Emergent, Emerging, Modern, Postmodern, Orthodox, Heresy, Liberal, Conservative, Baptist, Pentecostal, Mainline, Evangelical, Good, Evil, Pagan, Christian, Tony Jones, John MacArthur, Brian McLaren, Bible Answer Man (Hank Hanegraaff), The French, The English, Black, White, Slut, Pure, In, Out, Us, Them, …And So Many More Labels!
OK, so here is my vent. I fully realize that it is in our human nature to label and define and fragment just about everything into tidy boxes so we can then pass judgment, create an “in” and an “out”, an us and them. But just because I get it does not mean I like it. In fact, I even hate it when I see it surfacing in me. The fruit of such efforts usually creates a polarizing and dis-unifying “we’re good, you’re evil” mentality and “false” reality. It allows us to sit smugly back in our thrones casting everyone else into the shadows of our light. It REALLY makes me sick—and when I see it in myself, I feel sicker.
As one who appreciates and participates in the emerging dialogue and friendship, I often get labeled and boxed into a certain corner based on the label given me. As an example, there are a couple diagrams created by Michael Patton, which represent his certain opinion, floating around and generating quite a bit of buzz. Michael also posted 20 signs (and I get his humor, but behind it is a stab of denouncement) that you are moving from emerging to Emergent:
Top Twenty Signs you are moving from emerging to Emergent!
20. You only curse around fundamentalists.
19. You leave your church because the sermon was not obscure enough.
18. You refer to your local assembly as “church,” “synagogue,” or “mosque” depending on who you are talking to.
17. Your blog is a rant about how everyone else rants too much.
16. You brag that you have never been pinned down theologically on any issue.
15. The only thing you are sure of is that others cannot be sure of anything.
14. You bring your own wine to communion.
13. You are offended when someone says they are going to “Preach the Gospel” or “Teach the truth” believing they should just “Tell a story.”
12. Instead of a tract, you carry a can of Play-doh in you back pocket.
11. Your website links to Green Peace and the Democratic National Convention just because conservatives are against it.
10. You start a Christian blog, but leave it blank, fearing that you might offend someone.
9. You are not any good at art, yet you continue to present the Gospel by painting stick figures on recycled paper.
8. When you present the Gospel, Heaven is renamed The Matrix and you call Christ Neo.
7. Your church caters from Whole Foods.
6. Every sermon illustration begins with “The other night I was drinking a beer and . . .”
5. You have yet to read the book of Romans believing Paul was too modern in his thinking.
4. Your car has a bumper sticker that reads “I think my boss is a Jewish carpenter but I can’t know for certain.”
3. You don’t worship on Sundays because everyone else does.
2. You evaluate truth by asking how many people hold to it. If it is too popular, then it is wrong.
1. When someone calls out your name you get angry saying, “Don’t label me.”
I really do not see either the list or the diagrams as being helpful at all—quite the opposite. I have been reading through a book called Dialogue (by William Isaacs) and some of what he says really resonates with me about this whole inherent human need to label. What happens is we label something—give it a distinction, an image—and then we come to believe that these divisions are real, rather than simply our man-made boxings.
Isaacs notes that when a Syrian astronaut saw the earth from space the first time he said, ‘”From space I saw Earth—indescribably beautiful—with the scars of national boundaries gone.” The dividing lines disappear when you get enough perspective. The lines were made in the minds of human beings, in many cases drawn in the boardrooms of Europe and applied to places like Africa and South Asia. Yet now these lines have significant reality to them: Institutions have formed around them, identities are invested in them. The fragmentation on earth remains pervasive. [...] we make divisions like these all the time and then forget that WE have done so. [...] As a result, our social fabric is deeply fragmented. This fragmentation pervades the way human beings talk and think, in families, between friends, in business, in communities [politics, religion...]. It is a reflection of the divisive forces that we have inherited and usually take for granted [...] and so produces relationships based in the fiction of isolation. [...] Whatever image (or label) our minds make up is NOT the thing imagined. It is always both more and less.”
What Isaacs suggests next floored me with its complex-simplicity and possible beauty: That we might “practice the art of looking at something without needing to have a name in our heads for what we are looking at.” Imagine that? When we see something, or someone, or some movement, or—whatever—we resist the need to name it or label it. When we see a pregnant teenager with tatoos wearing all black we don’t label her, instead, we go deeper. We simply look at her and when a label comes to mind, we shuck it and keep looking until we see HER—as she really is—not a label. This enables us to view her and ourselves as participants of each other, instead of judges and labelers of each other. Empathy begins to surface. Then, perhaps, we might be at the place to begin a dialogue and friendship where we can really try to see them as God sees them, to love them as God loves them. We begin to see ourselves as participants with everything and everyone (with all of creation), acknowledging that we are really no different then the thing we are tempted to label.
