Judgmentalism

Our Obsession with Labels

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"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."

–Mark 9:38 NIV 

The phosphors weren't even dark on my monitor before someone challenged me to come out of my hiatus. In short turn, two more incidents cried out, begging me to post, taunting me to spurn my self-imposed break. Curiously, all three possessed a common thread: an obsession with labels.

Nathan Busenitz posted excerpts from an old interview in which the normally sane John MacArthur threw a rod and proudly declared that all Christians are dispensationalists. Just like he is. If they were truly honest with themselves, that is.

Hmm. I wonder how R.C. Sproul and Vern Poythress took that news.

Last time I checked, there wasn't a Darbyite bone in my body, but that's beside the point. MacArthur felt the need to assign a label to all of Protestantism that he uses to refer to himself. But like Lay's Potato Chips, you can't stop at one. "Dispensationalist" doesn't cover it all. Go ahead, put a label on it!In Johnny Mac's case, he's a Reformed Calvinist Cessationist Credobaptist Dispensationalist. I'm sure if we delved deeper we could determine if he's an Infra- or Supralapsarian. He probably supports the use of grape juice over wine, so add Teetotaling to the list of labels.

Boy, that's a lot of labels. 

The second confrontation with labels came inside Cerulean Sanctum, when my repost on homeschooling got a number of commenters hot and bothered. At issue was my innocent comment about homeschooling my son. "No," came the righteous response from a couple people, "you are most definitely NOT homeschooling your son. You're doing a public e-school at home, but that's not the same as homeschooling." 

Seems I can't even label myself correctly. Other people have to step in and do it for me.

Even if I should concede that the critics are correct on the jots and tittles of this particular letter of the law, still the issue of labels raised its ugly head. We have to know who's right and who's wrong. Judging by the vociferous (and verging on venomous) response my self-labeling received, "hellaciously wrong" was the correct answer.

And lastly, within hours of my final pre-hiatus post, a respected Godblogger took me to task for my hesitancy to toss labels around. He objected to the "About My Theology" portion of my "About Cerulean Sanctum" page, wherein I state the following:

I'm "Reformational," meaning I completely affirm what came out of the Reformation. Labels are difficult and I tend to eschew them, so I'm not "Totally Reformed" in the strict five-point Calvinist manner that many Godbloggers are, but I lean more toward the theology of Martin Luther.

My insistence that I don't like labels didn't sit well. The gist of this blogger's post channeled Lucy Van Pelt and labeled me the Charlie Brown of the Godblogosphere. You know, wishy washy. (Though I somehow got a few points for being honest about it!) 

What is it with the American Church's obsession with labels?

I find it nearly impossible to find much emphasis on labels in the New Testament, particularly the Gospels. Let's take a look at the disciples' attempts to label:

"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."

–Mark 9:38 NIV

Not one of us. That's a classic in the labeling community, isn't it? We use the "not one of us" label more than any other. We insist on dividing, creating schisms, and call our obsession "discernment."

But how did Jesus address John's labeling of this man?

"Do not stop him," Jesus said. "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us."

—Mark 9:39-40

Jesus' response: Tactful rebuke coupled with a complete overhaul of terms. Better still, he narrowed the label further (which we'll discuss further down.)

I'm sure the disciples' labeling the man taxed Jesus' patience—at least a bit—since mere verses before the disciples engaged in another common labeling practice:

They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.

—Mark 9:33-34

Here we have the flip side of "not one of us," the "we're the best" label. Of course, with such a label, someone must fall into the category of "not the best," or as we more commonly see it enunciated, "scum of the earth."

Any guesses as to Jesus' response? Yes, tactful rebuke coupled with a complete overhaul of terms. Detect a pattern here?

In fact, the more one looks at the labeling practices of the people Jesus encounters in the New Testement, the more we see that people do a lousy job of godly labeling. The Roman centurion labeled himself "unworthy," but Jesus labeled him "faithful." The Pharisees were dying to label the man born blind or his parents "sinners." Jesus said no, "glory of God." Most people would label the priest and the Levite "godly," but Jesus reserves that label for the hated Samaritan who stops to help the man robbers left for dead.

