Saturday, September 26, 2015

Capitalizing "Christlike" - How Spell-Check Showed Respect

The other night, I blogged about our need to develop Christlike attributes. When I did, I sometimes neglected to capitalize the word "Christlike." Thankfully, spell-check corrected me. "Christlike" literally means "like Jesus Christ," We capitalize "Jesus" out of respect, and because it's a proper name, like Andrew or Sacramento. We capitalize "Christ" because it's a title, like "king" in King George, or "president" in President Monson. Yet, we don't capitalize other adjective that mean "like a person holding a certain title," like "kingly," "presidential," "prophetic," or "apostolic." I wonder if "Christlike" is capitalized out of special respect to Jesus Christ, or out of the mistaken idea that "Christ" is Jesus' surname.

I choose to believe the former. Jesus is a God, after all. He is certainly worthy of a great deal of respect. That's why we capitalize not only His name and title, but also the pronouns we use to refer to Him and the word that means "as He is." Capitalizing "Christlike" is just one of the ways we remind ourselves to show Him proper respect. I'm grateful that my spell-check reminded me of that the other night.

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