Annie is making a good point here. When I was in college, I had a teacher who was in the Vietnam War, and he told us that they were taught to use the slang term for the Vietnamese soldiers because it de-humanized and de-individualized them - it took them off the same level as themselves and made it easier to pull the trigger to kill them. They were no longer men with wives and children, but rather just a vague group of hated people - like a pack of mangy annoying dogs or something. When we give people a label that they don't readily accept (I readily accept the label "woman" and "christian", for example, but not "liberal" or "legalist"), it tends to set the person on a different (lower) spiritual level than us and hence makes it easier to have un-Christ-like attitudes towards the person and tune out all they have to say. I've seen it so often here - once a person has a label in their mind towards someone else, they tune out all the person has to say or they decide to disagree with whatever the person says no matter what the topic is.
Some conversations around here look a little like this:
Mr/Mrs Labeler: I love Hershey's chocolate!
Mr/Mrs Labeled: Chocolate is very good!
Mr/Mrs Labeler: If you're not going to agree with the Scripture on this topic, then stay out of it!
Mr/Mrs Labeled: Hershey's is a great brand, but have you ever tried Dove?
Mr/Mrs Labeler: Why do you have to criticize everything I say?!?
and so on and so on and so on
