Tag: community

I remember when I first moved to the Boise area. I didn’t work outside the home, or know anyone, so at church I tried to introduce myself. Every week.

In the repetition, it started to feel like an elevator pitch. An almost memorized teaser summing up my reason for living, moving, my hobbies, and experiences. Basically, all my labels—in the hopes of a followup question of interest. It became tedious. I just wanted to be known already.

In a few years, I had community. And when I could say that people knew me, my paradigm changed. I became an empty nester. I won’t go into all the details, but many things like work and hobbies, which defined “me” also fell away with my job of full-time-mom-with-kids-in-the-home.

I was without an elevator pitch, except to say, “I’m in pain because I don’t have labels anymore.”

I began searching and grasping to organize my faith. I couldn’t find the book I needed the most, so I wrote it. (Some of you have read it in draft form.) Essentially, it was a way for me to process all the identities and labels that I had worn over my life. And how at some point they were all retired, made meaningless, or became unwanted…

I’d forgotten this until recently, as the conversation about identity keeps coming up. My midlife memoir was partly about holding all labels loosely and accepting only the unique identity that God has for you. It came with a subtitle message that a diverse community was better than matching identities.

Are the following labels, identity, or both?
Gay Christian, divorced Christian, vegetarian Christian, freedom-loving American Christian. What about Christian-first language: A Christian widow, a Christian worship leader, a Christian with trauma? What if you’re bothered by the descriptor “Christian” because of the Salem Witch Trials and the Crusades?

The goal of labels

It’s more than wanting to be known. I think labels are an attempt at grasping to see where you fit and to find your people. Name the enemy. Name the comrade.

Maybe they’re even to feel fully resolved about who you are. Summed up. A finished work before your time. So we can forgo the bother of sanctification and change.

I don’t fully understand all the nuances of Side A, B, X, or Y, so I hope it doesn’t appear as though I have a secret agenda in arguing against the concept of labeling your sexual identity. My context comes from the use of labels like Mom, homeschooler, really-cool-job-title, wife.

And let’s be honest, we can wear an identity we never label. Sometimes our identity is our experiences, trauma, vocation or lens merely because we bring it into every part of life—even though we don’t claim the descriptor in our elevator pitch. It consumes our every thought.

So, while the warning applies that all labels can become identities which supersede your identity in Christ, it is a little more complicated in some conversations, like LGBTQ labels.

I believe that complication stems from our earthly “purpose” to be mated as understood in the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply,” and is somewhat influenced by both modern romance (you complete me) and the purity movement (virgins earn blissful married sex.)

Christians have deified marriage with verbiage like “Marriage is the only piece of the garden that survived the fall,” indicating that a union of two people is the purpose for which we were created, and a little taste of heaven.

So, with the cultural push for Christians to find an earthly love story as a necessary part of their walk with God—gay Christians are inhibited from fully bowing down to this idol with body, mind and desire. Which could be freeing in reality, but in the context of church conversation, I understand why some would want the clarification, “Hey, while we all have to lay down our will and submit to sexual purity as part of sanctification… there is a unique lens for how I experience doing life in a community of Christians. And I need you to know that it is going to influence how I process and receive everything from your statement of faith to your Valentine’s Day dinner advertisement.”

Of course, LGBTQ isn’t the only label that some Christians might need you to know. My church recently had a couples’ progressive dinner. For couples. To meet other couples. Ignorance makes a very narrow set of pews available to divorced Christians.

Look around the sanctuary on Mother’s Day. There is likely someone who flees from the “Mommas, your ministry is the most important one, i.e.: the salvation of a woman is found through childbearing” sermon in tears. Couples grow weary of explaining they aren’t using birth control even though they might not introduce themself as a barren Christian.

If someone views life and service so differently that they can’t interact inside your church without clarification, let them share their label so you can stop hurting them.

