Some people play Geography or Twenty Questions when the family piles in the car for a road trip. For the Mason family, it always comes back to the name game. Jillian is the name maven. She loves to come up with good names for babies being born. Truth to tell, some of you have asked her opinion, and a few of you have taken it. She’s named all her children already and has firm views on Cameron’s and Rhett’s future kids. If she has her way, she’ll have to keep having kids just to account for the names.

I try to remind her there will be a husband with something to say about that. She thinks that won’t be a problem, either, because she will make that a factor in whether he gets to first base with her in the first place, or because she figures she’ll talk him into it and he’ll think it’s his idea to begin with. And where do you think she’s getting that self-confidence? Well, just ask yourself whom she’s been practicing on for 18 years.

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, the proverb says. But it’s not really choosing a good name, as in selecting a good baby name, that the verse is talking about; it’s choosing to make a good name for yourself in the sense of earning a good reputation. Another translation puts it, A good name is to be desired more than riches. … And that gets at it better, I think.

What do you desire? What do you really think is important in life? Proverbs is part of the Bible’s wisdom literature. This is not mainly the “how to get to heaven and keep out of hell” stuff. It’s the “how to live your life as if all the way to heaven is heaven” stuff. It’s about avoiding the road to hell altogether, along with any unnecessary potholes and wrong turns and detours on the road to heaven. It’s about being the kind of person it turns out to be worth being. And it all starts with the very Hebraic way of desiring a good name.

There are less-Hebraic ways of desiring a good name that we should avoid, however. For instance, some people want to make a name for themselves at any cost to themselves. This is the path of fame more than character. You see this all over our culture. The celebrity phenomenon cares little about who the person is, as long as he or she entertains us. And that leads people to become something by any means possible in order to be known. Pamela Anderson, the Baywatch “star,” admitted this week in a stunning moment of clarity that (and I paraphrase here) one part of her anatomy has a career (Or is it two parts? I don’t know.), and the rest of her is just along for the ride. Right. Then you have people who get on reality TV shows and allow themselves to be debased and abused, for what? Well, for the privilege of making a name for themselves, regardless of how. The saddest fate for many in our times is to live a life without being widely known for anything, good or bad.

More commonly, people equate wealth and a good name, since that’s what society seems to take note of. The poor are forgotten, overlooked, or looked upon as inconvenient. No one aspires to be poor. No one imagines the poor as blessed. Conventional wisdom says God blesses the rich and curses the poor. So the way to a good name is the accumulation of wealth.

By that standard you would have to say that Donald Trump has a good name. He lives on the top floor of the gaudy gold-trimmed Trump Tower in New York City. He goes through money and wives and hobbies like they all have a short shelf life. Donald Trump is popular, he is well known, he is rich, but does he have a good name or only a golden name that opens doors for him everywhere he goes and that most people would trade for in a New York minute—if the hair didn’t come along with it!

The proverb has in mind something different. A person’s name is tied to true identity before God more than to fame or prestige before people. Making a good name for yourself is a slow and hard; it demands that values become virtues. When it’s lost, it’s even slower and harder to regain. The philosopher Socrates said, Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of—for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

So what goes into making a good name? First, humility. This is a proper understanding of one’s standing under God and before other people. The rich and poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all. We are not permitted to see ourselves as fundamentally different from those who are richer or poorer than we. It goes both ways. We know how easy it is for the wealthy to look down their nose at the poor and think themselves better. But the poor can be just as guilty of resenting or envying the rich and considering themselves to be less noble simply because the rich have more money. No, we have to learn that a good name can have much or little attached to it in regard to material things. Things—the having of them or the not having of them—do not determine a good name. But what you do with the things you have does matter in the eyes of God and other people.

The virtue of humility underlies a good name, regardless of wealth. Seeing yourself in equal position to others under God is part of the so-called “fear of the Lord” that the Bible speaks of. But then verse 9 adds another virtue. Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. Generosity characterizes a good name. Giving, in other words, more than having. And isn’t it true that the names of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are better names today for their generosity and charity than when we knew them only for the wealth they themselves possessed?

