Labels: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

What would we do without labels? On clothes they tell us the size of the shirt, blouse, pants, dress or coat. They also tell us what material the clothing is made of, and whether to wash or dry clean it.

 

Labels on food products can tell us what each item is, what its ingredients are, how to prepare it for meals, its nutritional value and how many calories it contains. We have labels for many other things as well, ranging from cars and electronics to mattresses and bathmats. 

 

But we don’t stop there with labeling. We find labels for people equally useful. We label by vocation – doctor, lawyer, CPA, architect. They must be smart, and wealthy, right? There are tradespeople too, folks like carpenters, electricians, plumbers, roofers. Society doesn’t label them with as high esteem, but if you have a leaky roof, who’d you rather come right away – a lawyer or a roofer?

 

The thing about labels, we find them handy for evaluating and judging people. We label by gender, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs (or none), education, political preference, sports team allegiance, even the places where they shop and organizations they belong to. You see someone with tattoos or piercings? Why take the time and effort to get to know someone when you can label them?

 

Hey, if I’m pointing a finger that means three others are pointing back at me. I’ve been guilty of people-labeling more times than I’d like to admit. The problem is, if we do go to the bother of really getting to know someone, often we discover our labels are entirely wrong.

 

Imagine a can of food in your pantry that’s somehow lost its label. How can you know what’s in it? Most of the time the only way is to open it up and find out whether it’s a can of corn, green beans, or pie filling. 

 

Apply that principle to our often-faulty habit of labeling people we’re not acquainted with or barely know. We can judge solely by what we see on the outside – or we can try to engage with them so we can truly determine who they are and what they’re like.

 

We find an excellent example in the Bible’s Old Testament. King Saul of Israel had proved himself unworthy of leading God’s chosen people, so the Lord instructed the prophet Samuel to locate Saul’s successor. The Lord’s choice was one of the sons of a man named Jesse, so the prophet went to his home to give the sons a once-over.

 

We’re told in 1 Samuel 16 that Samuel started with the oldest, Eliab, and thought, “Surely the Lord’s exalted stands here before the Lord” (1 Samuel 16:6). But God told him, “Nope, not him.” The prophet checked out each of the seven sons Jesse had brought to him, but not one of them was God’s choice despite their passing the eye test. 

 

The reason was simple: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). Kind of like having to open an unlabeled can to find out what kind of food is inside, God was saying He doesn’t choose His servants based on how they look outwardly.

 

Finally, Jesse’s youngest son, David, a lowly shepherd boy – not a highly esteemed vocation back then – was brought to Samuel. Speaking through the prophet, God’s choice was clear: “Rise and anoint him; he is the one” (1 Samuel 16:12). David went on to have an oft-tumultuous 40-year reign over Israel, even writing many of the beloved Psalms in his spare time.

 

We find many other examples in the Scriptures that warn us against labeling – judging people based on their outward appearances. People who were lame, blind, mute, deaf, suffering from various diseases, despised Samaritans, women of ill repute, and many others. Foremost was Jesus Christ, whom the Jewish rulers and religious leaders dismissed as a troublemaker and deceiver. We know He was anything but that.

 

One time Jesus had been teaching in the temple. The leaders stirred up the crowd, getting many to shout in opposition. Undeterred, He responded, “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment” (John 7:24).

 

We’d be wise to take this to heart. We live in a time of labeling gone amok. Liberals shouting at conservatives, conservatives arguing with liberals, none of them making an effort to engage in calm, reasonable discourse. People from different generations speaking in derogatory terms toward each other. Even within the Church, members of different congregations and different denominations exchanging accusations. Most of the time, based on the labels assigned to them.

 

Just as we can’t look at a building and know what’s inside without actually going into it, the Scriptures warn we’re in danger of serious error by relying on labels to assess who people really are. Society tells us to save time by giving folks labels and then judging based on stereotypes. However, especially for those of us who claim to follow Christ, we don’t have that option.

 

As the apostle Paul asserts in 2 Corinthians 5:16, “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.” Through the power of Christ, we can avoid the trap of labeling and judging people solely on how they seem on the outside. Instead, we can choose to withhold judgment until we’ve made the effort to get to know them for who they truly are.

Lambasted by Labels

Labels we often apply to people stick more firmly than the labels
we find attached to many of our canned food items. 

We love our labels. I’m not referring to the ones we find inside our clothing, or pasted on the outside of soup cans, but the handy kind we can slap on people for quickly and easily defining who and what we think they are.

If someone is fascinated by the intricacies of technology, we label him a “geek.” People that devote much of their time to athletics are labeled “jocks.” A student who dedicates herself to mastering her coursework and achieving high grades is labeled a “nerd.”

We see this throughout society, particularly in politics, as well as with social values and ideologies. For instance, “liberal” and “progressive” have come to mean anything from being a champion of the poor and disenfranchised to being opposed to the perceived evils of capitalism to supporting the interests of oppressed minorities.

By implication, if this is what “progressive” people look like, then “conservatives” must be “regressives” – inhibitors of progress, right? They are characterized as being uncaring or insensitive to those in need. They endorse big business, but detest big government and have little interest in what minority segments of society desire or need. At least that’s what the conservative label supposedly represents.

We see this in religion as well. “Fundamentalist” and “religious” are terms both used and abused, applied interchangeably for extremist Muslim terrorists; very legalistic, highly judgmental people claiming to be Christians; leaders of mind-controlling, dictatorial cults; and individuals that genuinely believe in the foundational teachings and principles of the Bible. These groupings obviously are not one and the same. But for the sake of convenience, the terms “fundamentalist” and “religious” often receive one-size-fits-all treatment.

We could regard this as symptomatic of the throwing the baby out with the bathwater syndrome. But what a convenient, simplistic method for casually dismissing all people of faith. Sure saves the trouble of trying to figure out what they actually believe – and why.

Years ago my family and I decided to change congregations. That move also involved changing denominations. Later we were told the Sunday school teacher for one of our daughters at the former church asked her class to pray for our family because, in her mind, we had turned our backs on the “true” denomination. As if we had chosen to embrace the antichrist and forsaken Jesus. Nothing could have been farther from the truth, but in that teacher’s perhaps well-intended but confused mind, we had aligned with the wrong “label.”

Frankly, I detest labels like these. Labels are lazy. Why take the time to get to know and understand folks when you can neatly slap a label on them and be done with it, right? We see this with races and ethnicities, too. We conjure all-encompassing stereotypes for people groups and apply them en masse. This definitely saves a lot of effort bothering to befriend some of them and discover who they really are. Just slap a label on them. Makes life so much simpler – or so we would be led to believe.

Thankfully, God is not in the label application business. Jesus was comfortable associating with Samaritans, even though the Jews viewed them as pariahs. He enjoyed hanging out with Gentiles, including the despised tax collectors, much to the consternation of the hyper-religious, self-righteous Pharisees. And He had special compassion for outcasts – the disabled, sick and hurting.

Having observed this firsthand, the apostle Peter observed, "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality” (Acts 10:34). Another version translates that, "not a respecter of persons." And the apostle Paul declared, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

We are quick to assign labels to other people, perhaps because that makes us feel better about ourselves, being able to classify them either as being like us or different – and assuming those that are different are somehow inferior.

But if we apply the question that’s become a cliché, “What would Jesus do?” we have an straight-forward, uncomplicated answer: He wouldn’t stoop to applying labels. He’d take the time to get to know people, try to understand what they’re thinking and why, and seek to respond to their unique needs, on their terms.

Problem is, this takes time and concentration. It might distract us from our overly committed, self-consumed lives. But I suspect the effort would prove worthwhile.