What's In a Name, Redux

A few months ago I wrote an article called "What's In a Name?" In it I talked about the name Christian and what it ought to mean to us as followers of Christ. What prompted that article was the growing number of strange names people are giving their children these days.

Well, according to Yahoo News, I'm not the only one fed up with seeing these ridiculous names given to children. According to a story posted July 24, 2008, a judge in New Zealand made a 9-year old girl a ward of the court so that her name could be changed. What kind of name would be so bad that a judge would take such drastic measures to change it? "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii." Can you imagine being 9 years old and telling people your name is "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii"? Well this girl would not tell even her closest friends what her real name was because she was too embarrassed. In his ruling, the judge said of the name the girl's parents had chosen for her, "It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily." I think he's right about that.

Why do people want to give increasingly bizarre names to their children? Maybe they feel as if the common, ordinary names we're all used to hearing will cause their children to get lost in the shuffle. After all, if little Talula Does the Hula had been named Lisa, Mary, Susan or Karen (the most popular girl's names from the year I was born); or even if she had been named Emily, Isabella, Emma, or Ava (the most popular girl's names from 2007), she just would not have been noticed. The more people there are, the more bizarre the name will have to be if you want the child to be "unique."

So where's the spiritual point in this? When the Lord planned the church, He only planned for one to exist. Jesus promised His Apostles that He would build His church, not His churches (Matthew 16:18). From the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 throughout the rest of the New Testament, only one church is ever described. It is Christ's body (Ephesians 1:22-23), and we all know that there is only one body for one head. It is the bride of Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2), and Jesus is not a polygamist. With only one church in existence, it is not difficult to identify it. The New Testament used several different concepts to describe and indentify the church and its relationship to the Lord; we read about the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the family of God, the church of Christ, and so on.

But men have corrupted God's simple plan for one church to exist. Today there are hundreds of different unique religious groups that all claim to belong to Christ. But these groups must identify themselves in some unique way to set themselves apart from all the other groups. So, as it is with people's names, it is becoming more and more common with churches' names. As more and more unique groups are started, more and more unique names are devised for those groups.

Wouldn't it be easier if we just went by what the Bible says? If we went back to a single church that simply wears the name of its Head? After all, if this was the way God planned it, why isn't that good enough for people today? To do this, though, we have to get rid of our own ideas and all of the doctrines and practices that cannot be supported by the Scriptures. Paul said that we must do everything "in the name of the Lord" (Colossians 3:17), which means that we must do it according to His authority. If Jesus has not authorized what we believe, what we practice, how we worship, or the name we wear, we are wrong and need to change. Let's seek to be just the church that God designed, the church that Jesus built.