I hate labels.

I hate it when people either a) categorize entire philosophies with a simple label and/or b) dismiss or support those philosophies simply by referring to the label. Examples:

• "He's going to church there? I heard that was kind of emerging church."
• "As fundamental independent Baptists, we believe that..."
• "That's very postmodernist."
• "Are you a Calvinist or an Arminian?"
• "That viewpoint is very liberal."
• "That's an extremely Democratic way of thinking."

I don't like being categorized under a generic label. I refuse to describe myself as Republican (there's quite a bit of Libertarian in there!), postmodernist, Calvinist, or Arminian - although there are elements of each of these in me. I especially don't like seeing my beliefs dismissed under a label (e.g. "That's a very postmodernist way of looking at it!"), and I especially don't like seeing someone "prove" his/her point simply by referring to a label (e.g. "Well, as Republicans we believe...") C. S. Lewis coined a term to describe such intellectual sloppiness: Bulverism. He wrote in his essay, "God in the Dock,"

"The modern method [Note: This essay was written in 1941.] is to assume without discussion that [a man] is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became to be so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism.” Some day I am going the write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father - who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third - “Oh, you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.”"

Precisely!

There is one label I accept and embrace, however: "Christ-follower."