Line upon Line

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Cover image: “Lead Kindly Light” by Simon Dewey. 

Names are powerful. The ancient Egyptians recognized this and placed great importance on a person’s name. For example, it was important that your name be written down. They believed that one whose name was recorded somewhere would not disappear after death.

This concept of recording names was especially meaningful to me recently as I attended the baby blessing of my brother’s new son, where the name by which he would be known on the records of the Church was declared. In the Church, we place special importance on those things that are recorded in the Church. For example, Joseph Smith taught that as we record on Earth the names of those for whom the ordinances of salvation are performed, that those names are also recorded in Heaven (D&C 128:6-8).

We also believe that as we stand before God to be judged, that we will be judged according to whether or not our names have been recorded in the heavenly book of life that contains the names of those who are worthy to enter God’s presence. God has said, “For the names of the righteous shall be written in the book of life, and unto them will I grant an inheritance at my right hand” (Alma 5:58).

Names are also important because of the way they can literally change us. Social scientists from Israel, Paris and New York performed a study where they gave participants pictures of people along with four or five names, with one being the real name, and asked the participants to choose the name they thought matched the face in the picture. If the results were entirely random, we would expect that the test subjects would only choose the right name about 20-25% of the time. However, the results were significantly higher than that, leading the researchers to conclude that people actually tend to look like their name.

The scientists controlled for many variables and tested this hypothesis in a variety of ways with human participants and then tested it further with a computer. They found that the computer also was able to correctly match names to faces to a degree that significantly exceeded blind guessing. This was even true when the scientists used Photoshop to remove hair from the pictures and the computer was only able to examine facial features, especially the areas around the eyes and mouth, which are areas that we have some control over through the use of the muscles in our face. They cited research showing that “[t]he facial muscles are said to act as ligatures on veins and arteries, and they thereby are able to divert blood from, or direct blood to, the brain. An implication of the vascular theory is that habitual emotional use of facial musculature may permanently affect the physical features of the face.”

Obviously, parents do not know what their child will look like when an adult. Therefore, the scientists concluded that when we are given a name, we tend to take on certain characteristics that match what we believe to be the social expectations attached to that name and thus start to look like our name.

Alma seemed to be aware of this tendency we have to look like our name when he spoke to the people of Zarahemla. Alma asked, “And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?” (Alma 5:14). Alma is assuming here that if we have truly been born again by receiving the baptism by fire, which can change our hearts, that if we have sincerely taken upon ourselves the name of Christ, that the image of Christ will be evident in our faces.

Just as we are given a name at birth, we express our willingness to receive a new name, the name of Christ, when we are born again through baptism. If we truly receive the name of Christ as our own, if we really become Christians, we could expect that we would begin to appear to be Christians just as we might appear to look like our given name of Tom or Susan. It is important, however, that we truly consider the name to be ours. A name cannot change us if we do not feel a duty to live up to the expectations that attach to that name. Alma continued, “Behold, I say unto you, that the good shepherd doth call you; yea, and in his own name he doth call you, which is the name of Christ; and if ye will not hearken unto the voice of the good shepherd, to the name by which ye are called, behold, ye are not the sheep of the good shepherd” (Alma 5:38).

Finally, Alma turns his attention to the record that is kept in Heaven of those who are able to enter into the presence of God: “For the names of the righteous shall be written in the book of life, and unto them will I grant an inheritance at my right hand” (Alma 5:58). So when the book of life is opened, and it is examined to see whether we have been faithful to all of the ordinances of salvation, one of the names that should be there is our given name by which the ordinances have been performed. But another name that we will respond to, if we are worthy, is the name of Christ, which will not only be written in the book of life, but Christ’s image will also show in our faces.