Allowing someone to add an adjective to their identity might help remove the shame of hiding. It certainly encourages a second person to share their story. Not so all the gay people can find each other, or the homeschool moms can start a Bible study solely focused around their unique struggles—but so the shame of the struggle doesn’t fester. I wish someone had shared more openly while my kids were younger. I wish they’d heard you could be both same sex attracted and a follower of Christ.

I wish the conversation wasn’t attached to the political election but only to eternal election.

I know that just as prayer can be used for gossip, sometimes confession, or sharing your story, can be an invitation to see how receptive the other person is in joining you in your sin. But more often it feels like there is no safe way to bring light into your darkness. Apparently, there are no parameters (no perfect garden) to prevent all future sinning. Because it also could alienate someone into sin if you communicate, “tamp that down,” through the words, “You shouldn’t be a gay Christian. Just be a Christian Christian, like me.”

Although, that is the goal: to become a child of God without a label. To not look within ourselves to define who were are, but to be image bearers. If our purpose is to reflect God and we are a mirror shining his light into the world, then we want to have the most unmarked surface as possible. (Even though he created us intentionally unique.) There are many names for God, so I have considered that we can be two things at once as well. But it might be worth meditating or contemplating on this if it smarts your pride to let the focus be wholly Him.

All labels will change and lose value. Family members die and you can lose your status as child, spouse, parent. Jobs change. Fluidity. Even though we are sexual beings, not everyone will have sex up to the day they die. I doubt I’ll feel sexual desire when I can no longer feed or wipe myself. If I’n still blogging, I’ll let you know when I get there.

How do you know your label has become an identity?

One of my prayer partners told me, “Identity is more than a characteristic trait. It is who you are intrinsically.” If you want to know whether you have let your label become an identity, see how long you can go without thinking about it or mentioning it.

How many conversations do you have that aren’t about your kids? How many people can you meet without telling them your job title? On the other side, how many days can you go without mentioning what Christ means to you?

You can become just as fixated on the things that you are “not.” Otherwise, the romance book and movie industry wouldn’t profit so much from people who wish they were someone’s beloved. The makeup and plastic surgery industry wouldn’t be able to sell youth. You can live in a space completely obsessed with how broken you are. How much you are not.

Often you won’t realize your identity was an idol until you lose it, or cannot use the name. If the ground shifts underneath your feet without that label, you have built your life on sand. If you are afraid of losing who you are without the description, then you have chosen a false god.

And some of us need to throw that label as far from ourselves as possible. I know my mom said that she never wanted cuss language in her life as a way to differentiate who she was after she became a believer. Cussing was like an identity or label that marked a lifestyle outside of Christ.

A mystery known only to God

I want to share a quote by Elizabeth Elliot which I found in Being Elizabeth Elliott by Ellen Vaughn. It says, “The Christian realizes that his true identity is a mystery known only to God… And that any attempt at this stage on the road of discipleship to define himself, is bound to be blasphemous and destructive of that mysterious work of God, forming Christ in him by the power of the Holy Spirit.“

In our attempt to define ourselves, name the enemy, find the friend, join the club—I think it’s worth reflecting on how Jesus renames Simon to Peter when he calls him in John 1:42.

“Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).” It isn’t the first time in the Bible. Abram is renamed Abraham. Jacob becomes Israel. Saul is changed to Paul.

What if who you are, your label, name, destiny, identity is not for you to name?

Consider Revelation 2:17 “…and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” I suspect whatever names, job titles, identities or labels you claim now will be renamed just like when God called Simon, Jacob, Abram and Saul.

Coming to terms with a shifting identity is important. So is walking forward in willingness to let it be stripped away. But some are not there yet. I think not letting people judge you for how you handle new moons, sabbath festivals, or refusing meat because of weakness goes both ways. (If you are not in a place to exhort) then do not judge those who need to choose their labels, or those who need to violently disassociate themselves from one.

But when you’re ready to step into uncharted wilderness and grow, let God pick yours.