People are liars, and so am I

By Tilly Dillehay

I'll never forget the first time somebody lied to me during an interview.

I had been the editor of the small town newspaper for just a few months; we got a call from somebody in the next town over. A protest was under way.

Apparently, one of the local gas stations had just been purchased by an Indian businessman who had relocated into our rural area of Tennessee, and he'd immediately set about streamlining operations. He'd reduced the workforce and offered the manager a raise, plus the chance to keep two part-time employees on. She'd refused and walked out.

Now she and a small covey of other townspeople were outside the store with signs.

I got the businessman on the phone, and he told me the story in a confused, flustered way. He'd had to cut workers because there were too many people for the amount of work. It was simple business, he said. Then he told me that the woman who'd walked out had done so in the middle of a shift. She'd simply thrown the keys on the floor and left the building, leaving the place unguarded for about half an hour.

"They are trying to make a scene so we lose the business," he told me, "but that’s not right, you know. I’ve got a lot of businesses, I have about 70 or 80 American people that work for me. And they’re telling me that I’m stealing jobs? I’m a job creator."

Well, I got in my car and drove over there. There they were, a small battalion of locals, standing on the sidewalk opposite the gas station. They waved and shouted to passing cars, calling for a boycott of the Seven-Eleven (name changed).

Their signs were hand printed with messages like “Americans needing a Job,” “Seven-Eleven no no,” “6 Jobs lost,” “Boycott Seven-Eleven,” “U picked the wrong town,” and “This is how [town name] rolls.” I found myself filled with disgust for the whole scene: the raw hickness of them, the ignorance of simple business practices, the racist nonsense.

I came up with my camera and they all crowded to get their picture taken. The leader agreed to talk with me for a few moments.

So she told me her version. It was a story of a merciless foreigner buying out a local business, firing everyone, and replacing them with private friends of his own. The story ended with (no joke) his pulling an American flag off the wall of the building, disrespecting it, and throwing it in the trash. Her eyes did not shift as she spoke.

"Is it true," I said to her, pushing the recorder close, "that one of you walked out in the middle of a shift and left the store untended?"

"I don't... I'm not sure that's how it happened," she said.

"Really?" I said.

"I told her to leave," she said then.

She went through the story again, admitting that some of them had been offered jobs and refused them. "I told the girls—don’t sign anything, go home; don’t do it, drawing unemployment would be better," she finished. She seemed energized, triumphant. She and her wronged coworkers were telling their story. They were winning.

I left quickly after that, and went back to the office, where I called the owner again. He responded to the flag allegations with a denial, said they'd actually stolen the flag out of the store (I had noticed the protesters waving a large flag) and repeated his other claims.

His Indian employees were getting death threats, he said. He asked if I would help him; I said I thought he was absolutely in the right, but that I could only print both sides of the story and let readers decide for themselves.

And as I sat down to write the thing up, it occurred to me, very suddenly, that I was being lied to.

I didn't know who was lying; I only knew that someone was. This had not happened to me before in my career, not so blatantly. Generally, when I interviewed, I could take quotes at face value and trust the source. Reporting is simple when there is no controversy—simply take the facts down from a legitimate source and print them.

This was the first time I'd watched someone's lips move and known, without a doubt, that the lips were lying.

It was also the first time I discovered that it is actually impossible to write the news without a chosen narrative. 

Sure, I would set about telling the truth. That's what journalism is supposed to be. Just the facts, Jack. But I knew that when I chose quotes to represent each party, I would not be choosing those quotes from an unbiased position. You can hear my bias, even in my re-telling of this story.

I wrote the story with my wronged Indian businessman as hero.

My coverage never stated this. It never told his story as fact and her story as 'lies'. But I couldn't give the reader everything that both parties had said, so I had to choose. Even as I chose what sounded like the most compelling arguments that each had made, I was aware of my own opinion, pulling and pushing phrases around within the 'facts' of the case.

I had to pick a good guy and a bad guy, or at least, I had to decide which parts of everyone's stories were worth including. Even if I resolved to get every single opinion from every single person, I would have to decide when to stop digging and let things lie, and how much detail to include from each witness.

And I was tempted, so tempted, to leave out statements on one side or the other. I had a narrative to tell, after all.

Lies come easy for me too, I realized.

It is hard work to tell the truth. It is hard work to keep digging until you find the truth, and harder work to accept and report details that don't fit with your chosen narrative. It is also discouraging to realize that at any given moment (in the news or in any other field), people are bending the truth when they speak to you.

