Fri 28th December 2013

This is my first blog, the culmination of a combined desire to write a diary and start a blog (horrible, horrible word). Facebore has been a blog-outlet of sorts, not that I post that often, but I like to think that when I do it has some measure of profundity to it, with exceptions of course, such as "Happy birthday Joe x", that kind of thing, although when I do say that I mean it.

Well I've just watched 'The Shawshank Redemption' on t'box and Red, one of the main protagonists of the story, had walked to the field in Buxton to honour a promise to Andy Dufresne, his friend on the inside. It struck me the importance of names; 'the importance' being an understatement, as it happens. More a case of inherent need to name everything, without exception. Exceptions escape me at the moment, maybe there are, and I trust the reader will point these out to me as and when they occur. Even then my gut-feeling is that I am right on this and will no doubt seek a debate on the matter. If I'm proved wrong that is ok, back to the drawing board etc.

Right there is a case in point - "drawing board." Even that has a name. I think it is important to note at this stage that the study of language (is it hermeneutics? No it's not, just Googled it. Hermeneutics is the theory of text interpretation, esp. Biblical texts. 'Linguistics' is the word I'm after), is not what I am primarily talking about, although I recognise that language is a phenomenon. What interests me is that everything is named and that we need to name everything. I am immediately reminded of God giving us a new name when He makes everything new, as described in the book of Revelation. I am also reminded of  Adam in the book of Genesis given the task of naming the animals. I think this is something important and another clue, yet another window into the truth of our being created by God. The evolutionist will probably argue that it is merely a trait left from when we were monkeys and we started to organise our caves and had to, well, name everything. I'd like to write 'blah, blah, blah' after that because I think it's so absurd, but that would be disrespectful to those who sincerely held that belief. Having said that, if we're merely the result of a random explosion in a random part of the universe when a random rock randomly ended up in the correct place in a random solar system just the right distance from a randomly placed ball of fire with a randomly placed lump of rock that we need called the moon, and then a random cell randomly appeared and randomly started multiplying and randomly mutated into a different species of life oh you get the picture, then 'disrespectful' is relative to only you, or me. Because if there is no God then there is no absolute morality. But I believe there is a God and that we are made in His image, hence the need to name things and animals and our offspring. I think this is wonderful, because it points to the truth that we are known by name by God, and this is written in our very soul, at the core of who we are. Everything is known by name. As Jesus said, "Even the very hairs on your head are numbered."