It's Only a Name

My parents named me "Thomas Nathan Smith." The "Thomas" was from my mother's father, Alfred Thomas Brown. The "Nathan" was from my father's father, "Nat Jacob Smith." Until her death, thirteen months after my birth, my mother called me "Tommy," as did mostly everybody else for the next twenty years. The diminutive is a very Southern and Southwestern thing, so that Thomases in Texas and Oklahoma are "Tommys" till they die. To this day, if my phone rings, and the voice on the other end says, "Tommy?" I know I am talking to family in Texas or California. During my childhood, I was called "Tommy Nat" in the community as a way to connect me with my family of Smiths. Occasionally, I was called "Tomcat" or "Little Tommy Tucker" by members of my family. My daddy called me "Tbone" or, just "T."

After several years with my father, I entered an adolescence in which I was uncontrollable and, in many ways, on my own. I became a Christian at age fifteen and began preaching before I was sixteen. I drew away from my family then because of their lack of enthusiasm for my over-zealous and fundamentalist faith. People began to regard me as a boy without a family, without a past. Because of my talents and personality, these same people regarded me as a boy with a great future.

So, because I lacked a past and had a great future, people with the best of intentions began to make me their "Project." They taught me how to dress, how to eat in public, how not to extend my hand to a lady until she extended hers, how to talk- in particular they went after my English grammar and Southwest "twang," they persuaded me to leave my grandparent's home and the little "podunk" of a town where I went to school, and on and on...

They were grooming me for greatness and my family could only stand by and wonder what the hell was going on. Of course, all of this was "for the greater glory of God and His kingdom." I went along with it all, in part, because I was driven by an insatiable ambition and by dark insecurities. Oh, occasionally, I rebelled. I once hitchhiked from Okemah, Oklahoma to Boise, Idaho with a wad of cash that would choke a catfish and a very expensive Gibson guitar. But, I came back, rededicated my life to Christ, and bowed once again to the yoke of the handlers and improvers.

When I got among Yankee handlers and improvers, they did not approve of my name. "Tommy" was too Southern or too much like a hick, so I became "Tom." During a year at the Moody Bible Institute, I became friends with its President, George Sweeting. He also had great expectations for me. It was Dr. Sweeting who began spelling "Tom" as "Thom." "Thom" would give me more distinction on the preaching circuit. So it has been "Thom" for almost forty years.

(By the way, the naming of people and things in the Bible is replete with theological significance. To name something or someone is to exercise sovereignty or ownership over it. This is still true. Just imagine trying to "rename" a neighbor's dog or child!)

I think about all the forms of my name by which I have been called. I now realize that so many of them were the result of other people making me their "Project." Of course, being human, all of them hoped to gain from my anticipated glory. Many of them are dead now. All who remain alive are old. Old age has begun to gather around me. I am too old to be bitter, but old enough to now understand what was going on.

In my mature years, I have reconnected with my families all over the country. They call me "Tommy" and I have begun to sign off as "Tommy" in my written communications with them. But the name I am fondest of is my Daddy's nickname for me as a child: "Tbone."

Thus have I come full circle to Home again... and to myself.

Rabbi Tbone