Jesus repeatedly turned labeling on its head. While we have a penchant for a plethora of labels we use to determine who's greatest and who's one of us, plus all the subdivisions within those, Jesus stuck with only two:

  • For Us vs. Against Us
  • Sheep vs. Goats
  • Wheat vs. Tares
  • Found vs. Lost 
  • Saved vs. Unsaved
  • Faithful vs. Unfaithful 
  • Believers vs. Unbelievers 

If Jesus stuck to such simplified labeling, what about the Church He founded? 

If we examine the early Church, we WON'T find the apostles straining for a name for the burgeoning movement of Christ followers in Jerusalem. No one's angling for a label at Pentecost. It's not till Chapter 9 of Acts that we hear the label "the Way" applied. And it's in Antioch in Acts 11:26 that the movement gets a label that sticks, Christians. That label came in 45 BC, twelve years after the founding of the Church!

You see, the early Church had a job to do. They didn't have time to waste labeling themselves or others. As far as they were concerned, the labels Jesus used met their needs. Stick to the basics.

So why is it that Christians today feel compelled to resort to so many labels—and so obsessively?

I believe part of the problem lies in our modernistic tendency to condense everything we encounter into easily knowable parameters. We take comfort in thinking we comprehend what an item is by its labels. Unfortunately, we can attach all the labels in the world to someone or something and still miss the whole picture. For instance, we can label each part of a peacock—forehead, lore, beak, wings, primaries, secondaries, tertiaries, scapulars, coverlets, feet, etc.—but utterly miss the beauty and majesty of it.

If a family member died, would we be mortified if a Reformed Calvinist Cessationist Credobaptist Dispensationalist Supralapsarian Teetotaler knocked on our door and offered to grieve with us even though we were Arminian Pentecostal Holiness Lordship-Salvation Pedobaptists who drank a glass of wine for our stomach every day just like Paul advised Timothy? I doubt it.

Why all the fuss then?

I'm sick of labels, personally. I'm a Christian; that's the only label I wish to be known by. As to other labels, Jesus offers nothing but rebuke. The older I get, the more I understand that truth.

Time to stop the obsessive labeling. We're only hurting the cause of Jesus Christ by loving our labels more than each other.

Despising the Rocket Kid

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You can learn a lot from a six-year-old's soccer game.

Though I never participated in organized team sports as a child, just about every kid's in them today. Who wants their kid to be the one sitting at home lamenting that the neighbor kids are all missing, away at baseball games or soccer practice? Plus, as an only child, my son needs the communal aspect of team sports. (Though I agree with Randy Frazee that organized sports for kids are hurting our community in the long run.)

Last Saturday, my son's undefeated Blue Thunder team took on a chief rival, the Red team. Their last meeting wasn't a blowout by any means, but the outcome never lay in doubt. My son's team has two guys who outplay most of the other kids in the league by a large margin. One has superior ball control and the other has a howitzer for a leg. Both have a furious set of wheels. Amazingly, at least at this level of soccer, they pass to each other well, a 1-2 punch that KOs most teams.

Prior to Saturday, the team coach (Howitzer's dad, of course) told me he'd never lost a game, and he intended to keep it that way. That he's ridiculously tough on his son made it hard for me to relate to the guy. Plus, I think kids need to develop the skills to deal with losing rather than developing a win-at-any-cost mentality.

So onto the battlefield these sub-4' titans strode. At the end of the first quarter, the score was 5-1.

But not in our favor.

Seems last time these two teams played, Red's star player, a speed demon, wasn't feeling up to snuff. Here's to the Rocket Kids...But this time, he not only showed up healthy, he'd found another gear. He ran like someone had strapped a rocket to his back.  Our best two players, no slouches in the speed department, got more than their share of good looks at Rocket Kid's cleats.

Rocket Kid lacked the ball control or the leg of our best two guys, but that didn't matter. He blew by our entire team like they were standing in semi-congealed Jell-o. Shellshocked Blue Thunder parents stood on the sidelines shouting hysterically to our team to "Stop that kid!"

The sun shone on Red that day. While our own Howitzer singlehandedly tied it up later on, a ten kid scrum at our end of the field resulted in a dying bird goal against us. No joy in Mudville— six to five.

