Along with religion and ethics for the Deseret News, I also write about ethnic groups. And I've found "ethics" and "ethnic" often dovetail.
Last week I wrote about an undocumented friend of mine. And to show how unfair labels can be, I used a label to describe him.
The irritated e-mails began rolling in. I spent the morning putting out brush fires.
For what it's worth, the e-mails were right. I'd failed to make my point. And columnists who fail to communicate are as useless as tenors with laryngitis.
But more than that, the episode showed how sensitive people are about being labeled. And they are sensitive with good reason.
A label is a shorthand way of saying, "I don't know you so I'll call you this." Labels — like Jew, Mexican, Born Again, Republican — don't supply information about people. They hide information. They flatten people out into "types."
In short, it may be possible to "communicate" with people we label, but it's impossible to "commune" with them.
And communing is the essence of true religion.
Sometimes, of course, we hang a label on another person for some perceived "higher purpose." In times of war, soldiers often label the enemy with ugly names in order to find enough courage to pull the trigger. But how many American soldiers could kill a man that he knew by name — whose children he knew by name? I'm betting very few.
Just the fact we must train soldiers to "dehumanize" their targets is the true flaw of war — even "righteous" wars.
The theologian Martin Buber wrote about such things in a book called "I and Thou." In early English, people would address folks they didn't know well as "you" and address people they were intimate with as "thou." Buber's point is we have to get on that "thou" level, not only with God but with those around us. If we buy a newspaper from the same guy on the same corner every morning for 30 years but never learn his name, we're missing the heart of religion.
Labels always hinder our getting to know each other. And not just labels in the form of slurs. Impersonal labels — labels like "That crazy lady on Main," "The kid who mops the floor" or "The fat man with bad hair" — put distance between people. We label people and things, of course, because it helps us function in world. We figure there's no way our hearts can go out to every soul we meet.
But what if it could?
The role of religion, Buber says, is to get beyond the tags; to realize not even "God" can be contained by his name.
It's not easy.
Many war veterans struggle to personalize the people of other races that their combat training forced them to depersonalize.
Many people who've been injured by someone of another culture struggle not to project their anger onto the entire group.
Many of us often struggle just to be civil to those we care about.
As for that undocumented friend of mine, I can hardly slap myself on the back for getting past the ugly label the world would pin on him. I may know him a bit better than others do, but that doesn't mean I know him well. People's personalities — like the clothes they wear — come in layers. And my friend and I are just getting our overcoats off. We're just now getting to that "thou" business.
It takes time and energy to turn a "you" into a "thou."
Fortunately, Buber says, we don't have to go it alone. People have God to help them peel away the layers.
In other words, like so many things in life, just getting to know our neighbors often requires divine intervention.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com