We as humans have been given a great responsibility. As beings made in God's image, we are mandated to seek truth, to find truth and love truth and face truth, and—always—to tell the truth. We are meaning-mongers by nature. We look for meaning everywhere we go; we search for narrative in everything we do and see.

The problem is that we are also liars. We love darkness and cling to obscured meaning. We hide from the truth if it is inconvenient to us. And we generally seek narratives that fit inside our favorite story: a story in which we are the Grandest Hero. We must fight to remember a few basic things:

a) We are not the Grandest Hero. b) We are not the only witnesses when we tell lies. Others see (sometimes); God sees (always). c) The truth will always win... eventually.

In the case of our Indian businessman, I believe that the truth did win. He's still in business, although he had to pull his Indian employees from that location and put some trusted white employees there.

-----

In writing news, I find the following verses to be very helpful. They are written to all of us, as talkers and Facebookers and gossipers and texters and tellers of stories and readers of stories:

"There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers."
-Prov. 6:16-19

"Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight."
-Prov. 12:22

"But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth."
-James 3:14

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life... And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed."
-John 3:16,19-20

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love."
-Eph. 4:15-16

And this last one has been perhaps the most helpful to me:

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."
-Phil. 4:8

I owe my wife to the internet

Justin Dillehay

I blame the internet for a lot of things, chiefly for shrinking my attention span and offering me innumerable ways to waste time and money. But I have to give credit where credit is due. Without the internet, it's hard for me to see how I would have met and married my wife.

No, we didn't meet on E-Harmony. Still, I think I can cite good evidence for my claim.

First, let's talk about my favorite living theologian and preacher, John Piper. I have often told Tilly that without John Piper we would never have married, because without John Piper we would never have met. How so? (I'm sure you're wondering.) Simple. I can give it to you in three easy steps:

1) I wouldn't have met Tilly if I hadn't been at Grace Baptist Church in Hartsville, TN.
2) I wouldn't have come to Grace Baptist Church unless I had first become a Calvinist.
3) I wouldn't have become a Calvinist without hearing John Piper's sermons.

Ergo: I owe my wife to John Piper's sermons. But a couple of days ago it dawned on me that a fourth easy step was necessary for me to have met my wife, namely, the internet.

4) I wouldn't have heard John Piper's sermons without the marvel of the internet. True, his books played a big role in my theological shift (especially The Pleasures of God). But it was mostly his sermons on Romans 8 and 9. During my commutes to Vol-State and TN Tech in 2005-2007, I listened to upwards of 400 John Piper sermons--no exaggeration, no embarrassment, no regrets. And I did it without buying a single cassette tape, CD, or MP3 download. Those 400 sermons came to me free of charge through high speed internet download, courtesy of the state college system (we still had dial-up at home in those days).

Now based on the above syllogism, you could argue that this obsessive amount of internet Piper only got me to point of meeting Tilly, not marrying her. And you'd be right. But you can't marry a girl without meeting her. I'm just sayin.'

Besides, internet Piper is only one factor. I must also credit the internet for securing my nuptial bliss in another way, namely, online chatting. Though we went to the same church, my earliest lengthy conversations with Tilly occurred not face to face, but Facebook to Facebook. This is not to say that I had never had meaningful conversations with her before that time, but those early Facebook chats were a turning point for me.

Tilly is a writer, you see. And I'm a reader. So what better way to get a great impression of a writer than conversing with her through a real-time, written medium? This was a match through a medium made in heaven. I was flabbergasted. It was here that I learned that she was a wordsmith. Moreover, it was here I learned that she was hilarious! If you could have seen me sitting at the kitchen table staring at my computer screen, you would have seen a man on the edge of his seat waiting to see what Tilly would say next.

The rest is history.

So there you go.

I owe my wife to the internet.

True, God could have written my story differently. There are an infinite number of ways for an all-wise God to get two people together. But this is the story he actually wrote, and in this story the internet is a key plot vehicle.

We blame the internet for a lot of things, and rightly so. Its downsides are legion. But considering the role it has played in my life, it can't help but hold a special place in my heart.

Homework assignment: Do a thought experiment, and imagine how your life would be different without the internet. How would your relationships be different? Your job? Your theology? Your living room layout? Who wouldn't you be keeping in contact with? Where would you be living? What would you be driving? Would you have gotten your degree?

Sounds like a modern "It's a Wonderful Life" screenplay in the making.

