What Label Do You Wear?

Posted on Aug 27, 2011 in The Church | 0 comments

Is your church: Evangelical, Missional, Protestant, Conservative, Emergent, Bible Believing, Liberal, Progressive, Charismatic, Contemplative, Liturgical, Pentecostal, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Quaker, Traditional, Contemporary, Pentecostal, Spirit-filled or Christ-centered?  It is amazing to me how many different labels we have come up with (I could go on and on) to define different ways of being a Christian.

In my book I asked a simple question, “What does it mean to be the Church? Is it spending an hour on Sunday with people who look, think, and act much as we do? ” Is that what Jesus taught us?  Are we to go to all the nations, have all the people write out their statement of faith, sort them by doctrinal beliefs, then by worship style, then race and class, then cluster them together with people who pretty much look like and think the way they do?

My friend Corey Fields sent me a draft version of a blog post he is working on and it contained some other labels that I have heard carelessly tossed around lately:

October 10, 2010, John Stossel, talked on Fox News about “the makers versus the takers.”  On August 15, Ann Coulter said that welfare is creating “generations of utterly irresponsible animals.”  On August 18, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning compared the poor to raccoons.  On June 22, Neal Boortz called the poor “parasites.”  On July 6, he said there is an all-out war between the productive class and the moocher class.  (I’m not sure, Mr. Boortz, if your radio show, where you once called for the random shooting of the urban poor as a solution to violence, is what I would call a “productive” activity).

 

These only scratch the surface of the kind of talk you hear out there; all examples that seem to confirm suspicions of mine about widespread disdain for the poor, a dualistic view of society, and uneducated ideas about what tax dollars do.  The implicit assumption is clear:  whenever government services help people, they are helping lazy people who don’t deserve it and they’re using your money to do it.

Corey touched on a growing need in our county and within the Christian community to “label” the “other.”  In Christian circles, the favorite label seems to be “heretic” but we have others like “un-churched” and “seeker” that all mean “not one of us.”  The new enemy within our society seems to be the “poor.”  Some would have us believe that they are to blame for our nation’s financial crisis and not wars and corporate greed.

Labeling people is easy, until you actually get to know them.  I had someone tell me that dropping a bomb on high crime impoverished neighborhood like the one where Embrace serves was the best way to fix it.  When I took him into the community and he met the people, he actually wrote me a $10,000 check because he saw the reality instead of the stereotype.  He saw the elderly, the disabled, the single moms and the children.  He saw that they were good people who depend on federal support and he was convinced that they were worth investing in.

When we start with the assumption that the poor are poor because of something they did, then we see what we want to see.  We see the addicts, the moochers, and the parasites.  However, if we take the time to actually walk in the streets of impoverished communities we can’t help but see the saints, the faithful, the prayer warriors, and the kind-hearted.  There is no one label for my urban friends.

Effective July 1 of this year, the welfare recipients in the state of Florida had to pass a drug screening to continue to receive welfare benefits.  The governor of Florida Rick Scott stated “It is unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction.”  The assumption being that poor people are likely abusing drugs.  MSNBC reported earlier this week that “According to the Department of Children and Families, since July 1, 2 percent of people hoping for temporary cash assistance tested positive for drugs.”  This level is well below the national rate of drug abuse for the country which is estimated at more than 8%. Scott wanted to blame the poor for being poor but the facts just do not back up his claims.

I think the book of Job needs to be studied more in our churches.  All Job’s “righteous” friends believed Job’s suffering was somehow Job’s fault.  The point of this disturbing book is that Job had nothing to do with his plight.  Like Job, many of my friends have endured incredible suffering yet they somehow have kept the faith.  There is a depth to their souls that I have never experienced among people who have never suffered great loss.  They have lived the resurrection and are more Christ-filled than most church goers I know.

Over the past few months I have really wrestled with the label “Christian.”  “Is Embrace Christian?,” some have asked me.  And I guess that depends on what that label means to you.   For me a Christian organization is an organization that seeks to do what Jesus did.  If that is your definition of a Christian organization, then we accept that label. If however, your definition of Christian is a group of people who all believe the same thing about Jesus, then we would not want your label.

You see, I truly believe that God loves all God’s children equally.  When we create spaces where we can celebrate our diversity and welcome people of all traditions our lives are enriched.  In communities of diversity whether it be economic, racial, or religious, judgmental stereotypes are far less likely to be thrown around as carelessly as the ones my friend Corey pointed out.  Those kinds of self-righteous statements grow out of ignorance and the only way to break down this kind of ignorance is for people to cross these invisible boundaries that separate us from “the other.”  Likewise, I think if people of faith would let go of their need to label themselves and others and were willing to enter into relationships with people who are different from them, they too would find their lives are enriched.

I know I upset some folks by stating that Embrace Richmond was not a “Christian” organization.  I guess I was letting others define this label for me.  I choose to define it as “doing what Jesus did.”  You can define it anyway you like.  There are obviously many ways to be “Christian.”