If you want a good name, how are you doing in this department? Some of you argue yourself into stinginess on the basis of being a good steward of your money. You figure God has blessed you with it and you had better take care of it, manage it, build upon it, invest it, save it, give it only to the most deserving and all that. But then you have forgotten the first rule of a good name, which is humility. That is, you have forgotten that God has made rich and poor alike and that deserving has less to do with things than you wish were true. Besides that, most of us who have never learned to be generous are not nearly so hard on ourselves as we are on others. We somehow always find ourselves deserving and others seldom so. We have no trouble doling out a dollar to ourselves, but we cannot find a dime for someone else.

Jillian is in New York and Rhett is in Washington, D.C., now. Pardon me if you’re hearing a lot about my kids today, but this ends week one of the empty nesting. A little grief work. Well, both of them in the span of a week told me that they had bought a homeless person a meal. Jillian got a hamburger for a guy, and Rhett shared some Chinese food with someone at Union Station. They told me the stories, and I proceeded to tell them about all the good churches and organizations in those cities that look after the poor. They shouldn’t feel guilty for not giving to those that beg, because these people do not have to go hungry, I told them. They listened politely, and I felt I had done what I needed to do. But so had they. It was partly about the person in need, of course, but I also know it was partly about them. These kids have learned to be generous and not to be unduly guarded about money—especially since it’s still my money, don’t you know?! Now, I would like to tell you that they got that from me, but I must tell you that I think they got it from being around you all their lives. Well, not all of you, some of you. And not most of you, just a few of you.

Permission to speak frankly. If you are going for a good name by virtue of the virtue of generosity, many of you are failing badly if church giving, not to mention tithing, is any indicator. And it usually is. Let me ask you this: if generosity is a mark of a good name, how would you feel if we posted the giving records for everyone to see, the way some churches I know of do? Now, we aren’t going to do that, because I like my job. I know a pastor who did that one time and survived, barely. But what he learned was that there were some people whom people were paying a lot more attention and deference to in the church than deserved it, and some that needed a lot more attention and deference paid based on generosity—and not the amount so much as the sacrifice. Tragically, most of the most faithful givers in any church earn the least. Giving is one great diagnostic measure of spiritual health. If you want to get on a health kick, begin giving today.

James cautions the church about favoritism based upon wealth. Do people with money get privileges in the church that others do not get? Are the poor and rich treated alike? You know, the church is the one place where we try extra hard to model not the way the world works but the way heaven will work. If we reflect only the values of the world, we cannot make a name for ourselves that will last beyond the cemetery.

Which leads to the final virtue needed: justice. Humility, generosity, and justice. Do you treat people fairly or take advantage of others? You can be humble and generous, but if you’ve been stepping on other people or ignoring them in order to make a name for yourself, you cannot cover it up with your philanthropy.

The most experienced guides on Mt. Everest are disgusted these days. They say that so many climbers are eager to make it to the summit to make a name for themselves in the legacy of Sir Edmund Hillary that they will pass up other climbers in distress and leave them to die. They think they have only one chance to get to the top, and they won’t let anyone stand in their way.

My friend Bill McElvaney, who is retired now from SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, was the former pastor of Northaven United Methodist Church. When the search committee was checking his references, they called all the usual suspects. But then they did something I will never forget. They called the custodians at his previous church to see what they thought of him.

A good name has to do with how you treat people all the time.

eBay makes a big deal about this. A good name makes a difference in the online auction business. If you are a seller who treats people fairly, you earn a good name. If you cheat people for your own profit, those you cheat will rise up and tell the online world who you really are. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but sooner or later the jig is up. A recent study, though, found that a good name on eBay is actually worth something. People will pay an average of 7.5 percent premium to a seller with a good name. Which means it pays in the long run to be just and fair with people.

Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them. God personally takes note of how we treat people, and the warning is more than just “what goes around comes around.” God is personally involved in the rounding, whether up or down.

A good name bodes well for rounding up. And I assume that is the direction most of us want to go.