Some people don’t like labels. It’s common among members of my generation to reject them. However, it seem that when people say this, they are really trying to say that they don’t like being labeled by others.

Or perhaps the problem isn’t the label, but the box in which we put those people we label.

I like labels. When I read A Generous Orthodoxy several years ago, I gained a new appreciation for the complexity and power of labels. One of the book’s core ideas is one of accepting many labels, rather than one or two, which was a revelation to me. Accepting, for instance, the labels of both evangelical and anglo-catholic in my tradition is profoundly liberating.

The problem with labels is that we use them like a toddler treats a marker. We grab them, and start drawing on all of the things around us indiscriminately.

We also see the world through a prism of polarities or dualisms. So we label accordingly. If the person or object doesn’t fit one category, they must be in “the other”.

In this way, we seek to define the identities of those around us. This is a power game and is both politically and intellectually dishonest. Even if it is common.

The real power of labels, and it is a subversive power, comes in the form self-defining. When we see labels, not as something to be placed on someone or something else, but the means by which we self-identify, we become our most powerful selves.

Reread the older creation story (Genesis 2-3) and notice that in creating the first human, GOD gives the human a job of naming things. But then the job is changed and the first human, Adam (of the soil) is given a job to work the soil. The first human is transformed, given a new job, and given a name to reflect that job.

In labeling others, or refusing to explore the labels GOD has given us for ourselves, we are ignoring the foundational moment in the creation story, and living, not lives of transformation, but of ignorance.

It seems to me that GOD gives us way more labels than a name, and way more work than to fulfill that one name. We are given many. And the self-discovery of many of those labels is profoundly empowering.

Labels I’m currently adopting, in no particular order but off the top of my head:

Strong, Christian, Priest/Presbyter/Pastor/Reverend/Father, Rector, Daddy, Son, Brother, Emergent, Passionate, Talkative, Excited, Thankful, Radical, Evangelist, Hopeful, Liturgist, Theologian, Thinker, Writer…

So go and live out the labels GOD has given you. I’d love to hear what your labels are!