Beyond Labels: Seeing the Image of God in Every Face

Have you ever scrolled through social media and watched a thoughtful discussion devolve into name-calling within three comments? Or perhaps you’ve been at a family dinner where someone’s political opinion instantly transformed them from “Uncle Bob” into “that liberal” or “that conservative” in the eyes of others at the table. We live in an age where complex human beings—each carrying their own stories, wounds, hopes, and dreams—are reduced to single-word labels that allow us to file them away in mental boxes marked “ally” or “enemy,” “good” or “bad,” “us” or “them.”

This tendency to label isn't new, though our digital age has certainly amplified it. The ancient human heart has always found it easier to categorize than to understand, to dismiss than to engage, to judge than to love. Yet this practice strikes at the very heart of what it means to see others as God sees them—as irreplaceable persons bearing the divine image, worthy of dignity regardless of their opinions, mistakes, or affiliations.

 

The Ancient Art of Dismissal

In the Gospels, we encounter Jesus navigating a society riddled with labels. The Pharisees had their categories: “sinner,” “tax collector,” “Samaritan,” “unclean.” These weren’t merely descriptive terms; they were dismissals, ways of determining who was worthy of engagement and who could be safely ignored or condemned. When the Pharisees saw Jesus dining with tax collectors and sinners, they were scandalized precisely because He refused to honor their system of labels (Matthew 9:10-11).

Consider the woman at the well in John 4. To the disciples, she was simply “a Samaritan woman”—two labels that, in their cultural context, meant she was doubly unworthy of a rabbi's attention. The townspeople knew her as the woman with five husbands, currently living with a man who wasn’t her husband. These labels told a story: outcast, immoral, unreliable. Yet Jesus saw past every label to engage with her as a person capable of theological discussion, spiritual thirst, and evangelical fervor. By the chapter's end, this “labeled” woman becomes the first missionary to the Samaritans, bringing many to faith through her testimony (John 4:39).

The Greek word often translated as "hypocrite" in Jesus' teachings—hypokritēs—originally referred to an actor, someone who wore a mask to play a role. When we label others, we force them to wear the masks we’ve chosen for them, refusing to see the actual person beneath. We become directors in a play where we’ve assigned everyone their roles without their consent, and worse, we begin to believe the play is reality.

 

The Comfort of Categories

Why do we find labeling so tempting? St. Augustine, in his Confessions, observed that the human mind naturally seeks to organize and categorize as a way of understanding the world: "The mind commands the body, and is instantly obeyed; the mind commands itself, and meets with resistance" (Confessions, Book VIII, Chapter 9). We label because it gives us the illusion of understanding without the hard work of actual comprehension. It's mentally exhausting to hold the full complexity of each person we encounter, to remember that the person who cut us off in traffic might be rushing to the hospital, or that our political opponent might share our deepest values but differ on how to achieve them.

Labeling also serves a protective function. If I can categorize you as “dangerous” or “wrong” based on a single characteristic, I don’t have to risk the vulnerability of genuine encounter. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote prophetically about this in Life Together: "The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community." Labels allow us to love our dream of who should be in our community rather than loving the actual people God has placed before us.

The church father John Chrysostom warned against this tendency in his homilies on Matthew, noting that when we judge others by external categories, we “pass sentence on ourselves” because we fail to see that we too could be reduced to unflattering labels if someone chose to see us that way (Homily 23 on Matthew). Every saint has a past, as the saying goes, and every sinner has a future—but labels freeze people in a single moment of their journey.

 

The Violence of Reduction

When we label someone, we commit a form of violence against their dignity. We reduce the imago Dei—the image of God within them—to a caricature. Genesis 1:27 declares that humanity was created "in the image of God," using the Hebrew word tselem, which denotes a physical representation that points to a greater reality. When we label and dismiss others, we're essentially saying that this divine image can be overwritten by our human categories.

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas spoke of the “face of the other” as an ethical summons that resists our attempts at categorization. When we truly encounter another person’s face—not just their physical features but their fundamental otherness and dignity—we are called out of ourselves into responsibility. Labels allow us to avoid this encounter, to look at someone without truly seeing their face.

Jesus’ command to "love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) becomes impossible when we reduce our enemies to labels. How can you love a label? You can only love a person. The moment we begin to see the human being behind the label—their fears that might drive their anger, their wounds that might explain their bitterness, their sincere beliefs that might underlie their positions we find threatening—we begin the hard work of love that Christ demands.

 

The Discipline of Curiosity

So how do we resist this ancient temptation? How do we train ourselves to see people rather than labels?

First, we must cultivate what we might call “sacred curiosity.” When you find yourself reaching for a label—whether it’s “racist,” “snowflake,” “fundamentalist,” “heretic,” or any other dismissive category—pause and ask yourself: “What do I actually know about this person’s story? What experiences might have shaped their views? What fears or hopes might be driving their words or actions?”

Thomas Aquinas taught that truth is found in the “adequation of mind to reality” (Summa Theologiae, I, Q.16, A.1). Labels are almost always inadequate to reality because they simplify what is complex. A person who makes a racially insensitive comment might be acting from ignorance rather than malice, might be repeating what they heard growing up without examination, or might be struggling with their own fears and insecurities. This doesn’t excuse harmful behavior, but it opens the door to transformation rather than mere condemnation.

Second, practice what we might call “autobiographical humility.” Remember the labels that could be applied to you based on your worst moments, your most poorly expressed opinions, or your past mistakes. The apostle Paul never forgot that he could be labeled “persecutor of the church” (1 Corinthians 15:9), yet God’s grace transformed him into an apostle. This memory kept him humble and compassionate toward others’ failings.

Third, engage in the discipline of encounter. It's easy to label people we know only through social media posts or news soundbites. It's much harder to label someone when you've shared a meal with them, heard about their children, learned about their struggles. Jesus' ministry was marked by radical table fellowship—He ate with everyone from Pharisees to prostitutes, refusing to let social labels determine His relationships.

 

The Slow Work of Understanding

Gregory of Nazianzus once wrote, “We must overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, severity with gentleness” (Oration 4.96). When we label and dismiss others, we choose the quick path of severity over the slow work of gentleness. Understanding another person—truly understanding them—takes time, patience, and humility. It requires us to admit that our first impressions might be wrong, that people are more complex than their worst opinions, and that grace can work transformations we never expected.

This doesn't mean we cannot make moral judgments or stand against genuine evil. Jesus certainly did both. But notice how He did it: He reserved His harshest words for those who used religious labels to exclude and oppress others, while showing remarkable gentleness to those whom society had labeled as beyond redemption. He called out systems of oppression while inviting individual oppressors (like Zacchaeus) to transformation through personal encounter.

 

Conclusion: Living Beyond Labels

As you go through this week, pay attention to the moments when you’re tempted to label someone—whether it's the driver who cuts you off (“idiot”), the coworker who disagrees with you (“clueless”), or the public figure whose views you find repugnant (insert your preferred political epithet here). In each moment, pause and intentionally replace that label with a single question: “What story is behind this person’s face?” By doing so, you are not condoning their actions or agreeing with their beliefs. You are simply refusing to reduce them to a caricature. You are choosing the slow, hard, and holy work of seeing the divine image within them, even when it is obscured by pain, anger, or misunderstanding. This is the path of grace, the way of love, and the only way to build a community that truly reflects the God who sees us, not for our labels, but for who we were created to be.