“Are You a Conservative or a Liberal or What?”

Recently I had someone ask me, “Are you a conservative, a liberal, a fundamentalist, a moderate, or what?” Though I didn’t say it, with those choices I think I would opt for “A what!”

I hate labels.

Oh, labels would be fine is we could be sure they actually communicated something. (See my previous blog on “What Is a Baptist” to understand what I mean.) But as time goes by, more often than not labels become relative to the user. So to an atheist I might be labeled a right wing fundamentalist and to a self described right ring fundamentalist, I might be considered a liberal. I mean, Jerry Falwell is considered a liberal by some independent Baptists today!

Labels are often used to put someone else down without having to explain what they think or believe. This can happen in both theology and in politics, and we have seen a lot of it during the mudslinging ads from both sides in political campaigns, haven’t we? “So-and-so believes in the failed liberal policies of the past” or “So-and-so is an ultra-conservative who…”

Of course, words like “conservative” and “liberal” lend themselves to miscommunication because they are indeed relative to the time and the context. “Conservative” comes from word “conserve” and says basically that we want to keep the status quo. It is interesting that when the Soviet Union began their policies of openness and restructuring under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980’s, the “conservatives” were those who wanted to keep communism—that is, they wanted to “conserve” what they had.

And “liberal” comes from “liberate”—to free. Often, people are liberals until they achieve what they want; then they become “conservatives,” wanting to keep what they have achieved. I hear people often say that Jesus was a “liberal” of his day. While I think it is hard to make that categorization completely, it is hard to deny that Jesus came to liberate and to change the status quo as far as faith is concerned. “It the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” And the apostle Paul said, “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.”

Those who want to say that Jesus was a “liberal” of His day, though, tend to think He would be a “liberal” today. And that all depends on what is in place in a certain context! If a group is following after Jesus and obeying His teaching, Jesus would want them to “conserve” that. If a “church” was really more a group of modern day Pharisees, then certainly Jesus would want to liberate them.

So I think you see why I don’t like labels. It is a shame labels don’t mean much anymore, that they so rarely actually communicate a position. I don’t understand why people would even want a label that doesn’t properly describe them. For instance, why do so many people today still want to be labeled as “Christian” when they clearly do not hold to the teachings of Jesus? Why don’t they just give themselves another name?

I actually had a good conversation with the person who started our conversation with the loaded question. Instead of answering his question with any of the labels—even the “what” I was tempted to use—I said, “Let me just tell you what I believe and who I am and you can decide what I am. If you tried to label me by any one subject on a non-essential issue, you might miss what I believe about the most essential things.”

I went on to tell him that Jesus is my Lord and that the Bible is my guide for knowing the real Jesus and for what I believe and how I behave. I talked about my understanding of sin as being the biggest problem faced by mankind and that Jesus is the only One that has the ability to do anything about that problem—that He is able to forgive our sins because of His obedience to the Father, His sinless life, His death on the cross, and His resurrection. We talked about our need to turn away from our sins (repent) and turn to Jesus in faith, and that God wants us to walk in holiness and peace.

Finally, we talked about how important attitude is accompanying our beliefs. While I am orthodox in my beliefs and I teach the truth, I do not delight in condemning others. (Some do, you know, like the Pharisees of old.) Instead, I want to hold out to them the desire of God to forgive and restore them as they turn to Him in repentance and faith. I told him that I try to be cognizant that any time I preach on a certain sin, I know that there are likely those listening who have committed that very sin, and I want them to know that there is hope and forgiveness for them through Jesus and that He welcomes them as surely as the Father welcomed home the Prodigal Son when he “came to his senses” (see Luke 15).

So, no thank you to the offer of labeling myself. That, to me, is a recipe for miscommunication—that is, until we can better define the labels.