Philosophy for 5-year-olds

By Tilly Dillehay

When my younger sister Callie was about five, she introduced the rest of us very suddenly to the world of philosophy. She did it by asking this question at the dinner table:

"What if," she said matter-of-factly, looking up from a plate of mashed potatoes, "what if all of this is a dream?"

We all stared at her, three other girls who ranged in age from three to nine. She continued.

"What if everything we're doing right now, even eating and sleeping and our whole lives, is just part of a dream we're having? Like, we think we fall asleep and dream, but we're just dreaming inside a dream?"

We gazed at her, aghast, but she just picked up another bite and ate it unconcernedly. The rest of us began to giggle, just thinking about it. Then we finished our dinner.

A few months later, in the afternoon, I found myself gazing at another one of my sisters and asking some related questions: Is my sister real? I mean, is she as real as I am? What if I'm real, and I'm looking at her, and she seems to be another real person who thinks things just like I do, but she's actually NOT? How can I be certain of her existence as another sympathetic being?

I was seven (and clearly needed more friends).

Callie and I were both unaware that someone named Descartes had already asked those questions, about 350 years earlier. It was Descartes who came up with a little something called Cartesian doubt. Cartesian doubt is where you question everything you've ever seen or felt or thought you knew.

Descartes said things like "I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions... What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain."

Then another guy named Thomas Reid came along a little while later and said, "Oh, stop it; that's just silly."

The problem with going around all the time questioning everything you've ever known, said Reid, is that it makes you impossible to talk to. You turn into a crazy person. The questions 'What if it's all a dream?' and 'What if my sister isn't real?' are time-wasting nonsense questions, according to Reid.

Here are some other nonsense questions:

If Obama benevolently creates healthcare for all that no one will have to pay for, how will we distribute all those ex-nihilo government funds to pay for prostate testing on females?

If a cat is placed into a box along with a radioactive atom, is the cat still USDA certified organic?

When No Child Left Behind inevitably creates a country full of well-educated, well-adjusted adults, despite the breakdown of the American family, how soon should we vote in Common Core?

Is American Idol turning out real talent, or is it all an illusion inflicted on us by our own senses? (Similar question: Is everything Miley Cyrus experiences just a dream she had four years ago during the filming of Hannah Montana?)

Will digital readers replace paper books by the year 2016, when Americans no longer know how to read because they have no time left over after Duck Dynasty reruns?

If Cogito Ergo Sum is disproven and somebody gets a life, what will professors teach in Philosophy 101 courses?

Final question: If at least two little girls from one family ask strange questions in their early years, should they still be eating mashed potatoes for dinner?

A posthumous convo with Isaiah the Prophet

By Justin Dillehay

Do you ever wonder what it must have felt like to be an Old Testament prophet?

Take Isaiah.

Surely foretelling the future had to be confusing at times. Given some of the things the Spirit led him to write, Isaiah must have come away from his freshly inked scroll scratching his head more than once. Think of his famous chapter 53 (though of course, he wouldn't have thought of it as “chapter 53”), in which he writes about how the suffering Servant of Yahweh would be “wounded for our transgressions” and “crushed for our iniquities.”

Can’t you just see Isaiah puzzling over this passage? Can’t you imagine him comparing it with previously written Scriptures from the Pentateuch to try to understand the full meaning of what he had written? Can’t you imagine him laboring in prayer over this passage, asking "Who is this, Lord? What person am I writing about? Is he alive right now? Is he someone I know? And when, Lord? How long? Will I live to see this prophecy come to pass?”

Here’s how the Apostle Peter put it:

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. (1 Peter 1:10-11, ESV)

In other words, Isaiah wouldn’t have always ‘got it.’ And of course, he wouldn’t be the last person to read Isaiah 53 and ask, “Of whom is the prophet speaking?”

Remember the Ethiopian eunuch? His story is told in Acts 8:26ff. He’s sitting in his chariot in the middle of the desert reading Isaiah 53, and he’s not getting it. Suddenly, out of the blue, a guy named Philip runs up to his chariot and asks him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he says, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”

Philip and the eunuch read the passage together—Isaiah writes of a man who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and remained silent before his murderers. The eunuch asks, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”

Good question. Isaiah would have been on the edge of his seat had he been there. Suppose Isaiah could've traveled through time to be in that chariot with the eunuch that day. Imagine how he would have reacted when Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with that Scripture, told them the good news about Jesus (Acts 8:35):

Philip: It was like this, Isaiah. His name was Jesus.

