Just Me
For the past few months I’ve been having an internal struggle with labels and myself. There are a lot of labels floating around in the kingdom right now like emergent, progressive, neocalvinist, reformed…and so on. I feel like I really want to apply some of the labels to myself. There are a few reasons for this. The most apparent to me is that I want to be able to explain myself to someone in a few words. And to be able to explain my faith, and practically what it looks like and what I believe. So if I can put a label, that people already have an idea of what it is, on myself people will understand me. But as soon as I find a label that I think would apply to me, I realize that it miserably fails at describing myself. Last year some time I had a conversation with a friend, and we were talking about this same idea. Just the fact that labels and systems of beliefs are made by humans, and we humans are stained imperfect, thus causing the system of beliefs to be stained and imperfect. So for right now, the only label that does seem to fit is a Christian, but even that word has been stained and been drug through the mud by some who do deplorable things in Christ’s name. So there lies my dilemma.
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Good thoughts D. For me, I don’t like to think of words to describe myself as ‘label’s. I like to just think this is what I am. I am human, I am a Christian. But this is foolish, because like you say- labels are human creations and language never perfectly captures meaning. Nothing is ‘just the way it is’. Still, to those who seek to understand me, it’s gonna take more than a few words. Language depends so much on the reciever that in order to understand one another, we need to be in relationship. Let them think what they will about me until they truly get to know me. There’s my 12 cents.