People seem to like to refer to others as part of a group. In this era of political correctness and cancel culture, how can someone refer to people of a group without hazard? We all grew up with a set of shortcut words to describe others. Are those words now deemed offensive? Sometimes we don’t know.
Maybe we need to get beyond typing people be some group characteristic.
Do you ask someone their Sun Sign and then type them as acting a certain way? (I’m a Scorpio. That’s supposed to be bad, I think. I married an Aquarius. That’s supposed to be the worst match. We’ll find out someday…but our next anniversary will be 55.)
Perhaps the Enneagram is your type of choice. Some people treat it similarly to Sun Sign. It’s really meant to help you understand yourself—your positive tendencies, how your negative tendencies appear. You don’t meet someone in a bar and say, “I hope you’re a 7.” Hint: you probably won’t meet a 5 at the bar 😉
OK, the obvious is race, color, religion (or lack thereof), ancestral homeland, and the like.
What happens if we just think of people as, well, people? Humans? Children of God?
I think of the varieties of people Jesus interacted with. He was from Galilee. That was a commerce crossroads area not as isolated as Judea. He could go from Greek to Roman to Syrian to Samaritan to Jew and deal with each individually according to their needs. The gospel writers may have detailed these out of amazement that a Jewish rabbi would interact with so many non-Jewish people and with women so familiarly.
Perhaps we could all take a hint.
Faith Venture 
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