A better question, perhaps, is ‘What happened to you?’.
2 Likes
Im not actually. I domt have a reason to be. I dont know how you can understand online how can someone be aggressive or not. Sorry if i come out as aggressive though
1 Like
It can be challenging online to tell when someone is being aggressive versus someone being confrontational versus someone being bluntly open. One thing I struggle with is coming across kind online. I never feel I’m being mean but I often hear I’m exhaustingly confrontational and opinionated and in my mind I always felt I was being kind and simply engaging in a conversation where I would sacrifice my own free time to respond to everything directed at me. All we can do is listen to how others perceive and try to change our response even if we feel there was nothing wrong with it to begin with.
We can also be blind to how brass we are being especially when we are unknowingly triggered by something that traumatized and angered us and changed our lives.
1 Like
That’s okay. Sorry for the misunderstanding!
1 Like
Yeah, I suffer with this too. I can be needlessly snarky.
Doctrine is a good thing, if it is true. Cars and submarines come with operators’ manuals full of doctrine. Getting them right are matters of life and death, not to mention equipment longevity.
4 Likes
Well here’s to my first egregious failure of word.
Talking of which therefore:
Operators’ manuals > doctrine
A belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a Church, political party, or other group.
A stated principle of government policy, mainly in foreign or military affairs >user instructions
1 Like
Thats in science
In phillosophy and generally in religion even in politics or anywhere that it doesnt require standard physics laws to actually build upon its bad.
Doctrine in the above fields create only fanaticism and close-mindness leaving no room for other ideas and interpetations
Ive seen it in myself when i argued before with universalists and some others here as well.
This idea of responsibility really got me thinking, Mark. Humans are not silos, we live in a complex social matrix of roles and relationships. I think labels are necessary to make the links in those relationships meaningful and make sense and allow for mutual understanding and respect. Take ‘employer’ and ‘employee’ for example, both come with rights and responsibilities, some are the same, some are different. The terms ‘employee’ and ‘employee’ help to communicate that without having to explain or the little nuances every time. So Labels help provide a social shorthand, a shared language to within a group to quickly communicate what a particular role involves.
Granted some labels are used as tools of power to oppress, manipulate and/or dominate others. But there I think those of us who accept the label ‘citizen’ or ‘human’ have a responsibility to call that out and collectively seek to erase that label and see it replaced with one that affirms value and promote flourishing.
Edit: some light changes for sense making
3 Likes
Admittedly though the label of Christian has got to be a bit heavier to carry. Not to say everyone who claims it shoulders it equally well. But it is a noble ambition to care for others and look out for the forgotten.
2 Likes
I appreciate the sentiment here, Nick, especially as you are trying to work stuff out. However, Human’s are pattern recognition machines, we like to put things in boxes and categories and sets and then stick a label on it. It is how we make sense of the world, and perhaps how are ancestors worked out what was dangerous and what was safe.
My fear is that if you don’t give yourself a label those in your social webs and those you encounter will do it for you. And you might not like the one they give, nor may it be that is for you to replace it when you decide which one fits best.
But some labels like “Christian” or “Agnostic” are big enough tents that you can find safety in numbers as you work out what best describes you and what you believe.
Just something to think about.
1 Like
I accept labels that only describe my character. And of course social ones like gender ,work labels etc etc. Labing me as agnostic or Christian for example might be ok but not mecessarily true.
People can put labels on me . Couldnt care less. Its their decision. However if they engage in a conversatiom with me they might understand how wrong they might have been. Or the opposite. Me liking or not how they label me is irrelevant
On the other hand why dont you try my way right?
For example if i put the label “Christian” on you and call you that would you go out of your way to correct me and say" Ohhh nono im actually a Baptist Christian" . I dont think so
Or would you get triggered if someone says"I have a relationship with Christ but im not christian".Like who cares?You can call them a Christian ,that wont change how they “label” or view themselves.
1 Like
Sure all. Fair and valid points. As I say, just something to think about. Some people really don’t like being mislabelled, good to hear you are able to be gracious when it happens to you.
2 Likes
I guess it was too much of a stretch to recognize the analogous patterns of doctrine and instructions, speaking of machines. 
1 Like
I too like this idea of responsibility. I can understand bristling at labels – especially just looking at how “evangelical” has changed over the past few decades. It’s easy to fear that if given a label, people will make assumptions about you or become prejudiced based on those labels. But I’ve heard it from the other side too… someone goes to a church that looks to be nondenominational, but then realize after a while that their theology lines up exactly to a particular Baptist school of thought – that church just didn’t want that label anymore. I can see why someone in that situation might feel tricked. So in that sense, labels can promote straightforwardness – I’d much rather know where someone (or a church) stands on something first (and to what extent), and then make my own decisions about how I relate to that, but I also have a responsibility to treat others as I want to be treated, and not prejudge any more than I would like to be… which is hard. 
5 Likes
Indeed. That is why I think labels should be thought of as a “first approximation” and a way of setting the stage for further questions to narrow down where you stand on the many different things we believe things about.
For example, on this question of being an evangelical, I usually add some caveats to that one like this… I am a liberal evangelical… or I am of the western strain of evangelical derived from converted Quakers rather than from the southern Baptists, and thus more about the experience of the saving power of Jesus rather than the aggressive pushing of dogmatic fundamentalist Christianity on other people.
2 Likes
Labels are often messy, and means different things to different people but over all they are very beneficial to set up some quick parameters. I think of it kind of like the term tomato. When I say tomato maybe you think of a cherry tomato, or a beefsteak tomato, heirlooms or even a green tomato. But we all are thinking of a tomato and none of us are thinking of a banana. So when i mention that I am in the denomination known as the Church Of Christ, those familiar with it don’t confuse it for being a Baptist or a Pentecostal. But it’s not an a perfect term. The majority of church of Christ members tend to be fairly conservative YECers who believe in eternal conscious torment. I’m a fairly liberal evolutionary creationist who is a conditionalist.
Labels also obviously helps lay out many things about us. I don’t use labels as a prison, but rather a street with a handful of houses to pick from.
3 Likes
Isn’t the use of labels unavoidable, at least to one degree or another? Words themselves are labels, and we have to make some kinds of generalizations to be able to communicate at all. Some labels are to be proud of and others eschewed, of course, and there are almost always elaborations and exceptions to be made.
6 Likes
At what are words at the end of the day? Squiggles on a page, symbols on a screen, and sound waves in the air. They are containers in which we dump information that has a shared meaning within our community. I guess in that sense, a label is only a label if more than one person agree on its meaning - even if they differ over its applicability. Without mutual agreement the label is nonsensical. Language is a amazing… and weird.
2 Likes
I just seconds ago finished listening to the podcast interview that @Christy did with Jim and Colin, and guess what one of the things she said , among several other maybe more important ideas:
…words are just labels we put on our concepts…
Christy Hemphill | A Cockatoo Among Kittens - BioLogos
(Worth a listen, folks, if you haven’t yet.)
3 Likes