Isaiah: Jesus! Hmm. Named after ‘Joshua,’ the one who led us into the Promised Land! Makes sense.

Philip: He was born in Bethlehem—

Isaiah: Like King David! Stands to reason, since he’s supposed to sit on David’s throne (Isa. 9:7). Seems like my buddy Micah told me something like this would happen (Micah 5:2).

Philip: It gets more amazing. His mother’s name was Mary—and she was a virgin when she conceived him.

Isaiah: Ah! I had a feeling that that virgin conception prophecy of mine was about more than just my son Maher-shalal-hash-baz (compare Isa. 7:14-15 with Isa. 8:1-4, along with Isa. 8:18 and 9:6-7).

Philip: Maher-shalal...That's quite a name. Anyway, I’m almost done; just let me finish. He was given to us as a Son. A man, yes. But more than a man. He was the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6-7). Believe it or not, he worked as a carpenter until he was 30 years old. Then a man named John starting preaching in the wilderness—crying out, preparing the way for the Lord (Isa. 40:3). Then Jesus started preaching; he proclaimed liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind (Isa. 61:1). It was as though the new creation were dawning! The eyes of the blind were opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. The lame man leaped like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sang for joy (Isa. 35:5-6).

And preaching? No one ever spoke like this man! But few believed him at the time. He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3). Eventually—are you ready for this?—he was betrayed by a friend, given a mock trial, and executed. Hanged on an accursed cross between two murderous thieves, he was numbered with the transgressors (Isa. 53:12).

Thankfully, that was only the beginning. On the third day, the God who had crushed him raised him. God foresaw his offspring, prolonged his days, and ever since then, the pleasure of Yahweh has prospered in his hand (Isa. 53:10). After he was raised, he appeared to many of us. He even took us through your book, Isaiah, and explained to us all that it meant (Luke 24:44-49).

Isaiah: As Yahweh lives, I had no idea it would be so wonderful!

Philip: The best is yet to come. For now, he has gone back to heaven. But he has promised to return, when he will crush his enemies (including the wicked scoundrels who sawed you in half) and save his people. Then, he will bring a new heavens and new earth (Isa. 66:17ff) where the lion will eat straw like an ox (Isa. 12:7).

Isaiah: Sounds like the garden of Eden all over again!

Philip: Indeed. Until then, he has charged us with seeing to it that every tribe and nation hears this good news, which is why I’m out here in the middle of a desert using your book to preach Jesus to an Ethiopian eunuch. Thank you for serving us, Isaiah.

Isaiah: It was nothing. Really.

...the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven... (1 Peter 1:10-12, ESV)

As J.C. Ryle once said, "The humblest Christian believer understands things which David and Isaiah could never explain." You are the envy of Isaiah--the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he (Matt. 11:11). Next time you read Isaiah, think about that and rejoice.

Stop comparing your husband to other men

By Tilly Dillehay

Young wives,

Stop comparing your husband to other men. Stop it right now.

Am I assuming too much? I may be interpreting the looks, sighs, and minor spats I’ve witnessed incorrectly, but it seems to me that this is a serious stumbling block in the hearts of the young Christian wives I see.

And I should know about this. I almost lost my own husband over it, before I had even married him.

See, nobody ever told me about this complicated problem, when I was a young girl imagining the simple process of getting married. I always thought it came down to these few questions: Does he like you? Good. Do you like him? Good. Are you both Christians? Okay. Get married.

It never occurred to me, back then, how important another question would become to me:

Does everybody else ADORE him?

I broke up with my then-boyfriend (now husband) early on in our relationship. He was gracious enough to see past what I was doing and take me back a month later. But the breakup was caused 100% by my obsessively watching all of his interactions with other people to see what they thought of him.

Girls start asking these questions early in a relationship: What does everybody else think of this guy? Does everyone respect him? Love him? Want to be around him? Want him on their team? Listen to his advice? Laugh at his jokes? Cheer, or at least look glad, when he enters a room?

A lot of us got used to asking these questions as picky Christian daters. Then we never stopped asking them when we married a real human man and settled into living with him.

And these are not all bad questions to ask, when you are trying to decide whether to marry someone. You ought to know his character, and you ought to be able to face his reputation square in the face. Can you handle it? His reputation will soon make up a large part of your reputation. Will you be able to happily stand with him as a single unit? You will be creating a new reputation, together, the Family Reputation. That Family Reputation is something that you will live with for the rest of your life.

