I've just read another long article that tried to make some sense of many terms floating around such as "fundamentalist, evangelical, emerging, emergent, liberal, orthodox" etc. and some of the problematic issues that can arise when someone tries to identify or judge an individual or a group using these labels. My question would be: why do we feel the need in the first place to place labels on people or to see who they might resemble or belong to? I just can't see the value or benefit in something that creates immediately a picture in my mind, a picture that may or may not be accurate in my view and understanding of this individual. And why would anyone want to define either his own or someone else's identity according to labels of religious, political or sexual nature when it's pretty clear that none of these terms can ever come close to describing who someone is or stands for at his core?
So why are we continuing this madness? Is it just the felt need to belong somewhere and to be able to make sense of the world somehow by using these labels as coordinates to chart a course that will clearly mark the "safe" and the "unsafe" spots along the way? I don't want to be mistaken for a relativist here. I believe in the existence of objective truth and also in the necessity of God's guidance. But when it comes to people and our understanding of them, I can't shake the impression that labels become more of a roadblock and a poison than a real help in finding our way.
Josh, you're distracting me!!
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about this very thing recently... but from another perspective. Trying to tell people in our church what emergent means! also thinking about gender. i have two answers. 1. because we can not hold that much diverse information. in all areas of life, we group and categorize, so that we can function more effectively. and 2. so that we don't feel alone. asking myself if the catagory "female" is helpful to me, i had to answer, yes. my otherness can be isolating (in my opinion the root of adam and eves "covering their genitals" = the only thing that really "differed" from each other, was the "shame" of being different, hence alone in their case). when i meet up with others who in someway share those same qualities, which make me different than, say my husband, I am relieved! I am not the only one!! the same happened as I discovered the whole emergent group. Jan and I were literally the only ones we knew for over 10 years, who were wrestling with those kinds of issues. what a relief to find out that we weren't a freak of nature, but that we actually belong to a category now. the problem comes in when things become rigid, inorganic (as in dead, lifeless), and like you said, people are reduced to only this category, or that the category gets reduced to only a limited set of qualities (ie. woman). I wrote a poem about this... it is on my blog i think. The deadly box. ok. i'm not going to read any more of your blogs today!!
I can certainly understand that there are some good reasons too why we feel the need to categorize both things and people. At the same time I just hate to be put in a box before a conversation has even started, and labels have a very strong tendency to make us do that - which in turn not only leads to a feeling of belonging but also a "us-versus-them" mindset. Exactly in the area of theology it may be more helpful to see us all part of ONE category: human beings, created in the image of God!
ReplyDeleteLee, I just found an excellent post that exactly echoes my feelings and reluctance to adapt a label like "emergent". It is found here:
ReplyDeletehttp://evancurry.com/2009/01/08/why-im-not-emergent/