So instead of asking and feeling the need to determine, “Where does this belong?” may we slow down and practice the art of looking at something without feeling the need to name it…whatever “it” is. Perhaps, like me, the labeling-alternative is making you sick. To that I suggest that perhaps from God’s perspective (which is more than enough) our labels and lines and fragmentations and names and boxes really don’t exist and they are simply images that we have created and worshiped…
About The Author
Jeromy,
It is really very sad when we have men and women of Faith standing up and preaching the love of God through the saving Grace of Jesus Christ and people accuse them of being “milk-maids” or of “entertaining and loving people into the pits of hell”. (both quotes from Scott Bailey’s second comment to this blog post: http://devoteddads.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/purpose-driven-church-has-friends-in-low-places/
Why are mainline people so worked up about the emerging/emergent movement? I look at the graphics above the “Top 20″ list and I wonder, who has the gall to put some people in the sphere of orthodoxy and some out? I just don’t understand the threat. Is it money? Are these mainline or evangelical/fundamentalist churches afraid that if new converts go to EC churches the mainline or e/f churches will lose money?
My understanding is that the angels in Heaven celebrate with the Father when any soul makes a decision for Christ. Not just those who make decisions in mainline or e/f churches.
This name calling and finger pointing just kills me. This is how wars start. This is like Catholics and Protestants in No. Ireland
grrrrr…… frustration has overcome my ability to form cohesive sentences…
Matty
I think part of it is a very human thing, which is the fear that if I let go of this belief, or label, or box…I will loose my sense of control (even “control” is a false construct in our own mind…not a reality). But if we resist the need to label, almost making “not labeling” a spiritual practice, then perhaps we will begin to see ourselves and the other person, first and foremost, as human—a creation and child of God, whom he loves.
I think you are very correct in saying “this is how wars starts.” Labels help us in objectifying (viewing the other as an object) people different than us which often translates into ghastly and unthinkable deeds. The Holocaust, slavery, native American slaughter,and the Crusades quickly come to mind.
Frustration shared…
Jeromy,
WOW! Have you given me some good food for thought. Brain circuits are sending up smoke right about now, a little on overload :-).
It’s interesting because I recently had a conversation with someone where we had hit a point of conflict in our relationship. I was upset about our conflict, not the issue we were conflicting about. He made the statement to me that we both knew the bigger picture of one another, the other person’s heart. So even if one of us acted out of line in a temporary manner, we would not judge the entire person by that one time because we saw the whole person. It made me be at peace while we worked the issue through to loving resolution.
That came back to me in reading your post. When we (I!) label someone, it’s as though we won’t look at the whole heart, but just a portion of them and say, “That’s who they are” as if a label could sum up the person in their entirety. I also realized in reading this how much it can hurt to have labels inflicted on me as if they sum all of me up.
I’ve never seriously considered this topic before in this light. You’ve given me much to think on, ponder, and no doubt repent from! Thanks! I have to be honest and say that labels make my life very convenient, as if I could just package it all up neatly by knowing where someone “fits.” It makes me feel icky to have just even written that last sentence, but it’s true. It really is just another mind trick to try to keep my world in neat lines and give me some sense of control–yuck! I think it’s time for a heart change within me. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes….I think it’s going to be quite a journey with some ups and downs as I stumble my way through this one:).
Thank you Tracy for you candor and honesty. I deeply resonate with what you shared…ugh. Labels can deeply wound and are almost certain death to true relationship.
“When we (I!) label someone, it’s as though we won’t look at the whole heart, but just a portion of them and say, “That’s who they are” as if a label could sum up the person in their entirety.” We form images (labels) of the “other” and act as if the image is reality. Though, as you said, these images (labels) are incomplete, this does not prevent us from holding onto them, at times, quite firmly. You said it very well!
Icky and Yuck pretty much sum it up. Good luck with your brain circuits and let me know how it goes
!
Question: Do you suppose God operates in the realm of our labels and distinctions or above/beyond them? I struggle with this one…
Jer and Tracy -
In a flash of inspiration once I said, to a friend who was struggling with labels/boxes, the following:
“We humans put God in boxes, but we must realize that our boxes are in God more than God is in our boxes.”
and my “visual aid” was a picture of a fog (representing God) and a bunch of shoe boxes which had been opened and closed whilst in the fog. So there was fog in the box and fog all around the box… just food for thought…
Matty
Thanks for that picture, Matty.
So I saw this new diagram and cracked up…(go to the bottom): http://aboulet.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/mapping-emergent/#more-588
Jeromy, you wrote:
“Question: Do you suppose God operates in the realm of our labels and distinctions or above/beyond them? I struggle with this one…”
That question has made me think! It seems as if Jesus at times certainly did group people together and make statements about them (as in calling the Pharisees a brood of vipers, whitewashed tombs. He could have drawn a diagram-ha!). It seems God in the OT also sometimes defined people in VERY broad strokes (entire nations, for example), when surely there were exceptions to the “rule” of the label He was giving.
