Labels are everywhere! We live in a world that labels everything from coffee cups and clothing to food ingredients and designer fashions.
While labels are helpful for certain things, they can be incredibly damaging when they define people—their value, character, or significance.
Change must begin to take place. So, where do we begin? We begin by learning how to love without labels.
Few people understand this better than Barbara Newman. For more than 30 years, Barbara has provided education, inspiration, and transformation for churches and families typically disregarded by society. It is easy to place significant value on what one does, how one looks, where one lives, what one drives, or what one wears—all dependent on what we deem valuable. And when it comes to those who are different—those labeled as diseased, deformed, disabled, depressed, poor, weak—their lives are most often disregarded. Candidly, such attitudes and actions are thoroughly divergent from Christ’s model and teaching. Tragically, the church is not exempt from attaching labels.
I am convinced that if Christ and the disciples attended a church today, they would be looked down upon because of their appearance, what they did, where they lived, and what they said. Stop and think about it for a moment. Isaiah even said there was nothing externally impressive about Christ, but Christ came because He views all of us as priceless, unconditionally loved, so significant that He died for us.
We hope this interview that Colleen and Barbara shared in 2014 encourages you to examine where labels might exist in your life and in your church and how we can, as Christ's body, move beyond condemning labels.
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In When Life Isn't Fair: What They Didn't Tell Us in Sunday School, Colleen Swindoll Thompson weaves together biblical truth, practicality, and her own growth experiences as a mother of a son with special needs. She writes with raw honesty about her personal crisis of faith as well as the hardship and humor that come with learning to trust God through difficult times.
In When Life Isn't Fair: What They Didn't Tell Us in Sunday School, Colleen Swindoll Thompson weaves together biblical truth, practicality, and her own growth experiences as a mother of a son with special needs. She writes with raw honesty about her personal crisis of faith as well as the hardship and humor that come with learning to trust God through difficult times.
