I was driving to work today and I noticed a “W in ’04” bumper sticker on a car. Normally this is no big deal since I know those things are a pain in the ass to get off once they are on, but today I got to thinking.
You start out with a cause, something you believe in and feel the need to educate others on. So you do what you think is good to educate or advertise for your cause. Then at some point enough people are joining your cause so that advertising your cause is no longer the purpose of displaying a symbol on your belongings. It has now become an identity, something that labels who you are and what you believe in.
A quick example is that suppose you believe in obtaining world peace as the most important thing facing politics. So that is one broad bumper sicker you could apply, but say you think the US should play a more active role. That is another, then you go down another level and you agree more w/ how the Libertarians want to use the US to achieve world peace, and finally you agree with candidate “Smith” the most. So you put a bumper sticker on for Smith.
Lauren and I make jokes sometimes about people with purple “V”‘s tattooed on their heads, which is what we think of when people talk about how great the vineyard is and about how there is no church in the world that is better than the Vineyard. (Slight exaggeration but close to actual statements I’ve heard made). But I’ve been debating with Mike about Catholicism and what not and I got to thinking about something he said. I am a Vineyard person….a Vineyard-ite or Vineyardian or something like that, but I won’t hesitate to jump ship if I see something drastically wrong in the church / denomination and no way of fixing it. I’m not like my friends who are so pro-vineyard or all of my Catholic friends who will defend a church / denomination till they are blue in the face.
I don’t know if this is a good thing or bad. First off, I will defend my faith in Jesus and the accuracy of the gospel, to the death (or at least that is what I tell myself). Secondly, I’m not against the Methodist or Catholic or any other denomination that preaches the gospel.
But, as with politics, I see to many people starting with the whole “My church (or candidate) is better / No mine is.” kind of thing from time to time. Instead of acknowledging the changing dynamics of government and religion in a fallen world we often want to insist that our label is the best one. I don’t want to do that, so I choose to not put bumper stickers on my car that are hard to get off. If I were going to put one on I think it would be something about world peace, or something that I totally am for. No fish or purple V’s on my car, but maybe a “Love your neighbor” kind of sticker
Now, there are Catholics out there that I know, some who have influenced my life greatly, as well as Vineyard people that love their place they’ve found in the Church. And I think that is so cool. I like talking with Mike, because he is totally into Catholicism. And my general idea is that if you are going to go Catholic, you have to go all the way. You learn your shit about history and saints and councils and all that. And when someone does that it is so cool.
What isn’t cool is when church going people get uppity about how one is right and one isn’t…blah,blah,blah. I figure I can debate about that all day, for kicks, but when the rubber hits the road I gotta realize something. We are working for the same purpose. We love what we’ve found and we want to share it, and it takes all kinds to share it with different kinds of people. To recognize that is an important part of becoming a mature Christian I think. (Of course the next step is learning to discern when God is working in a place and when it is man or satan controlling a place, but that is a post of a different color.) We serve one God with one resurrected Son, and we have four books that we absolutely need to talk properly about the Son and God, everything else is kinda extra….or a bonus.
What I feel like is that people loose site of that sometimes. In other words (to go back to my example) when you slap that “Smith” sticker on your ass end of your car you forget that your first purpose was to promote World Peace. But now you are all caught up in the “Smith” thing, and you only care about getting him in office. You lost your original ideal. That happens to people over a whole lot of stuff sometimes I think.
So, my question is, what labels have you used to pigeonhole yourself into a people group? Which ones would you be willing to step back and occasionally look at objectively. If one of them looked like it didn’t fit anymore would you be willing to go through the very difficult work peeling it off? And do you work to see the labels that Jesus gives people instead of the ones they are, or are trying, to apply to themselves? These questions (most of them anyway) could be not spiritual, or very spiritual. I’m open that way.