Those are a fews of the phases that people have assigned to me over the years. Being called those things really does not bother me that much because I know that none of those things are true. About the only time that it does bother me is when a close loved one (who knows better) says those things just to damage me, and then it is not so much the labels as it is the betrayal. This marks one of the biggest problems in America today, especially among Christians.
Churches will take one point of view and accept that point of view as the only truth and attack anything else as evil. Most churches practice a military type chain of command that dictates what they believe that truth is and so anything that challenges what they have put forward must be wrong because it diminishes their influence. So, these labels are used to build walls that will keep their congregations under their influence instead of dialoguing and maybe learning something.
For instance, I had a Paul like conversion to Christ, and one of the congregations that I attended for a while taught that God did not talk orally to people today & the only way to know Christ was though the Bible and the only ones that understood the Bible were the people that graduated from their Seminary. My testimony challenged their teachings and so they had to label me as evil to maintain their headship over the people. In another congregation, some of the people wanted to run the church and saw me as the "bell cow" of the congregation and so they tried to brand me with labels to eliminate my influence with the people.
Another reason that people brand others with these labels is that they are afraid. They really have no ideal why they believe what they do, except that they have always been told to believe that way. Tradition and "because I was told too" always makes poor reasons for beliefs and so the only way to uphold this way of thinking to destroy any other way of thinking.
The sad thing is that when we hide behind these imaginary walls, we stunt our growth and we lose our influence. The two things that we are trying to stop, we end up promoting. We cause love to lose ground instead of gaining ground and the same with knowledge. I have actually learned more from people who have challenged my beliefs than I have from people who tried to dictate what I was to believe. Will we get some things wrong if we dialogue with one another? Yes, we will, but that is a part of learning. As a believer, I have the Holy Spirit with me leading& teaching what is true as I go forward and if you have Jesus in your heart, then you do too.
Yes, it reminds me of the first time I got on Facebook and happened to quote something from the magazine 'Rolling Stone.' A guy from Glenwood immediately jumped on me, like this was a terrible thing to do. I gradually realized that on Facebook people were a little more direct and therefore you could understand more easily what they were really about.
ReplyDeleteI have found that being on Facebook, you are mostly around people that you know and so they react accordingly. That is different from sites like The God journey where people are learning each other.
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