People Aren’t Monoliths. Shatter the Stereotypes.

In an interview with Charlie Rose back in November 2016, Jon Stewart analyzed the Presidential election results. While liberal, Stewart had harsh words for liberals. They will tell others not to view Muslims as monoliths, as well as other oft-classified people groups; however, they often turn around and treat those who voted for Mr. Trump as monoliths. People aren’t monoliths; we are infinite contradictions, like America itself.

Just because someone voted for Mr. Trump, it doesn’t make them racist, Steward asserted; they may have voted for him because they feared their insurance premiums would skyrocket. I suppose the argument could go the other way, too: just because someone voted for Ms. Clinton doesn’t mean they aren’t racist; someone could have voted for her because of her environmental policies and not really care about ethnic minorities.

While Stewart and I are not saying all cats are grey, or that it doesn’t matter how one votes, he and I are saying that we need to make sure we don’t treat people like monoliths; we need to shatter stereotypes. It is important that we approach people as complex, and as infinite contradictions, as noted earlier. Rather than label people in terms of one-size-fits-all constructs, we need to ask them about their hopes and fears, why they have such hopes and fears, and how they came to their passion positions.

All too often, we allow political candidates, media outlets and peer pressure groups to herd us into false binary positions that reduce us to this or that stance, and this or that value. Facebook and Twitter can feed into the problem, too. Seemingly everything you need to know about an issue or a person can be summed up in 140 characters; but we are all characters with quirks that cannot be summed up and shipped off into cyberspace so smoothly.

So, allow people to name and define themselves. Ask open questions rather than back them into a corner. What’s to say they can’t turn around and do the same to you? Such jockeying for position and control in conversations leaves all of us between a monolithic rock and a monolithic hard place. When that happens, we all becomes so rigidly predictable.

One final word. We who are Christians should be all the more concerned for safeguarding against stereotypes. After all, God commanded that we not construct graven images in his honor: “You shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 26:1; ESV). No rock or stone can sum up the deity. God is infinitely mysterious. Thus, we need to ‘allow’ God to narrate and disclose himself to us. Moreover, Jesus did not come to earth as a soundbite or as a twitter feed, but as a storied person whom we cannot ultimately define. We can only describe him over and over again from a variety of ways in view of his dwelling in our midst. Then there is the rest of us: since we are all created in God’s image, we should not reduce one another in all our creaturely mystery to graven images or monoliths either. So, honor God and one another: destroy the idols and shatter the stereotypes.