Labels

Before I start I’m not exactly sure where the blog is going, nor am I really sure when it starts. You know they say a good story has a beginning, middle and end and at the moment this blog has a middle!

I’m looking after a number of animals this week. Now I’d not really describe myself as an animal person. People usually label themselves as either a cat or a dog person; as I’m allergic to cats I have to be a dog person, and actually this week I’ve been on two dog walks.

The first one was with my parents and brother and our dog. She’s become an old lady at 15 and can’t go very far, but it was very nice for the five of us to walk down the road to a bit of grass. Then this evening I took the two little dogs who’s names I can never remember / I’m not sure which is which so are generally known as black dog and white dog- or just to mix it up red dog and blue dog – due to the colour of their leads. I learnt its not easy with a dog in each hand when they want to go in opposite directions.

The news today has been talking about the seven social classes. You can find out what you are here 

I’m an Emergent service worker. Now I’ve never been particularly happy with being middle class, it seemed such a stalk contrast, but I know because of mine and my parents education I couldn’t be counted as a working class. Actually with the conversations about five years ago about giving youth work a professional status would mean despite its dosser image – well we all know all I do is play pool and table tennis -  it's actually equal to teaching and social work.

BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat were saying that the people on twitter didn’t think class was important, and I’m not sure it is, I just think it’s about labels. We like to label things. We like to know who is like us, who is different.  As well as finding new ways to describe ourselves.

My understanding of discipleship is based around identity. Matthew 16 tells the story of Jesus asking the disciples who people say he is, and who they think he is. It is Simon who declares “you are the Christ, the Son of the living God”. Jesus says, “You don’t know that, God told you that.” So the first part of our discipleship journey is about working out who God is – and it’s not about us, but how God reveals that to us. The conversation goes on with Jesus renaming Simon as Peter, and telling him that Peter means rock, and on this Rock Christ will build his church. So knowing who Jesus is, working out who we are in Him and then working out what that looks like in our lives.

Being a Christian is a way I describe myself. I’m not always proud of what is said and done in my name, but more recently the church is standing up for those caught in poverty by the governments plans –but you could read more about that in the wonderful Youth Pres’ (Hayley) blog 

I’m about to start job hunting again, working out how to label myself is part of the technique of making myself look good on paper, and then bring out the best of myself in interviews – as well as keeping it real!

Who am I? That’s the question I feel like I’m constantly coming back to. Do any labels really help? Can they really describe a full living human in just a few words. Who knows? I don’t.