... but I just don't care. If you want to label me, fine. I'm a fundamentalist, I'm a Baptist, I'm a three and a half point Calvinist (not quite sold on the whole 'irresistable grace' thing). I'm a teetotaler, I'm a radical right wing conservative. I'm a half nerd, I'm a music junkie. I'm a free thinker *GASP!*.
You can throw labels at me and on me all day long and they may sort of help you figure out who and what I am, or give you clues into what I think, but I've got news: It doesn't work.
So much of life gets caught up in stupid arguments over meaningless terms. Terms and words don't matter. The thoughts and actions behind them do. Look at Obama. He said "change" and we have seen change, but it wasn't what we were thinking, it was what he was thinking and what he has done that has indeed 'changed' us from bad to worse.
Sacred circles are perhaps the worst about these sort of things. Christians divide themselves and bicker and seperate from each other over terms. They say the exact same thing, but the terms are different and so they divide. They do not look at what God said, they simply know what some preacher told them and that's it and they stay hooked to rhetoric of which they know nothing of the source. "I'm an independent fundamental baptist" they say and will disagree and separate from anyone who goes to a "First Church of Somewhere" or "Somewhere Church". The doctrine is the same between the First Baptist Church and the First Church of Somewhere, but one isn't called Baptist and so they divide.
It's sad, it's ridiculous, but there it is.
I'd call for us to just lay aside the terms and look at what people are actually saying. I'd call for people to go back to Scripture. To go back to the thoughts and actions that form the terms and hold to that. But I know I'm only one small voice. I know nobody will listen. So I'm not going to bother. Go on, keep dividing over terms. Keep being violent towards your brothers and sisters over terms and labels.
Go ahead, ask me what I am. I'll give you labels. You'll agree or disagree because I know what terms to use, but in ideology we may be as different as night and day, just using the same words. But hey, do whatever makes you happy.
Keep using your labels and having your arguments over words. Just leave me out of it.
