The human mind is an incredible processing machine, and like any good storage software, it structures and categorizes information.

We naturally love to label and define stuff. It’s a way to make sense of things. Whatever we read, think, and experience, we subconsciously categorize in our brains. The stuff on the foundational level of our thinking is what makes up our worldview, but all the other stuff finds it’s way somewhere in our internal taxonomy.

So, using our minds we label stuff… and yes, we even label people.

The problem however, is when we allow our pre-defined labels to filter the information we take in. So, a typical example is when we listen to somebody who has an opposing viewpoint (political party, group, etc..) and we don’t give them the time of day because we have already defined them as wrong. They must be wrong because they fall into this label – Liberal, Conservative, Marxist, Capitalist, environmentalist, etc…

A good example is the current handling of the Norway shooter as played out in the news media. As soon as this tragedy happened, the media’s reaction was to label the person… why? to try to make sense of him (psychoanalyze him). So, first he was a Muslim terrorist, and then he was labeled as a Christian fundamentalist. The problem is, if you read the info on him, he doesn’t fit in any of our normal categories, because he isn’t normal.

The Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, the Virginia Tech shooter, these are people that find ideas to feed their hatred and delusional desires. They don’t fit in the cultural boxes we define ‘people groups’ in.

How much of life are we missing, because we wrongfully label people and therefore disregard or ignore them? Do we stay away from authors because we have already labeled them as heretical to our worldviews? filmmakers, artists, celebrities? How often have we labeled somebody as odd or weird, and then after getting to know them, discovered how beautiful they are as people.

Labeling people is sometimes a way of defining them as ‘the other.’ distancing ourselves from them. It is the root of where racism begins.

Our mind needs to structure information, it’s natural. But true open-mindedness is allowing our labels to be questioned. People are far too complex to label.

Often, the first thing that comes to mind when I wake up is what is going to go wrong today, or what will I be responding to? Sometimes I feel like the majority of my day job is either about troubleshooting problems or working on solutions to avoid potential problems. I know, that sounds pessimistic, and it bothered me for a while. Then I realized how much of life is actually about response.

Think about it… how much of what you do is a response to something else? you can even say that reading a book or riding a bike is a response to desire.

All of the great movements in history are about response. Postmodernism is a response to modernism which is a response to pre-modernism. Art, music, film, politics, philosophy, and any cultural genre you can think of includes paradigms in response to prior movements. Today’s technological innovations are a response to the shifting tide of a digital world.

In Christianity, the most influential movement in it’s history ‘The Reformation’ was a response to Middle Age Catholicism. God, in Jesus is a response to the fallen state of man.

Response is not inherently negative… it can be a positive move towards change for the better.

I feel better now.

There’s been a lot of talk about interfaith communities lately, especially from political and spiritual leaders, and also from global organizations. Of course there is no problem in organizing religious groups for social action, or for specific causes. The problem lies when you try to create environments of worship, or unify faiths as one purpose driven community.

From the surface, we are told that interfaith is open-minded, inclusive, and welcoming. After all, since religion does cause a lot of strife in the world, what better way then to unify faiths into one body. Why claim there is one truth, when you could embrace many truths.

The first problem is that Interfaith doesn’t unify religions, it creates a new one. To say that all religions can co-exist in one worship experience or as one worldview is to make a religious claim. It defines a picture of God and a narrative about religious experience.

Secondly, Interfaith is not inclusive but highly exclusive. To say that there are many truths is itself a truth claim that excludes. If you do not believe the Interfaith picture of reality, you are not welcome in the Interfaith community. Like every other religion, you must believe ‘the same truth’ in order to participate. Of course that makes sense, but Interfaith seems to hide behind the ‘we are the only truly inclusive group’ creed.

Lastly, Interfaith is not open-minded, but probably the most close minded of religions. To state that all religions can be unified, even just in worship, is to negate the intricate details and differences between them. When you really study the theology behind the religions, you discover the vast differences in just how God is understood.

It’s interesting that nowadays it is popular to be a spiritual seeker. It’s cool to say that you are searching for faith. It’s not cool to say that you found it.

Maybe it’s because when you say that you found faith, it requires a commitment to an interpretation of reality. And maybe people are afraid of commitment. However, seekers are already committed to a worldview whether they realize it or not. To interpret faith as simply a mystery that can never be found, is still committing to a picture of reality.

This, of course is different from doubting. I think it’s natural that everybody has periods of doubt in their faith commitments. But if the roots of commitment have been well grounded, meaning that there is a sense in which truth has taken hold of you, then certainty begins to form.

This idea of ‘truth taking hold’ has always been interesting to me because it’s more about an external influence. Maybe one of the problems with spiritual seeking, is that people tend to look inwards rather then outwards. I don’t know about you, but inwards can be a very dark and confusing place. If you truthfully look inside yourself at your intentions and what matters most to you, you’ll probably find selfishness and pride.

Of course external faith doesn’t mean signing up to a world religion or established system of religiosity. Much of that stuff is either culturally defined or packaged to make you feel good about yourself. Jesus hated that kind of externally influenced religion more then anything.

At some point, I came to realize that seeking faith is more about being sought; Finding faith is more about being found; discovery is more about being revealed. And so it goes.