Unlabeled

“To define is to limit.”
Oscar Wilde

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Walt Whitman

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
William Shakespeare

“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.”
John Dewey

“What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are moments when the soul just... flinches. It does not protest loudly, does not shout or rebel in the ways that make headlines or hashtags. It just quietly, stubbornly refuses to be reduced. I remember a women’s conference. Polished, well-lit, and punctuated by cheerful declarations of identity. We were all encouraged to “name who we are”—an exercise meant to foster clarity, rootedness, perhaps even empowerment. The speaker went first, modeling obedience: “I am a child of God. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a speaker...” She smiled with the serene satisfaction of a woman who had drawn neat boundaries around her being. The room nodded along. And I sat there, still. Not because I did not love Jesus. Not because I did not see the goodness of wifehood or motherhood or meaningful vocation. But because something in me resisted. Not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Not ego. Just... truth. Because a handful of tidy words, no matter how noble, cannot contain the complexity of what God is doing in a human soul. Because when we start to define, we begin to limit, and we were not made for limits.

The Tyranny of Naming
The urge to name things is ancient. Adam’s first task in Eden was to name the animals. There is power in naming—a kind of God-given stewardship. But power becomes a prison when we turn it inward, slicing our souls into manageable titles, presenting them like a résumé of righteousness. We love boxes. Wife. Mother. Leader. Organizer. Analyst. Type One. Enneagram Five. ISTJ. Investigator. Add a few adjectives for flavor—steady, dependable, principled—and voilà: the modern soul, distilled into something palatable. Marketable. Shareable. We love labels because they promise clarity. We do it to each other. We do it to ourselves. Sometimes the impulse is born of love, sometimes of fear, sometimes of pride. But clarity is not the same as truth and naming does not sanctify. Labels may organize, but they do not resurrect. They may comfort, but they cannot consecrate. They give shape to something—but often at the cost of depth. The soul is not a tagline. The soul is something God breathed into dust. You do not brand that. What we often call “clarity” is sometimes just control. We name in order to manage. We reduce in order to feel safe. We define in order to hold chaos at bay. But there is no courage in containment. There is no faith in the formula. And there is no holiness in reducing an image-bearer to a role, a season, or a sound bite. We crave to be known—and yet we settle to be named.

The Bible Is Full of the Unlabeled
Have you noticed how often Scripture leaves people unnamed? The woman with the alabaster jar. The man born blind. The thief on the cross. The widow with two mites. The woman at the well. No carefully curated list of “who I am.” Just fragments. Encounters. Moments of divine interruption. And that was enough. Their names are not forgotten because they are unimportant. Their names are forgotten because they were never the point. The point was Jesus. But is the way they were mentioned not a label? No. These are descriptors, not identities. They are not names in the biblical sense. They are narrative placeholders, not declarations of essence. Scripture reveals them through a single encounter— a defining moment—but it does not reduce them to it. The woman with the alabaster jar is not remembered for her status or her story, but for the beauty of her act. Jesus did not call her a sinner, or a mourner, or even a woman—He said, “She has done a beautiful thing to me” (Mark 14:6, ESV). The thief on the cross is not remembered for his crime but for his cry: “Jesus, remember me.” And Christ did not respond with a label. He responded with a promise: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43, ESV). The man born blind was not an object lesson in suffering. He was a vessel for glory. Jesus said it was “that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3, ESV). The woman at the well—known for her shame, her failed loves, her isolation—was not labeled by Jesus. He offered her living water. He spoke truth, yes, but He did not leave her with a label. He left her with a testimony: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did” (John 4:29, ESV). These are not labels in the modern sense: frozen, self-identifying summaries. They are narrative windows—moments of divine interruption that reveal God’s mercy, not human merit. They are fragments, not finish lines. More importantly, Jesus never addressed them by these terms. The world called them by what they had done, or what had been done to them. Jesus called them according to grace. Their stories are not remembered because they were labeled, but because they were seen. There is something merciful in that. God does not need you to be branded to be beloved. You are not less holy because you resist naming yourself. You are not less faithful because you cannot fit your soul into a single sentence. There is a sacredness in being unnamed and yet still seen. There is a dignity in refusing to be defined by anything less than God Himself.

