Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Matthew 22:36 (NIV)

The Labels – Neighbors Series – Part 1

Go to PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4  |  PART 5  |  PART 6  |  PART 7  |  PART 8

I'm writing this on Thursday, June 15th. I tell you this, because I’d like for you to set your mind back to the 15th of June, to what you were thinking and feeling; how the events happening around the world, and in our own countries (however different they are), affected you. And even if they did.

Yep, I’m talking about the Orlando shooting and the response – the many vast and varied opinions and sentiments and judgments…

But I’m not just talking about that one incident. I know that around the world, in many different countries, every single day in a thousand different ways, tragedies occur, terrors pursue, hatred and violence fill up the space between souls. On a more subtle level, we hold our differences up to each other like barriers, tight fisted, not daring to look each other in the eyes, convinced of our separateness. Convinced of our personal “rightness.”

It’s this idea of separateness that breeds animosity between us. “The Minimalists” posted this quote on Facebook the other day:

“Labels are like material possessions: they are necessary, but we don’t need to give them as much meaning as we often do.“

Labels are necessary. Our brains receive up to six billion bits of information PER SECOND! (yep). But cognitively, we can only process around three thousands bits of information per second (just thinking about it makes me want to take a Netflix and wine break).

Labels help us file information in our brains efficiently. When we see a chair, our brains don’t go, “Oh look, a chair. Circa 1960, hand painted using a fine horse hair brush, in Pantone colour P179-1 U. Used primarily to sit on while one eats dinner, or watches television. It looks like it could support a person, or things, up to 100kg…”

No. Our brain grabs the label “chair” and files the information away so that we don’t have to spend any more time processing the data.

Labels get tricky when we rely on them too heavily with one another. There is always more to a person, a story, a life, a culture, a religion, than their/its label.

Our great challenge as human beings trying to live as best we can in this crazy, beautiful, multifaceted world where we believe in free speech and freedom of religion and the right to be treated with dignity, is to live beyond our labels of each other. Dig into them. Find out the story, the detail, the personality, the situations and circumstances. There is so much MORE to you and I than the labels we get filed under in the minds of others, and the labels we file others under in our own minds and hearts.

This is a tough, because labels carry so much weight in our world today. And I’ve seen a lot of labelling from a lot of different people on the internet over the past week. A reliance on them. Assumptions and “truths” made of them.

I’m a Christian. Yes. It’s a label I have. But it's a label I sometimes loathe to wear. To be honest, there are some who share this label with me, but we share little else – our faith and lives and ideas and values and stories and practices couldn’t be further from each other. But if you only stick to labels, you wouldn’t know it.

You have to ask deeper questions of people. You have to get interested in what's under the label. What lives and breathes and moves in the blood, bone and breath of a human.

Jesus was asked a question:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt 22:36-40.)

To look underneath the labels we've created for each other, we have to ask these questions:

Who is my neighbor?
Who is my brother/sister?

Over to you. So who is your neighbor? Leave us your comments below.

Go to Part 2 – My Neighbor »

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