Categorization
In the Western world we have inherited a significant predilection for categorization.
This impulse likely derives all the way from our Greek philosophical progenitors who attempted to ascertain how things work and why things are the way they are in a systematic way. Any kind of attempt toward a systemization will almost invariably lead to the impulse to categorize; otherwise, how can one make sense of the data one is systematizing?
And yet the Greek philosophers still sought to understand their environment in more cohesive and coherent terms. As we have expanded our understanding and insights into the world we have encouraged the move toward specialization. Specialization can only really exist when people have strictly circumscribed various disciplines, and this is being done to ever narrower degrees as our knowledge and understanding expands.
Yet this impulse toward categorization in the Western mindset goes well beyond knowledge and its disciplines. Modern Westerners have established categories for seemingly everything. We categorize different groups of people based on our experiences and prejudices. We categorize our lives based on various events, milestones, or experiences. We even categorize ourselves, looking at ourselves and conducting ourselves differently in various environments and contexts.
This Western impulse to categorize has become so thoroughly enmeshed in our understanding that we cannot imagine the world otherwise. We assume everyone everywhere has participated in such categorizations. The way we lump ourselves, others, and all things into various categories is so normal for us we assume it must be the case for others as well.
It is not as if categorization is inherently a bad thing. We have been able to advance human knowledge and understanding in significant ways on account of establishing and maintaining categories and standards for exploring and learning in those categories. We all very much want specialists to be very well versed in their specialties. Many insights and connections can be made within the disciplines of various categories which may not have been as evident or perceptible otherwise.
Nevertheless, despite Western conceit, such levels of categorization are not inherent or intrinsic to all humanity. Many other cultures have envisioned their world in different ways and did not feel the impulse to categorize to the extent manifest in modern Western thinking. And from those cultures we can obtain and appreciate some critique of our impulse toward categorization.
We are only beginning to grapple with the ugly, sinful, and abhorrent heritage inherent in the Western categorizations of various people. From the beginning the Scriptures indicate all humans derive from Adam and are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:1-2:3, Acts 17:26); people may be part of different nations, but none are intrinsically better or worse than any other. Those in the West saw themselves as the “superior” and “master” race and opined on the “subhuman” origins of other races; within living memory the superiority and supremacy of the white race was still held as “common sense” which “everyone understood.” Plenty of people today presume themselves superior to others on account of the category of people in which they have placed themselves and look down on those whom they have placed in other, “lesser” categories.
Categorization breeds such dehumanization and depersonalization. Much has been built regarding various forms of stereotyping masquerading as categorizations. People are defined by their generation, their place of ancestry, their current geographic location, their political proclivities, their income level, their education level, their religious affiliations, and such like. People then assume they know all about others based on the alignment of these various categorical boxes. While it is likely many people in a similar stage of life or framework may have many beliefs and feelings in common, few people fit entirely neatly in any individual box or category. Have you ever felt alienated or dismissed because someone identified you as fitting into a given category and thus assumed you thus must affirm or believe a given set of ideas or perform a given set of practices? Furthermore, how many people shift their views in order to fit within these categories because they have been pigeonholed into such categories? How much better might our discourse and interpersonal relations be if we did not assume we understood what people believed or practiced merely based on certain demographic categories?
Our impulse to categorize often leads to a failure of imagination in an inability to perceive a greater whole. While Western categorical and specialist approaches in medicine have led to significant advancements in understanding, the “silo effect” is very real, and many people have endured great suffering because their difficulties cross different specialties and their medical practitioners seem incapable of seeing the whole picture. Many times, great advancements and developments in one specialized field could well illuminate others, yet there is no generalist who can be found to make such connections. Advancements in specialties generally outpace ethical and moral considerations. Such is how we now have many technological advancements which involve a nontrivial chance of the devastation of human life on the planet that seem to continue to advance without any sort of check or restriction.
Personal categorization remains the breeding ground of hypocrisy. We can easily fall prey to the temptation to separate out our “work lives” from our “personal lives,” and especially our “Christian” lives from either or both, despite the exhortation to bring the Reign of God in Christ to bear in every aspect of our lives (cf. Ephesians 5:21-6:9, etc.). The impulse to specialize has also led many Christians to justify themselves in their lack of experience and effort in many aspects of the faith: they have become used to leaving various specialties to “the professionals,” and thus imagine they can leave the work of the faith to the “religious professionals” and just keep paying them and all will be well, even though the work of the “religious professionals” is really to equip said Christians so they can also jointly participate in the work of faith (Ephesians 4:11-16)!
Obsessions with categorizations have often led many to fall prey to category errors in the interpretation of Scripture. Far too often we are tempted to invent categories, impose them on the Scriptures, and then come to conclusions quite foreign and strange to the Biblical text on account of them. This temptation exists across all the various spectra of belief and faith. The premise of same-sex sexual relationship affirmation can only be sustained by imposing on the Scriptures the Victorian-era categorizations of sexuality in terms of “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” and then presuming since Paul could not have conceived of a “loving same sex sexual relationship,” such are not condemned. At no point in these conversations is the conceit of the legitimacy of the new categorizations ever questioned despite the fact queer theory would completely undermine the Victorian framework, and this remains true even of those who are on the other side of the spectrum, who have normalized the same framework and thus find ways to commend “heterosexuality” over “homosexuality.” It is worth noting how the Roman framework of understanding the honor/shame of sexual behavior in terms of penetrator/penetrated is also not assumed, commended, or justified in Scripture. Instead, Scripture speaks regarding sexual conduct, not exhorting anyone to “heterosexuality” or any specific kind of “-sexuality” but chastity (1 Corinthians 6:12-20, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8).
Sometimes these categorizations may even be based on distinctions witnessed in Scripture and yet too much can be made of them. A notable example of this regards the nature of the church. In Scripture we can discern uses of ekklesia which speak of what we call the “church universal,” the one body of all believers (e.g. Romans 12:3-8), and other uses of ekklesia which speak of what we call the “local church,” an individual congregation or a group of individual congregations (e.g. Romans 16:16). Much effort is then expended regarding the attempt to distinguish between these two categories and to systematize the portrayal of each. And yet the Apostles throughout use ekklesia for both and do not make explicit distinctions, most likely because individual congregations of the Lord’s people should reflect the universal body at a given place and time. Thus, even when our categorizations retain some merit, we must be careful lest we make much more of those categorizations than the inspired authors ever intended.
Considering things in terms of categories is not merely a Western phenomenon, and it is not inherently or intrinsically bad. Yet as with all things involving humanity, we can easily make categories absolute or view or use categories in corrupt ways. Such abuses and corruption in categorization have led to many disastrous results in human history and have been part of how horrible atrocities have been rationalized and executed. We do best to hold to categories lightly, recognizing their utility while cognizant of their limitations. We must resist the failure of imagination which comes from uncritical acceptance and clinging to categories and categorization. We do best when we subject all things to God in Christ and seek to bring His reign to bear in all things so we can obtain the resurrection of life!
Ethan R. Longhenry
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