The Damning Nature of Labels

The trouble with labels is all you have to do is label someone as racist, homophobe, xenophobe, misogynist, narcissist, or Islamophobe and you don’t have to deal with them anymore. You don’t have to converse with them or understand their point of view or respect them. Everything they are or any good in them is erased. They are now nonhuman. They are incapable of change, redemption or progress. You have in essence damned them. You are playing God making an assessment of them that can never be reversed.

You might say that conservatives label people as socialists, liberals or leftists with an equal amount of disdain. But I don’t believe it’s the same. Conservatives believe people can change. We’ve seen it happen. I have seen liberals become conservatives. Even people who were once socialist have become conservative in their thinking. It happens nearly every day.

My dad told me once that if you see a young person in their early twenties who isn’t a liberal, you wonder if they have a heart. If they’re still liberal by the time they reach their mid 30’s to 40’s you wonder if they have good sense. There’s something about growing up and living in the real world: having a job, paying your own way, and getting taxed that wakes you up to reality. You suddenly want to keep what you’ve earned. Having the government take it away and give it to other people who haven’t earned it doesn’t feel incredibly fair anymore. So, calling someone a liberal, democrat or leftist isn’t assigning them a permanent destination.

But misogynists, narcissists, racists, etc…. fewer people expect or allow those people to change. Someone who wore black-face thirty years ago (when it was no thing) is a racist today and loses their job because a picture of them at a by-gone Halloween party crops up. In today’s world, there is no statute of limitations on racism, bigotry, etc. There is no allowance for growth.

People were created to learn, change, grow. No one is all good or all bad. If we want to grow and change ourselves we must allow others the opportunity as well. Do we really want to live in a world where there is no redemption? No letting go? No moving on from the past? Where one misstep, one misspoken word, or series of steps/words damns you for the rest of your life?

Our self-righteous, “enlightened” society is eventually self-damning; for there isn’t a soul on this planet who has lived a perfect life save one. And individuals with the same self righteous hypocrisy tortured and murdered Him for it. Even He wasn’t good enough for them. One day we’re going to need the mercy we denied others and it won’t be there.