Nine Minutes More

"It is true that there are certain things that libertarians believe that will seem just shocking and scandalous to most people unless we're given 10 minutes to explain ourselves." At least.

Tim Woods, a scholar at the libertarian Ludwig Von Mises Institute, is being quoted in the latest issue of Time magazine ("Rand and Ron," 7 June 2010). In response, journalist Michael Crowley writes "that's about nine minutes more than anyone in modern politics gets."

Actually, Misters Woods and Crowley, it's more than anyone gets these days. Decades ago, preachers, politicians and professors could wax and wane for an hour or two and the sermon or speech was socially acceptable. That was before TV and radio even, certainly long before sound bites and 24/7 cycles and instant messaging.

I tend to be what is called a biblical theologian rather than a systematic theologian – it would take more than 10 minutes to explain the difference. I like my theology as well as my politics anchored in a Scriptural context several thousand years long and Church Universal wide, and I don't like said Word reconstructed to fit my (or anyone's) system du jour. So I tend to bristle at what my friend George Paul Wood calls taxonomy when it comes to sorting out political (or religious) classifications. I much prefer a thorough analysis of where a person stands than a sound bite that conveniently stuffs said person in a hole for safekeeping, because people rarely stuff so conveniently.

George does have a point – to a point. But labels are not the end-all of understanding. And on this I think he would agree with me because he is a thinking Labelist. (As I wrote another thinking Facebook friend, Jack Niewold, the other day, there are two kinds of people in this world, those who categorize people and those who don't.) Don't get me wrong. Labels can be useful – and certainly Jesus did use labels, as Jack reminded me in a Facebook thread that lasted at least 10 minutes. But labels no more define a person than skin does. Which is to say, labels do work – but only to a point.

When life is going at the speed of light as it tends to do in our own day and age, who has time to think, to process, to analyze, to look at all sides of any one issue? Maybe it is better to boil it all down to two simplistic poles and let them go at each other for five minutes on Fox or MSNBC – far more entertaining than listening to a Libertarian or a Communitarian, Calvinist or Arminian or Sacramentalist actually talk out his or her ideas ad nauseum.

But this is where we miss it. Talking something out is not just for supposedly thinking people. Talking something out is a part of relating, of hanging together, of coming to understand another as more than just the sum of a few short conclusions. And some of the best relaters are those who, while they cannot put two words together, do know how to hang together.

One of the headlines in today's news cycle is that Tipper and Al Gore are calling it quits after 40 years, hardly newsworthy in my book. Except that one sound biter is saying that is an accomplishment because people live longer these days and 40 years of commitment is a long time.

Well, it sure is. And I'm barely over halfway there with my bride of 23 years. But 40 years is not all that long to really, truly understand another. I won't comment on the Gores' predicament. I only say, generally speaking, that 40 years is only when you get to the end of the beginning stage of understanding another, be it your spouse or someone on the other side of your religious or political spectrum.

If I did wear labels more easily, I might call myself a Libertarian or a Communitarian or a Calvinist or an Arminian or a Sacramentalist or an anti-Sacramentalist. But I don't wear labels very easily and it mostly has to do with not wanting someone to stop listening after one minute. Even if they don't have ten minutes, I don't want to give them the satisfaction of thinking they can move on simply because they have found a useful label for me. They are free to move on. They are not free to think they so easily understand me.