So because we become illiterate, we are giving over power to the universities, right? This is why institutionalism is very important.

We should be elitist. We should be institutionalist because we want to control the institutions because the institutions have so much power over the definitions because the institutions are putting together, you know, when a new dictionary comes out, it's the institutions, the universities that are doing this. It's Oxford.

It's Harvard. While we shouldn't, we shouldn't be solely focused on institutions, we should be focused on them nonetheless. Yeah.

And that's why Christianity has pretty much is falling out and becoming more and more obsolete is because we have become illiterate. Yeah. We're giving all the literacy to the pagans and we shouldn't allow them to do that.

Yeah. That's great. We should be well-read people.

We should be... Exactly. Yeah. We should know our terms enough to defend them and then put forth a proper view of the world based on God's word and that's how we define things properly and we can name things well.

So to wrap up here, last point to be made on this topic is that naming really is magic. I've already hinted at that, but I want to push that a little further. Words are magic.

They are power and control. So when you see in Star Wars, the Sith Lords, they can just, you know, right here, boom, and then they're lifting you up and choking you out, right? They have power and control from afar. When you think about the idea of magic and spells, right? Or telepathy or, you know, any of these supernatural things that we don't think are possible really are possible through words.

You can choke somebody out by taking away their voice by redefining terms. You know, you can do all the things that you think only magic can accomplish from afar by actually, you know, a really tangible way by redefining words. So words really are magic.

It's no coincidence that God gave us His word. We are people of the words and we deliver words to other people that have meaning appointed by God. That's the magic of Christianity.

So if you see, if you see someone, sorry about that, if you see someone attempting to rename something that historically has had a clear meaning based on God's word, you're looking at somebody or something that wants to be God. They think they're God. They really, they reflect on themselves and they think that they are powerful enough to recreate the world in their image, which means that they think they're God.

And this is the heresy of the pragmatism prize that you were getting at, the philosophy of pragmatism that you can create your own world through your words. This is where the word of faith movement really comes from is like American pragmatism and Gnosticism, secret knowledge, hidden knowledge in the word of faith movement. So there's a lot to go into there, but we see the word of faith movement is a mass distortion, which is just a Christian form of the heresy of pragmatism.

Any other thoughts there? As we wrap up. And one point to go back on is the reality of subcreation versus being the creator yourself. Yeah.

Just because Maki is saying that word naming things, defining things, speaking things, like we're not saying that you yourself can speak things into existence. What we are saying is that you, as made in the image of God, have been given the task of naming and recreation. Yes.

Yeah. We're, we're playing. We're just kids in a sandbox.

We only get to play with the sand we've been given. Yeah. That's what Maki is trying to say.

God has made the sandbox. We get to play with that. So, you know, with pragmatism and the whole philosophy, you know, William Purse, James Purse, developed to this guy named Giovanni Papini, who wicked godless men.

He would quote John chapter one and he would say, this is talking about himself. He's creating a reality. He is the word.

He speaks words and his word, he can manifest things. So you have an extortion of this reality with people who say you can manifest things and bring them into existence by speaking it. Just speak into the universe and it will come back to you.

That's not how it works. You're playing in the sandbox. You don't get to just make the sand.

Exactly. That's what Rocky is trying to say. And that's the way we should view the world is that we are seven creators.

We are not creators ourselves. So I guess words are a natural part of creation language. It's already there.

God spoke. Therefore humans have language. They tap into the magic of words that God put in the sandbox.

The sandbox has words in it. God gave us language. Okay.

We as Christians, how we play with the sand properly as we build, we build the castles that God wants us to build. The unbeliever takes the magic of words and tries to create a whole new sandbox and take the sand out of the sandbox and play his own game. That's what I'm trying to say.

We as partaking in the magic of naming, like Bryce said, we're sub-creating and we're mimicking and we're only playing by the rules God has laid out in his words. So we never rename something in an immoral, wicked way. We always do it based on God's word as clearly revealed to us.

So yeah, just to make that abundantly clear, it is a beautiful thing, the magic of words. God has given a great, great beauty, beautiful thing there. Language is awesome.

But as Christians, we use it properly with wisdom. The tongue is a fire. The tongue can set ablaze many things of fire.

Yeah. Good. All right.

So thanks for listening, guys. Check out the for the king dot substack dot com to keep up with my blog. And thanks to the Christian podcast community for letting me be a part of it.

Still excited about this new partnership. And also go check out reflectiveworks.com and use the promo code for the king for a 10 percent off of commission piece of art from Will. So thanks, Will, for partnering with me in that as well.

And thanks, Bryce, for always being a part of this by the man. Thanks for listening, guys, to the king of the ages of world. God be a honor and glory for ever and ever.

Amen. Soleil.