Removing The Labels

This video was very inspiring and thought-provoking to me when I first saw it a couple of years ago and it got me thinking a lot about this concept of labels. I think since we are all unique people, it’s natural that we sometimes use labels simply as a way of differentiating and identifying ourselves and each other. 

For example when you meet a pair of identical twins for the first time normally you try and find some sort of distinguishable physical feature to label that allows you to tell them apart. Then if you can’t remember who’s who you have them stand side by side for what will feel like a minute or two but is really more like three or four seconds while you scrunch your eyes, analyzing their every feature. Then you give up and make a guess. Not that I would know very much about this though.  ​

The problem is, the labels we give people don’t represent the entirety of who they are and we can start to have one-dimensional perceptions of them based solely on physical characteristics or certain abilities or inabilities. Continuing with the analogies in the video, we often confuse “my body” with “me”, the car with the driver.

As I’ve been reflecting on all this, I’ve had a number of theological and practical questions come to mind. 

First of all, if God is a God of love, and peace, and equality like we believe Him to be why did he create people with all kinds of different features and characteristics but then allowed people with some characteristics to have more privilege and opportunity than others? In other words, why does God allow labels to exist? 

Secondly, how do we actually rip these labels off as the video encourages us to do? How do we live a life free from labels, a life where we see ourselves and each other for who we truly are?

To attempt to answer the first set of questions I think we can get some insight from the Old Testament of the Bible. 

How literally to take the narratives of the Old Testament is something that will always be debated, but the belief I’ve developed about the Bible in general is that God has allowed this collection of documents thousands of years old to be preserved and brought together for us to learn about who God is, what God is about, and how God has been present with and faithful to the humans he created throughout history no matter how historically accurate it actually is. 

So by looking at Genesis I think we can get a good idea of what God’s plan was for the world and for humanity and how these labels came to be. 

There are two accounts of the creation story and at the end of both of them to me the world seems to be perfect, everything is how God planned it to be. As it states in Genesis 1 after God had created all things including humankind, “he saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good”. 

At the end of Genesis 2, the two people that God had created in his image, later named Adam and Eve, were given the great honour of taking care of the Earth and all the other living beings God created and were free to eat from the abundance of the Garden they were living in. Even though they knew they were different from each other, they did not let their differences separate them in anyway, they were not ashamed by their differences. 

God intimately loved his image-bearers and he wanted to give them a way to show that they truly loved him and were thankful for what he had given them. He didn’t want to force them to show their love to Him because that wouldn’t be love after all, so after blessing them he gave Adam a simple order to follow as stated in Genesis 2:16: “You may freely eat of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.”

Adam and Eve did end up eating the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 3, they disobeyed God, they didn’t reciprocate their love. As God addressed each of the three parties involved, Adam, Eve, and the serpent after the apple is eaten (as was read earlier in Genesis 3:14-19), we have to keep in mind that God starts with the word because, or uses future tense to show there is a cause and effect nature to their actions. 

So when God told Eve “your desire shall be for your husband he shall rule over you”  God was not saying this is how he wanted things to be from now on, he was simply stating this unideal reality was a natural result of putting our own desires before God’s.

So whether or not you take it literally or metaphorically, my point in going over this story in Genesis 3 is that it shows that we humans are the ones responsible for the division and labels that exist in the world, not God. 

God created us all to be different and to live free lives which I think is a good thing but it allowed for the possibility for these differences to be exploited in harmful ways if we choose not to follow God’s ways. 

Nowadays we usually aren’t given orders from God as direct as the one Adam and Eve received about not eating the apple but we definitely sometimes behave in ways that go against the way of God that clearly harm our relationships with each other and reinforce the differences between us. 

We can be judgmental of the way people look or act or what they believe, we can gossip about people, we can take advantage of people or try to use people for self-serving purposes, we can be envious of people, or we can try to make ourselves seem superior to others: all these things, even if they just occur in our minds, separate us from God and each other. They create labels and oppression.

In the rest of the Old Testament the resulting power imbalance of the genders was seen in the patriarchal societies that lasted the next few thousand years which although has greatly improved since, sadly can still be seen in our society today in many ways.  Along with this came many more kinds of divisions: divisions in class, race, nation, and religion which can be clearly seen throughout the Old Testament.

This being said, God had unwavering, loyal faith in humanity and worked with the people in many ways to try and get rid of all the division and labels. He tried singling out a certain group of people, the Israelites by having more intimate and audible relationships with their leaders than he had ever had with humans before and blessing them in ways that were visibly, and explicitly linked to their desires and prayers for in hopes that they would return the love to him and live the way he wanted them to. 

If you read through the Old Testament, you’ll see that this never really worked out but God was determined to restore the kingdom he intended to create when he created humans: a kingdom where everyone truly loved God and loved each other as people equally created in his image. A kingdom free from labels. Finally he decided he would send part of himself to Earth to take on human form and live a human life to show us who He really is and the way we were truly meant to live. This was Jesus.

Although throughout his life Jesus performed many miracles including making the blind see, Jesus himself was blind; blind to labels that is. Maybe blind isn’t the right word but Jesus knew that labels had human origins, they didn’t come from God. 