Also, it’s very important to know whether other trustworthy people consider him to be a basically responsible human being who is capable of sharing adulthood and following Christ with you. Wise people who know you well—these are the opinions that should matter to you. If they don’t like him, you should seriously wonder whether you have been blinded by your infatuated state.

Ask those questions, and ask them realistically. But ask them humbly, too. Ask them in such a way that when you do finally say “yes” and the ring is on, you will be able to stop asking them.

Why? Why would it be a negative thing, to be on the watch? Why shouldn’t you constantly be alert to what others think of your own husband... how others interact with him, how he measures up at work, etc.? After all, the Family Reputation is at stake.

 

Here are 9 good reasons:

1.       Because it’s done. You are now married to him, and your reputation is now his. You are no longer dating the man, and it is no longer your job to find out whether he is a good match (read: good enough) for you. HE IS YOUR MATCH.

2.       Because it is clearly disobedient to scripture (which calls it Pride). When you watch like a hawk to see that he’s getting proper honor, you are actually just watching like a hawk to see that YOU are getting proper honor. This is plain, old-fashioned pride. Pride will fell you like a tree, every time.

3.       Because when you compare your husband to men in general, you will soon find yourself comparing him to specific men you actually know. It’s hard to say which is more dangerous. Another man is obviously preferred as a party invite. Why isn’t MY husband preferred like that? Another man sounds more spiritually wise or intelligent. Why doesn’t my husband say things in such a way that people listen? Another man gets better work and is more in demand. Why isn’t my husband skilled like that? Another man is fearless and charismatic. Why is my husband so quiet and unassuming? Another man is joyful and plays with the kids. Why does my husband get so crabby? And worse, why does he let other people see it?

4.       Because you will set patterns in your first few years of marriage that will probably stick. When you set a habit of comparing your husband unfavorably to other men now, you will find that your mind soon slides there automatically. It may take years for you to reset your thinking, if you are ever able to at all. If you start your marriage with these kinds of shifty, restless mental habits, you will end up with two options: A) either settle into a kind of sarcastic resignation, or B) worse, you will sow the seeds that grow into adultery and abandonment.

5.      It is exhausting and unsatisfying, being a self-appointed honor guard. You can be a better friend to your husband, enjoy his company more purely, and give better advice (gentle, solicited, winsome advice, on career moves, personal/social gestures, or spiritual disciplines) when you are not on a one-woman mission to make sure nobody is better liked, better looking, or better respected than he is.

 

6.       He will get more and more confused, the longer you play this game. Have you ever heard a woman quibble to her husband as they leave a double date or party? “Why did you say that, about Sherri? It was so embarrassing.” “I wish you wouldn’t drop food on yourself.” “You acted like a child when everybody decided to leave early.” At least this quibbling is not completely incomprehensible to a man, although the heart behind it is clearly a selfish one.

Much worse is when a wife decides with a panicky feeling that she is married to an idiot, and silently tells him about it for the rest of the night. He doesn’t know what the problem is. She may not know herself.  He will simply not be able to understand what’s going on, without any form of real communication from you. And you aren’t going to say what you really mean because it’s too awful to say aloud: on this particular evening, he has offended you simply by not being the husband you think you deserve to have.

7.       What exactly is it that you ‘deserve to have’, again? Let’s just take a moment to remember what kind of friends you had as a single girl, and what kind of reputation you had then. Was it actually so much better than the duo reputation you now have with your husband? I doubt it. Growth in character, in service to others, in career, and in spiritual maturity is something the two of you are now working on together, as partners. Your new family is not, by the grace of God, stagnant. Don’t you think this man will be used to sanctify your rough edges and immaturities, just as you will be used to sanctify his?

So maybe you know a bunch of men who are already more like what you wanted your husband to be. (That, of course, assumes a whole bunch about their public personas being exactly like their at-home personas, but we’ll leave that alone.) Are you everything that YOU hope to be as a mature Christian adult? I thought not.

8.       Thankfulness is the best way to fight this beast (and is commanded in Scripture... remember Eph. 5:19-21). God has given you a man. He comes home to you every night. He kisses you sweetly in the morning. He doesn’t beat you (I am making an assumption here). He is a Christian man who is learning to love the Lord of Heaven. Although I might risk sounding like one of those mothers who harp on the plate-less children in China, I’ll go ahead and say it... do you know how rare he is? 

