Let Us Make Us a Name Is the Oldest Sentence in My Industry

I once drove forty minutes out of my way to walk past a marquee with my name on it.

There was no show that night. I was not working. I had already seen it, twice, in daylight. I drove out at about one in the morning to look at some letters on a board, and then I sat in the car across the street for a while, and then I drove home.

I have never told that story from a stage because it is the single most embarrassing thing about me, and because it is not the funny kind of embarrassing. It is the kind where a man sees himself clearly for about four seconds and then puts the radio on.

Here is what I would want somebody to know about that night. I was not admiring myself. I want to be exact, because getting this wrong is how a person misses it in their own life.

I was checking that I existed. That is a different transaction entirely, and it is not vanity, and treating it as vanity is why most people never find it in themselves. Vanity looks in a mirror and enjoys it. This drives across town at one in the morning to make sure the mirror is still there.

There is a sentence in Genesis that says this out loud, and everybody preaches it as arrogance, and I do not think it is.

Read what the builders actually say

Here is the verse, and the second half is the half nobody quotes.

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:4, King James Version)

Lest we be scattered. That is the reason they give. Not: so we can be admired. Not: so we can rule. Lest we be scattered, which is a sentence about being lost, dispersed, unaccounted for, gone without anybody noticing.

That is fear. It is a specific fear, and it is the exact fear that drove me across town at one in the morning, and I would bet a great deal that anybody who has chased a name knows it from the inside.

So the tower is not primarily arrogance. The tower is insurance. It is a thing built so that a person cannot disappear, and it is built by people who have looked at how easily a life goes unrecorded and have decided to do something about it.

You are not a vain person for wanting your name to hold, and Genesis puts the fear in the builders' own mouths. Genesis 11:4 gives the reason as lest we be scattered rather than as pride. It is the Spirit of God, Romans 8:15 the Spirit of adoption, who answers a fear of being unaccounted for in a way that a marquee cannot.

God is not against a name. He hands them out.

If a person thinks the lesson of Babel is that wanting a name is wicked, the very next chapter should stop them.

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. (Genesis 12:2)

One chapter after the tower, God says I will make thy name great to a man who was not building anything.

Read the two sentences beside each other and the difference is not the wanting. The difference is the direction of the verb. At Babel: let us make us a name. To Abram: I will make thy name great. Same noun. Different hand.

And the promise does not stop at Abram getting a name. It ends and thou shalt be a blessing, which points the whole thing outward again. A name that God gives goes somewhere. A name a man builds has to be defended where it stands.

You have been offered a name from a hand that is not your own, and Scripture hands one out one chapter after the tower. Genesis 12:2 has God saying I will make thy name great to a man building nothing. It is His Spirit, Galatians 4:6 sent into the heart crying Abba, who does the naming that a person cannot do for themselves.

Isaiah says it to the people with least reason to hope for one

The version of this that finally reached me is not aimed at a successful man at all. It is aimed at people who in that culture had no line of descent and therefore no way for a name to survive them.

Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 56:5)

A place and a name. Both. And better than of sons and of daughters, which in that world was the only known mechanism for not being forgotten.

Then: an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. Cut off is the operative phrase. That is the thing the tower was built against. That is the thing I was checking at one in the morning.

He does not tell them to stop wanting to be remembered. He tells them where the remembering happens and who does it, and He puts it inside His own house rather than on a board across a street.

You have a name inside His house that cannot be cut off, and that is aimed at the exact fear the tower was built against. Isaiah 56:5 promises an everlasting name that shall not be cut off, and it is the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1:13 sealing us until the redemption, who is named as the seal on it.

And if the wanting has got heavy enough that a marquee at one in the morning sounds reasonable, say it to a person and not only to a page: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Wanting to be sure you exist is not a joke and it should not be carried by one man in a car.

Jesus corrects the disciples on exactly this, and He is kind about it

The disciples come back from a mission genuinely thrilled, and they have every right to be, and what He says to them is one of the tenderest corrections in the gospels.

Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10:20)

He does not tell them the ministry was nothing. He does not scold them for being pleased. He moves the celebration from a result to a register.

And the register is the point. Their names are already written, past tense, somewhere they cannot check, by Somebody who does not need reminding. That is the end of the drive across town, if a man will let it be.

John records the same picture at the other end of the Bible, and it is stranger and better:

and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. (Revelation 2:17)

A name that nobody else knows. Which means it cannot be used for standing, cannot be checked, cannot be shown to anybody, and is therefore the only kind that could ever settle this.

You are already written down, and the writing was finished without your involvement. Luke 10:20 says your names are written in heaven in the past tense. It is the same Spirit, Romans 8:16 bearing witness with our spirit, who tells a person that inside their own chest.