Pinning labels – 10 June 2016

We apparently have a serious urge to pin labels on people.  You have only to show up at some event and someone will say accusingly, You’re not wearing your label.  Of course I see why we might need to be labelled with our names, if among strangers. 

But our need to label people is a bit more complex than that.  I was recently labelled publicly as white, male, middle-class, privileged, all of which is true.  They somehow unaccountably missed handsome and genial…  It’s selective, you see.  Moreover, the implication which went with the label was: Therefore what he says doesn’t matter.  Other folks get labelled Jew, or Moslem – as though that’s what you need to know about them – or labelled no-hoper, pacifist, Greenie, vegetarian, religious, red-necked, black, white, gay, lesbian… as though these and all the other labels actually describe anything about anyone accurately, insightfully or with wisdom. 

So what is the alternative?  In the rhythms of contemplative life and prayer we learn and we are constantly reminded how every person is as much a mystery as we are ourselves.  We learn to pause at the threshold of any other person’s life, waiting and listening.  What we may think they are is never as important a question as, for instance, what they have survived, or Simone Weil’s great question in defining loving your neighbour, What are you going through? 

But, practically and realistically… we are obliged quite often, to label people in ways that are not meant to be sinister, simply true.  It seems OK if we decide that someone is a saint, or decent and wise, or a genius, or a hero.  It may be no less true that someone else is a buffoon, or a tyrant, or a liar or a hypocrite.  But in all this the important thing to know is that the label, good or bad, can never be a fair and final judgement.  You remember Nora Batty -- she folded her arms, pursed her lips, looked up to the sky and said, “Well, that’s what I think.”  Do you know anyone like that?

St Benedict has a chapter in his Rule headed, Restraint of Speech.  It is partly to stop monks chattering, but also to ensure that what they do say is true and kind and wise.

There were times when Jesus pinned labels.  I imagine, on the whole, they were richly deserved.  In Matthew 23 – and I am well aware that passage may reflect later issues in the early church, than strictly what happened at the time – Jesus labels the scribes and pharisees, the Jewish church politburo you might say, as hypocrites, blind guides, whited sepulchres, brood of vipers…   I find it hard to know what to say about that, except that it may have reflected more the early Christian church’s harsh experience of being expelled from the synagogues.  In the Book of Acts, by contrast, we find at least one pharisee, Gamaliel, who was quite different.  That should warn us not only about labels but about generalisations – how often do we hear, Oh, they’re all like that…  It is best to allow God’s Spirit to develop in us the contemplative willingness to listen and observe, we hope with kindness and wisdom.