There are so many examples in the gospels of times when Jesus interacted with people of different minority groups, in such a natural, nonchalant way even though it radically opposed the cultural norms of the times and could sometimes even be called blasphemous by the religious leaders. 

In John 4, he talked with a woman he didn’t know by the well, a public place which in itself was unheard of at that time and this woman was also part of the Samaritans a group that did not get along with the Jewish people he came from. He also ate with the tax collectors and prostitutes, he washed the feet of the people who were following him, the disciples, he befriended the poor and contagiously ill, the outcasts of society. He always put the will of God before what was best for his physical human life and body. He truly loved God and he truly loved every person he met. 

So how do we answer the second set of questions I posed? How do we remove the labels that exist in our own lives, in the world we live in today? To me the answer is pretty obvious: we follow Jesus, we live our lives as Jesus did. If we all lived this way, I think the kingdom of heaven could exist on Earth, things could be how God intended them to be when he first created Adam and Eve.

So you may be wondering what inspired me to speak on this topic on the first Sunday of this Ministry Inquiry program. 

Well over the last couple of years I’ve consumed a lot of Christian books, and articles, and video sermons, and have started reading and studying the Bible more on my own so I feel like I’ve developed a pretty solid intellectual understanding of what Jesus is all about. 

Being someone with a tendency to have my head in the clouds, constantly obsessing and stressing over whether whatever I’m doing is meaningful and is fulfilling my purpose in life, it was very motivating and almost relieving to come to this understanding that I have the ability to make a big difference in the world simply by modelling my life after Jesus and trying to encourage others to do the same. This somewhat naive but ambitious, mindset of faith has helped me remove many labels that have existed in my own life and has helped me get to where I am today. 

The labels that I’ve battled through are less physically-oriented and more self-imposed than the ones the video talks about or the ones I referred to in the Old Testament. 

For example, for the longest time I never would’ve imagined myself having a role like this that involves a lot of interaction with people and being up here at the front. There was a period when I felt I was too shy or not smart enough even to put up my hand in class or speak in front of more than a few people.

There’s a lot of good self-confidence strategies out there but what has worked for me to get past these labels is coming to the realization that God is always with me and knowing that as long as I’m trying to please Him, trying to follow Jesus in what I do or say it doesn’t matter what other people think of me.

This also helped me in making the decision to switch out of the joint UW-Laurier Computer Science and Business Administration program I was in my first two years of university. By my second year I just wasn’t enjoying it and feeling as passionate about it as I thought I would and I started to realize my main motivation for going into this double-degree program was to make sure that I did something that would be labelled as successful and prestigious by other people and by society but I was getting the feeling that this was not what life is about, that to be a follower of Jesus meant to dedicate my life to serving others and serving God. 

Although I believe it’s possible to live this kind of life no matter what you study or what your vocation is, so I could’ve stayed in this program and just tried to change my motivations, I decided to change my program completely and focus on an area of study I’m more passionate about. Since I haven’t exactly figured out what that area of study is yet, my plan at this point is to finish with a general Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Waterloo hopefully by the end of next summer.

I definitely resonated with what a congregant said last week about things being less clear the more you challenge yourself with questions about faith. Over the past year or so I’ve been really determined to figure out what truly following Jesus looks like in day-to-day life in 2019, in the context we live in. 

After some reading and reflecting I did in the fall, I came to the conclusion that to be able to this I needed to stop trying to live a life that society would label as normal and stop feeling the need to own all the things that society labels as essential. 

I’m not going to label myself as crazy, but I definitely did some crazy things to try to achieve this such as deleting all my social media accounts, exchanging my smartphone for a flip-phone, getting rid of my laptop, giving up alcohol, giving up watching most TV shows and movies, and donating many of my possessions, my clothes, my collections, my sports memorabilia, etc to the thrift store. 

Although doing some of these things has had positive impacts on my life and definitely doesn’t go against what Jesus taught, I feel like at times all of this focus on cutting things out has also caused me to like the Pharisees - legalistic, arrogant, and judgmental towards people, at least internally. So I kind of feel like through all this I created more labels than I removed but it’s been an important learning experience for me in my faith journey.

As Paul points out in Galatians 3:23 it’s not about disciplining yourself, being “imprisoned and guarded” under laws or certain lifestyles, if we really have faith in Jesus if we really want to follow Christ, verse 27 says we will be “clothed in Christ”. 

Only when we are fully wear the love of Jesus do we lose the labels we put on ourselves and each other and see everyone as children of God. As verse 28 puts it “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” 

So what I’ve been learning from all this is I just need to be humble, to let go of my own ambitions and anxieties alike and just submit myself to Jesus, letting his Spirit, the Holy Spirit guide me. I know if I keep working at this I will have an easier time loving myself and others and I will experience the kingdom of heaven in my own life more often.

Although I don’t know yet if going into ministry or becoming a pastor is what I will end up doing for sure, I’m thankful for the opportunity here this summer to explore what this would be like. 

Again I don’t think it matters what we do in life, we’re all called to study the Bible and be ministers even if we don’t have the role or label of pastor.

I’m very grateful to have grown up at a church that doesn’t put labels on people but lets people be who they are and provides many opportunities to test out their gifts. 

Let’s keep working together to remove the labels we put on ourselves and each other, allowing Jesus to lead the way.