The Danger of “I Am...”
Moses asked God for His name, and God gave the answer that ends all answers: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14, ESV). Only God has the right to speak from the place of absolute being. Only God can say, “I AM” without qualification. The rest of us must learn to say, “I am what He says I am.” The world craves quick clarity. Sometimes the church does too. Woman of God. Proverbs 31 wife. Titus 2 mentor. We mean well, but we box with our affirmations. And sometimes the boxes we use to elevate are still cages. Whenever we begin to string together a list of identities—“I am a mother, I am a leader, I am a this or that”—we walk a razor-thin edge between testimony and idolatry. Between acknowledging God’s work in our lives and claiming the work as our worth. The point is not to throw away all roles or titles. They serve a purpose. They help us relate. But they are not the essence. They are not the fire in the bush. They are not the breath that brings dust to life. Your essence is hidden in Christ (Colossians 3:3). Hidden. Not hashtagged. Not spotlighted. Not announced with trumpets or printed on lanyards at a conference. Hidden. That is not failure. That is freedom.

Known, Not Branded
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12 (ESV), “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Before we ever arrive at the fullness of knowing ourselves, we are already fully known. Not as insert title here, but as souls—unfolding, aching, complex, holy. This is a wildly un-American thought. It does not fit on a nametag. It does not sell well. There is no “elevator pitch” for the mystery of being made in the image of the Eternal. And yet that is exactly what we are: Imago Dei —not imago label. What if the highest truth about you is not something you can say about yourself? What if it is something only God knows? It might be the Spirit gently drawing you back from the edge of performance and into the quiet place where God names you “Mine.” Isaiah 62:2 (ESV) says, “You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give.” Not one you give yourself. Not one the culture assigns. Not one that gathers applause or wins cohesion. A name spoken by the One who made you. A name formed not from your accomplishments but from His affection. To be known by God is not the same as branding ourselves for Christian consumption. It is not the same as constructing a spiritual résumé. It is not even the same as claiming “identity in Christ” when what we really mean is a slightly shinier version of self-help. It is something quieter, deeper, and far more terrifying: It means God sees the whole of us. The fears we dress in achievement. The longing we mask with order. The unspoken aches that words will never fully carry. He knows the self we do not know how to name. Yes, we are children of God. But that is not a label. It is a re-creation. It is not a descriptor we invent to feel secure; it is a name spoken from heaven, sealed by blood, and breathed into us by the Spirit. Even that identity is not one we define. It is bestowed. When we begin to surround it with qualifiers—wife, mother, leader, creative—we may not be sinning, but we are starting to flatten the soul. When we try to shore up the eternal with the temporary, something vital is lost. There is something eternal in us that resists being captured by the circumstantial. To label is to seize what is fleeting. But the soul—your soul—is not fleeting. It is layered, unfinished, still becoming. Known by God alone in its fullness. And maybe that is the truest name after all: Known by God. And in the knowing, you are never reduced—only deepened. Never boxed in—only drawn out. Never limited— only becoming.

So, dear reader, let the world keep asking for something tidy. Let it itch for categories, for clarity, for a name that fits on a sticker. You were not made for stickers. You were made to bring Him glory. Let the world label. Let the conferences list. Let the well-meaning Christian influencers lay out their five-fold identity frameworks. You can be kind without conforming. You can listen without yielding. You can nod without agreeing. And then you can go home, close the door, open your Bible, and sit in the presence of the only One who names without limiting. Who sees without simplifying. Who knows without diminishing. You are not failing for refusing to play along. You are simply waiting to be called by the name only He knows. You were made to be known by the One who sees in full. Not boxed, not branded, not simplified—but seen. Known by God.