So in the Bible giving someone a name means things. God renames people and they become what he calls them. Abram becomes Abraham. He goes from exulted Father to the Father of many nations. Sarai goes from “my Princess” to “Princess”. These two become the parents of a great movement of God. These are the two through whose offspring, Jesus, all the nations of the earth are blessed.
So I sit today and listen to the hand wringing and blame giving as to the Boston bombers. Were they radicalized because America is such a bad place that even peaceful Muslim boys become bomb throwers and murdereres? We have the blame America firsters, the blame American education crowd, the blame American immigration policy group, and the blame the American government club. The only group I guess we can’t blame are Muslims or Islam. We don’t want to offend them.
I am of the “blame our own ignoranace of history, be it our own or anyones elses” crowd. I wondered this morning if anyone would have asked questions if the boys names would been Adolf Hitler Tsarnaev, or Joseph Stalin (oh never mind that one – too many people in this country think he was a pretty cool dude), or Lee Harvey Tsarnaev. But no one asked the question about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, not even the FBI who interviewed him a few years ago.
Did anyone ever think to look up the names Dzhokhar and Tamerlan and see what they could mean? Try it. Dzhokhar was a Russion airforce officer that broke away and was killed by Russian missiles.
What’s in a Name? You might want to look up and read a little bit about Tamerlane. His real name was Timur the Lame. You might want to read about what he did and why and then ask the question – why would parents call a child by that name?
