Things that Come in a Box

Cereal
Appliances
Books
Rings

People
Genders
God

The human brain is very good at classification and pattern recognition. Based on even a very small amount of evidence the brain can leap to a conclusion. This is good for avoiding being eaten by a tiger, but not so good when it comes to our relationships with others.

One doesn't need to look far to see how even the church tends to box, classify and divide people. There are groups for youth, groups for elderly, for women, for men, for singles, for college singles, for career singles, for the "re-singled", and so on down any set of classification you wish to explore. Take a look at Christian bookshelves. One example in point: "Every man's battle: winning the war on sexual purity." Really? Every man's battle? Classifying sexual purity as a male issue seems, generously, to be a viewpoint at least 50 years behind the times if not more, which I suppose is par for the church as a whole.

Sometimes it makes sense to group and classify. For example, those struggling with particular addictions or traumas can receive great benefit from a community focused on that particular issue. But due to the nature of our minds, it is also exceeding easy to go much further down the road of division and classification than is really beneficial to anyone. Its easy to ignore someone's opinion once you've labeled them as insignificant or even to treat someone as less than human once you've labeled them as such. We must always be on guard against these divisions, which Christ has reconciled in his body.