This photo taken at an open air arts festival is (for me)
iconic. I’ve no idea who the women are, where they come from, how they earn a
living. They’re just labelled “acrobats”. We hang labels on people, and the
labels define how we regard them. Labelling someone can make us think we have
them “taped”: that’s all we need to know about them.
But it isn’t. For example, I was never a great fan of former
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Whatever good she did in reforming structures
seemed to be at the cost of individual and community welfare. She was labelled harsh
and insensitive. However, recently I read her daughter Carol’s biography (see
left). It revealed a softer side to the “Iron Lady”. Seeing someone through the
eyes of a person who loved them illuminates their humanity in a way that our
restricted view of their public actions or reported statements does not. Labels
are at best partial and often misleading. They’re a cheap excuse for a lack of
empathy.
Internet “trolls” spread fears and smears by attaching
abusive labels to people. Professor Simon Wessely, an expert on chronic fatigue
syndrome (ME), found a third of his patients recovered after both physical and
psychiatric treatment. This drew the wrath of trolls.
“It’s constant stalking, harassment, attempts at
intimidation,” he said. “I’m accused of calling ailing patients malingerers,
neurotic cripples, of throwing boys into swimming pools, stealing things,
plagiarising, misconduct, falsifying data, being in league with Pharma or the
lackeys of insurance agencies…that everything I do is part of a vast conspiracy
to deny the truth – all of which are grossly, professionally, defamatory.”1
Debate on professional matters is a necessary part of life;
truth in the scientific world needs rigorous testing. But abusive labels are a
lazy substitute for thought, which achieve no more than making the abuser feel
clever or superior.
Academic Joan Freeman found that children who were labelled
as “gifted” by their parents were far more likely to have emotional problems
than equally gifted children who were regarded like any other. She also found
that the problems had their roots in troubled home backgrounds.2 The
labels, coupled with other pressures, were counter-productive.
Temperaments growing
Jesus used pejorative labels on three occasions. In a
message to Herod he called the king “that fox” (Luke 13:32), that is sly,
untrustworthy. He used the Jewish term for Gentiles (“dogs”, Matthew 15:21-28) in
order to draw out a Gentile woman’s faith and show his critics that God loved
her too. And he likened some critics to “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27f). In
each case he was speaking directly to the people concerned, not making cheap judgements
about people who couldn’t respond.
Jesus commanded that we shouldn’t judge others, which is what
labels do (Matthew 7:1-5). He also warned against using terms of abuse (Matthew
5:21-22; raca is a term of angry
contempt). James outlawed verbal abuse because all are made in God’s image
(James 3:9-12). Labels reduce people to objects, and mask their unique
personalities.
C.S. Lewis once asked why some Christians are labelled as
less nice than some non-Christians. “God has allowed natural causes, working in
a world spoiled by centuries of sin, to produce in [Christian] Miss Bates the
narrow mind and jangled nerves which account for most of her nastiness. He
intends, in his own good time, to set that part of her right.” Indeed, he says,
the real question is whether she might be worse if she were not a Christian.3
None of us is perfect; all of us are slowly changing. So maybe
we’d be happier if we stopped labelling and name calling, and began to look at people
with empathy instead. When Bishop Wilson of Singapore was tortured in a POW
camp in Japan in 1943 he coped by seeing his torturers “not as they were, but
as they had been. Once they were little children, playing…and happy in their
parents’ love…and it is hard to hate little children.”4 That’s one
way of making a start. Here’s some more.
Think and talk
1. Consider making
some mental adjustments (perhaps discuss with others how to do them) such as:
·
Remember hatred uses more energy than love and
damages you emotionally and spiritually; spare yourself the pain.· “To humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate” (Nelson Mandela).5 To be truly human, resist cruelty and maintain dignity.
· Soccer players wear “respect” on their sleeves; think “respect” when you encounter or consider other people.
· Kind words and actions can have unexpected results. When the princess kissed the frog, she didn’t turn into a frog; the frog became a prince.
· Think of someone you despise, then listen to Jesus’ words: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). How does that change your view of the person?
2. Look up Luke
10:25-37. What attitudes towards others are we encouraged to adopt?
3. What do you think
God feels about the labels we give to people?
References
1. Interview in The Times, 6 August 2011.2. Joan Freeman, Gifted lives, Routledge 2010, pp.10, 205f.
3. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Fontana Books 1955, pp.174-176.
4. Quoted by Adrian Hastings, A history of English Christianity, Collins 1986, p.385f.
5. Nelson Mandela, Long walk to freedom, Little, Brown and Company 1994, p.10
© Derek Williams 2013
