I got called a name today by another Christian. I did not especially like it. I was called an agnostic. I looked at him kind of weird when he said it, thinking he was joking. But he wasn’t. We have known each other for about two years, and though we agree on many basic doctrines of Christianity, we don’t agree on everything, and we definitely do not see eye to eye on some central Christian practices like baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and church attendance.
So today he called me an agnostic.
Given the context of our conversation, I was not sure he knew what the word meant, so I tried to get some clarification. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Agnostics do not know whether or not God exists. Atheists believe God does not exist. Agnostics are open to the idea, but unsure. I believe God exists, so I am not an agnostic.”
But he persisted. He countered that even though I believed God existed, he held several beliefs about the attributes and actions of God about which I was uncertain. Therefore, in his mind I was an agnostic.
It’s odd, isn’t it, when we use our own beliefs to determine the orthodoxy of someone else?
Anyway, it soon became evident that I would not be able to convince him that I was not an agnostic. All I could do was chuckle to myself and walk away. If he wanted to call me an agnostic simply because I didn’t believe the same things he did with the same certainty, let him.
Later on, I realized that for him, agnostic is probably equivalent to unbeliever. If so, I guess that would also make me a backslider, and possibly even a heretic. He is probably praying for me right now to “return to the fold.”
Do you ever notice how many names we Christians like to call people? Adulterers, heathens, pagans, unbelievers, unchurched, the list goes on and on. (I wrote a post about this a while back.) I wonder if they dislike it as much as I disliked being labeled an agnostic. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they don’t know.
But one thing is for sure, labeling others in such ways affects how we view and interact with them. So I propose a label that everyone can except. Let s stop the name calling, and just call people what they are. Let’s call them “people.”
Hi Jeremy, hope you & the fam are all doing well! Read with interest & some amusement your “Name-calling” post! Couple of thoughts struck me:
1) While some “labelling” is pejorative; labelling is essential to communicating & comprehension.
2) In your post you avoided “labeling” your acquaintance or friend (?) , but you did “label” him a “Christian®” and a “name-caller®”.
3) Christ in His earthly ministry used descriptive labels in His discerning identification of “people”.
did He not? ( Matthew 23.33; Luke 3.7, etc.)
Love you “Jeremy”! Your “name-calling™ brother” In Christ®, bruce http://www.abercrombie.cc
Bruce,
Ha ha! You’re right! I called him a “name caller.” And yes, Jesus did use labels, and did many other NT authors. Thanks for pointing all this out.
I guess I’m not totally against labels, but maybe if someone objects to our use of a particular label, we should change it?
I’m reading a book right now called “Washed and Waiting” about gay Christians. He makes a good point that he uses the terms “gay” and “homosexual” as adjectives, not as nouns, as in “gay Christian” or “homosexual person.” Why? Because people are not identified first and foremost by what they believe or what they do. They are people first.
What a person does or believes is part of who they are, but not all that they are.
Jeremy,
I can really relate to this. Some friends of my family called us a few weeks ago with a request that we pray for the salvation of a mutual friend. We were a little shocked since we thought that this person (we’ll call her Lori) was already a believer. We discovered that during a discussion between our friend and Lori, they found that they did not believe the same things about heaven and hell, largely because Lori was raised in an athiest family in China and was a fairly recent believer in Christ. The sad part was that we were not able to convince our friend that Lori could posses eternal life if she did not agree with a list of “essential doctrines”.
When training ministers I always teach them that determining a person’s status as a beliver or unbeliever is not possible and is almost alwayt counter productive. I teach that evangelism is living life as a relfection of Christ in such a way that we inspire those around us wither into a relationship with HIM or into a deeper relationship with HIM. It is amazing how much more effective and how more receptive people are to your message when you are not trying to judge their status before God.
FedEx
That is right! We are not the judge of other people’s eternal destinies.
Be careful trying to convince your friends about “Lori.” They may begin to think that you are unsaved also! Ha ha.
I’ve taken to just describing peoples actions that I disagree with, rather than labeling the person. Everyone can change and to define a person by their actions is very close to judging someone’s heart. It’s never productive to do this and often just freezes people into shunned positions that they can then never get out from under.
Further, it keeps us from dealing with others in a loving Christian way and goes a long way to promote negative opinions that others have about us. This labeling is really more a product of WASP culture than it is of any authentic Christ motivated behavior, in my opinion.
We can still accomplish discernment and church discipline by addressing peoples actions, rather than the people themselves. While ensuring we avoid the leaven of malice by putting people in boxes they’re never allowed to leave or repent out of.
Thank you and God bless.
This is a good approach. Thank you for creating peace with such interactions.
So I’m doing a study on name-calling in the Bible, especially during ministry (because it’s a hard topic, especially with the “political correctness” in society). So here’s what I found so far:
* Almost all of the name calling I found are towards people who are actively trying to throw down Christianity (Pharisees, etc.). Most are done towards groups (aside from Elymas). There is no (or little?) name-calling towards average-joe sinners (even ones in adultery in John 8).
* The “names” called are actually technically right, unlike most of the name-calling done today. It’s likely that Jesus and Paul are pointing at a condition rather than being racist or rude.
* I believe that Jesus likely tried to remain calm (as other verses talked about being peaceful when talking about truth). So it’s less about rudeness (I think) and more about pointing problems to lead to repentance.
I’m now only wondering whether it’s common practice in ancient Hebrew sermons to do name-calling, unlike today with plenty of sensitivity.
UPDATE — Regarding Jesus’s “name-calling”, I found two modern examples that could be comparable.
* A close modern example comparable that I found was when a teacher calls an entire class troublemakers after nearly all of the students are causing trouble by throwing paper wads, fighting, and yelling at each other for no good reason. Like the teacher in the example, Jesus had the authority from the Father.
* Another example is when history textbooks label Hitler, Stalin, etc. as “dictators”. Calling a random person a dictator is not very nice, but the use in textbooks is rarely ever questioned because the term accurately describes those people.
As I said earlier, many of the name-callings are directed towards people who are actively trying to ruin others’ faith rather than average-joe sinners, like the Pharisees. The Pharisees’s legalistic policies affected many, including blind men who got healed on the Sabbath. On the flip side, most of the sinners don’t do these kind of things and are also in fact know themselves that they are sinners. Jesus did not use any name-calling on the tax-collector, the women in adultery, or the woman at the well — even though they also did some pretty bad stuff.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that the majority of Paul’s sermons have less focus on name calling but more focus on proclaiming who Jesus is. In fact, the Bible says that Paul reasoned with the Scriptures (as seen in Acts 17:2).
Finally, I found a neat article that goes more in depth on it — https://bjorkbloggen.com/2016/08/18/jesus-used-some-harsh-and-rude-comments-so-we-can-do-this-as-well/.
I really want Jeremy Myers to make an article regarding Jesus’s “name calling” since he made an article on not name calling.