9.       God intends that you not be a foolish woman. Stop being one. Proverbs 14:1 gives sober advice. “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down” (NIV).  This is a commentary on all the things a woman does to attack the foundations of her own marriage.  These include things like nagging, withholding, criticizing, being lazy, and being willful.

Comparing your husband to other men is one of those things, make no mistake. You are young now, and you can’t see the long term effects of this. But you’ll find yourself in a house without walls if you don’t nip it in the bud now. God would have you to build your house!

 

This post is not intended to be unduly harsh, or to presume that every young marriage is affected by this feminine tendency.  But it is meant to be hard on sin that will eventually be hard on you and your husband. Be encouraged: if you see this tendency in yourself, it should give you great hope to diagnose the sin in your heart. Diagnosis of sin, when it leads to true repentance, is the kind of pain that always leads forward into joy.

Remember what you are now: an adult, involved in one of the most sacred and precious institutions God has laid before man.

Social pressure is nothing to the gravity of this thing you’re doing. Do it to the glory of God.

How to name your baby like a hipster

By Tilly

 

Let's talk about how babies were easier to name twenty years ago.

This occurred to me when I was running in the park last week, and I heard some of the names that kids were shouting at each other across the playground nearby. They were not the kind of names that kids were shouting in playgrounds when I was that age.

Back in my day, girls were called things like Ericka or Britney. Amanda. Rachel. Boys had names like Matthew, Tyler, or John. 

All American, straightforward names.  Among all the little people around me in jelly shoes and Power Ranger t-shirts, I only recall an occasional odd Zoe or Braidon.

But something happened in the last decade or so, and it seems like parents are now all on the same mission: find the name that no one has found before. Apparently this is the first step towards helping your kid to “brand” themselves early in life.

Find them a name that is exotic but not too weird, culturally or historically evocative but totally unexpected, and easy to pronounce but not necessarily spelled the way common sense would dictate.

Name them something like Foxen, or Gatsby, or Craeford, and when it comes time for them to create their own internet company, they’ll be ready.

When I was six years old, there were three Ashleys living on our street. We privately referred to them as little Ashley (she was 3), big Ashley (she was 11) and brat Ashley, or Brashley (you understand).

My siblings all have names that people called unusual in the 90s. But that was before we ended up in a world where Isabella is the #3 girls name in America, Layla is #31, Nevaeh is #39, and Genesis is #56.  For boys, Gavin is #40, Jaxon is #66, and Xavier is #80.

My name, which most people assume is short for something awful like Matilda (apologies to all Macon Matildas), will probably be next. I’m just waiting for Brangelina to name their next acquisition Tilly, short for Thumbelina Kyote Jolie-Pitt. 

And these are the popular names I’m talking about. It’s not unusual for the list of popular names to change. It’s shifted many times in the last hundred years. That’s why our grandmothers are running around with names like Betty, Dot, Ethel, and Norma, and our grandfathers have names like Floyd, Earls, and Melvin; you haven’t seen anybody under the age of 60 with names like these in a while.

In another fifty years, you’ll have an entire crop of Grandpa Liams and Gramma Averys.

But what’s changed is that the range seems to have expanded. Rather than being content with the new top 100 list of Scarletts and Coopers, more parents than ever are creating names of their own, or swiping them from places other than the Social Security list of top 1000 baby names.

This is how you end up with a year like 2012, in which more American babies were named Guadalupe than were named Brittany.

Here are some practical tips for naming your baby in the spirit of the times:

1. Name your kid after an obscure country, city, or state. You’ll get a fantastic little reflection of your own creativity: a cute little Moldova, Trinidad, Seville, or Oregon.

2. Pick an obscure color: Cerulean, Mauve, Amaranthine, Azure, Celadon.

3. Pick a figure from history that no one much liked at the time: Darius, Cain, Ferdinand, Jezebel, Louis, Adolf.

4. Try the last name of a great writer, but use as first name: Angelou, Bronte, or Ibsen for girls; Faulkner, Woolf, or Flaubert for boys.

5. Take a game of scrabble and divide them into consonants and vowels. Randomly draw four of one and two of the other, then get busy creating. You’ll get nice, gender neutral names like Derev, Vider, Irdev, and Evrid.

I understand that in order to name a baby, you are supposed to have one. Hasn’t stopped me or many of my childhood friends, from what I remember—we were picking out baby names since the first time someone handed us a baby doll.

So thankfully, I won’t have to worry about this process when the time comes—I know my little Turgenev is going to love his name.