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Fixing Labels

By Jim Eubanks
Minister, Forney church of Christ

December 11, 2008

People will talk, and much of our time is spent in talking about other people. In fact, it is almost impossible to keep personalities out of out conversations. The same was true in Jesus’ day. When Jesus became a public figure, he was talked about and discussed as perhaps no other person in his day. In point of fact, he was not recognized as the Son of God.

When Jesus came he said some things which were rather difficult for the people to accept for they would require many basic changes in behavior. Consequently, as they heard him speak and as they watched him work miracles, their tendency was to give him a label, to put him into some already existing, familiar, and convenient category and to dismiss him from their thoughts. This saved them the trouble of really looking at Jesus and making a fresh, independent evaluation of him. “Who is Jesus,” they asked? Each reply was some familiar classification, John the Baptist, Elias, Jeremiah and so forth. Each reply was wrong, but was completely satisfactory to the one who made it. Their minds were operating like the skilled arm of a mail clerk tossing letters into pigeonholes.

As the man “cases the mail” he picks up a handful of letters and tosses each into one of the many pigeonholes in front of him. So far as the content of the mail is concerned, it means absolutely nothing. He reads none of it, but simply sorts it, classifies it, and puts it into its pigeonhole. This is all right for a man sorting mail, but when a man sees Christ it is not enough just to label him and forget him.

The categories into which these people put Jesus were all wrong. He was not John the Baptist, or even one of the prophets. It was easy for them to pigeonhole him. The tragic part is that they never seemed to realize that Jesus was new, that he was unique, that he did not fit into any of the categories that had ever been made. Having failed to realize that, these people missed Christianity. Jesus was different from anyone who ever lived. There was no category big enough, nor adequate enough for him. Jesus faced the problem of being too lightly considered.

We face the same kind of a problem. There is a tendency among men now to consider the church too quickly and to pigeonhole it without giving it due consideration. We who are members of the church of Christ, particularly have this problem. We find it difficult to convey to our neighbors and friends the distinctive position of the church.

We have concocted labels for all fields as new things come to us and our culture and have certainly not missed religion.

There are three great categories into which men normally classify anything religious. They say it is either Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. Even when a young man in the military hunts a chaplain, he finds him labeled Protestant, Catholic or Jewish.

There is the tendency to classify churches by putting them into these same familiar pigeonholes. It is the common practice of people of our day to classify the church of Christ as just another denomination or the Protestant group. We would like to convey to them that the category does not fit.

Today, when followers of Christ say, “We are neither Catholic, Protestant, or Jews” they experience the same reaction. Our friends say to themselves, “Since you are not Catholics you must be Protestants whether you admit it or not.” Whether it is recognized or not such are guilty of doing the same kind of thinking which caused the people to reject Jesus in his day. Those who seek to follow Christ may have some of the characteristics of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, but we are not members of any ecclesiastical group. We are just Christians only, members of Christ’s church.”

This is part on of four part defining why we undenominational and not a part of any ecclesiastical religious group.