Coach Never-Lost-A-Game, who at the end of the first quarter boasted a deer in the headlights expression and bits of half-chewed ballcap between his teeth, seemed relieved to have walked away with a one-point loss. He actually had a smile on his face. I liked him more after the game than before. Maybe we all learned something that day.

I say all this to make a point. When you've got a Rocket Kid on your team, all is well with the world. More often than not, you'll win the game. It's a great feeling to know that his effort will no doubt win you the championship.

God's put Rocket Kids in the Church, too. They may not have great ball control or a killer leg, but they're out in front, leading the charge for the rest of the team. More often than not, they score.

But something's strange about the American Church's attitude toward the Rocket Kids who play on our team. Instead of cheering Rocket Kids on, we tend to despise them. We point out their lacks, their faults. Secretly, we may even wish they'd go away for no other reason than they make the rest of us look bad.

We're despising the Rocket Kid.

In the Church, Rocket Kids minister in ways that may make others uncomfortable. Rocket Kids have big ideas that break long-held traditions. Rocket Kids are so far out in front, those of us better labeled "Pedantic Kids" can't understand what they're about. Rocket Kids demolish conventional thinking.Rocket Kids look foreign to us, almost as if they're playing on the wrong team. Rocket Kids bring change, and change makes us feel unprepared, even ignorant.

I don't need a word of knowledge to know that some reading this will immediately fall back into a familiar "He's asking us to endure heretics in our midst."

Here's my simple answer to that.

Let's consider world missions.  The conventional wisdom for years looked like the following:

  • Teach American (or British) missionaries the culture and language of an unreached people group, then plunk them down in the mission field to evangelize those people.

But at some point in time, a Rocket Kid thought this:

  • Bring a Christian who speaks his unreached people group's native tongue (and understands the global language of English) to the United States for training, then send him back to evangelize his own people.

Now I don't have a Wayback Machine to whisk me to the seminary classroom where the Rocket Kid behind that idea first proposed it. However, I can imagine what the rest of the class thought: they despised the Rocket Kid and his crummy idea.

No doctrine lay mangled on the theological floor as a result of that Rocket Kid's paradigm-shifting idea, though. But he suffered for it, I'm certain. Chances are, that change in missiology may have even shattered ideas of racial superiority within some sectors of the Church. Today, you won't find a missiologist worth his salt who would support the first proposition over the second.

We've got to stop reflexively busting the the chops of Rocket Kids in our churches. Just because we're staring at their backs as they press on ahead of us doesn't mean we shoot them so we can catch up.

Sometimes I wonder if we Evangelicals are like the oppressive government Handicapper General in Kurt Vonnegut's extraordinary story from 1961, "Harrison Bergeron."  (It's worth reading the story—it's brief.) We want status quo and lowest common denominator rather than Rocket Kid concepts. Rocket Kids blow past us with big ideas and paradigm-busting practices, and we're too busy, shotguns blazing, to discern the Holy Spirit speaking truth to us.

Rocket Kids walk into gay bars to minister to the lost people there. Rocket Kids question economic injustices perpetrated on the poorest of us. Rocket Kids take unpopular stands against the status quo. Rocket Kids see the flower growing in the crack in the sidewalk that others miss. Rocket Kids believe that Christ bids us come and die, and they walk out that death daily, no matter what other people think.  Rocket Kids are misunderstood, opposed, and hated in their time, sometimes even by "The Church," but go on to be enshrined in the pantheon of Christian greats.

How much would it cost us to listen to our Rocket Kids, even if we don't understand them, to see if what they might have to say is worthwhile? What if we drew alongside that Rocket Kid, much like Priscilla and Aquila took Apollos under wing, and helped him or her fuel the rocket? Are we more afraid that someone might leave us—pedantic and ordinary as we are—in the dust? Perhaps we're still standing on the sidelines yelling, "Stop that kid!"

God forbid that I should hold anyone back. I don't want to see the Church despise and stifle Rocket Kids. I want to engage Rocket Kid ideas and see if God is speaking truth to me through them.

More than anything, I'm glad we've got Christian Rocket Kids on our side. The worldly have their own Rocket Kids, so we need to treasure and encourage ours to the glory of Jesus Christ. Because, in the end, Jesus Christ made Rocket Kids for a reason.

“Gut Check”—The Complete Series

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Tough questions every American Christian will face at some point in life—that's a Gut Check: