My dear boy,
Dr. Jonas Akung. I was quite fond of him. Anyway, we were seated under the sound of his voice when he shared his stories. Today, I’ll tell you one of the many stories that he had shared for four years straight. Depending on his mood, you could vaguely predict what story he would share, and his favorite was about a Rev. Sister who came into his hotel room to have coffee. He told us this whenever he felt the need to remind us of how stifling the culture down here is. Although I think the story was to gauge the depravity level of our minds. My favorite, as I write, which is what I hope to comment on, is the one about his name.
He said his name means “toilet” or “something dirty” in his native tongue. The background story, cut short, is that his family didn’t want to lose any more kids to some evil spirit that kept killing their children. So, they named him “dirty” because they knew the spirit would not have something unclean.
This, nonetheless, is not a new practice as it is the custom of the world to give up their children in hopes that they’d come back to them. This is a practice founded upon Judaism. The Hebrew God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, and he obeys. But his son was saved. The family of Akung was willing to give up their son by naming him “Dirty” with hopes that he’d be spared, just like Isaac is spared. In Matthew 16:5, Jesus says, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” perhaps corroborating the foregoing. Nevertheless, this is a dicey one because all this hope is built on the deity acknowledging the willingness of the one making the sacrifice. I say it is dicey because it doesn’t always go according to plan. Akung lives today because he was spared. Isaac is spared.
On the other hand, Hezekiah pulls a similar stunt, and his seed isn’t spared. He willingly gives up his seed, and they are swallowed up. This is the origin of the Hezekiah complex, where men do not care who pays for their sins, provided it isn’t them.
Perhaps, a factor that proves to tilt the results in favor of one making the sacrifice is if the deity has requested the sacrifice. Or as seen in the case of Akung, tricking the deity into rejecting the sacrifice. This is steeped in the Greek mythology of Odysseus, who tricks the one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, by telling him his name is “Nobody,” knowing that when he blinds him, he’d complain to his brothers. He does actually, but when he swears “Nobody” has blinded him, his brothers think him mad.
Hence, to survive the deity, one could show willingness in doing the deity’s bidding or trick the deity into relieving him of his obligation to him. The deity always comes, and we’ve seen this play out throughout history.
Why this story? Well, this is the ramblings of a bored literary critic. In other words, your father is getting old.
Love,
Dad.