It seems that maybe labels in and of themselves are not the problem, but maybe the significance that we attach to them. Not that I’m pro-label as I’ve seen through this post how harmful it can be, but it seems there are times when it may be helpful, for example, to define what is happening in society as a whole, an entire cultural shift, for example; it can help us understand what is going on.
The caution, I think, is that we don’t apply those labels and affix them so tightly to a person or a group, that they become THE defining thing about that person or that group, but rather are a vaguely helpful tool to help us understand a principle, movement, or general system of thought. I guess labels are like any other words we use: They can be helpful or harmful depending on the heart and intent behind them.
I’ve gotta’ mull this over some more, but those are my ramblings for now!
Great ramblings…really got me thinking. Yea he did throw around a few good names, didn’t he. It’s funny how it seemed to always be aimed at self-righteous religious people who tended to judge and categorize people (sinners [with vast sub-categories], lepers, Samaritans, women, gentiles…). At times it was almost like he was saying, “You say all these people are going to hell, let me tell you whose going to hell…” and then quickly flipped their labels up-side-down and said “you travel land and sea to win a single convert and then make them twice a child of hell as you.” As I think out loud here, it seems as if he toyed with our labels (and created [possibly] some of his own) to communicate deeper points…
I agree that there is a human need for labels to help us identify, communicate, and understand…after all, EVERY word is an image and label—just a bunch of lines and squiggles we have given meaning to. As I type this, I am using something that has multiple labels: machine, computer, MAC, laptop, Leopard OSX, keyboard, etc. But as you said, when dealing with people and groups, that our partial image defines them in their entirety allowing us to dismiss or judge or….
A semi-radical thought I have: Though God obviously is aware of our labels and grouping and boundaries and camps, perhaps he sees the world much like an astronaut—just land, sea, air—and he sees us much like I see all three of my kids—though they have labels and names, they are all simply my kids whom I created (or helped create) and love very deeply. We see earth divided into countries, religions, races, genders, ages, social classes, etc. Perhaps he see a gorgeous globe filled with his beautiful kids—who, like any kid, misbehaves and exercises independence, but are still their parent’s kid.
Ugh…so how does God see us? My brain is now smoking…
Try this…next time you’re in a public place, look (really look) at the people around you and try not to label them (gender, age, race, clothes, etc.) and simply view everyone walking around as God’s kid, whom he created and loves. Curious to hear what happens in your heart…
This was a fun visit. Jeromy, Elle and Matthew seem to be having a fine conversation. I don’t think anyone needs to worry about you three, not at all. I have a feeling that you will read for entertainment what others have to say and trust your hearts to find your way.
Old Mack ~ Thanks for your words. You seem like a good, lighthearted person who loves to encourage. I’m glad you enjoyed your visit. Blessings!
[...] just have a small portion of the whole. A torn fragment…nothing more. It is when I judge and label the part that I see as the WHOLE that things get messy. People get hurt. Names are thrown. Fear is induced. But when I have the [...]
Something I read this morning in my devotional, “Do not judge a man by what he appears to be, but see him as what he can be if he gives himself unreservedly to ME(God).” from Come Away my Beloved, (Francis J. Roberts.)
Thanks for sharing that nugget, Dana. Blessings!
In talking about names and labels, I think of God in Genesis giving it to man to name the animals. He must have thought this was a cool thing to do - He brought them to man to ’see what he would call them; and whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name.’ (Gen 2,19). Wow. Did God know what the names chosen would be? I like to think not (that’s radical theology!) And to top it all, Man names Woman.
In true naming, the essence of that person or thing is captured; ‘This is this, and not that’; ‘This is what she/he shall be’. That’s certainly a big part of naming in Jewish culture - Sarai (bitter/barren) become Sarah (Princess). A name is a prophetic statement. And it’s not fixed. Names can be changed.
If I don’t have boundaries, I get damaged because I can’t tell (or don’t want to know) what is me and not me. But a boundary is not a wall, if I am healthy, it is a line I choose to cross at will. Distinction is built into creation; that’s different to division. God gave language to speak about his creation of distinction. Man did not divide in the act of naming, but distinguished. But in severing connection with the Creator, man thinks he OWNS what he has made. BIG MISTAKE. Centuries of heartbreak follow…
I meant to have said - man thinks he OWNS what he has named (tho the formed is still true) !
Sarah, very insightful. What’s cool is that we still name the newly discovered animals today!
My wife and I are expecting our third child and we were name-shopping. As we looked to different cultures for names we noticed something. Some cultures pick a name for what it means (like your example), almost ignoring how it sounds. While our culture tends to pick a name based on how it sounds (”Be sure to say the first, middle, and last name together to see if it sounds good!”) with little to no thought on the meaning. We saw it as a mirror of how surfacey our culture tends to be.
Well said: “But in severing connection with the Creator, man thinks he OWNS what he has named (and made). BIG MISTAKE.” I see people getting hurt when all we see is their label and not their identity as someone who is created and loved by God. Centuries of heartbreak and wars follow…
Very true. I’m really digging this blog.