I am the worst kind of Georgia fan there is. Lewis Grizzard, a longtime Atlanta newspaper columnist and diehard Bulldog fan, always used to say, “I’m Bulldog born and Bulldog bred, and when I die I’ll be by-God Bulldog dead.” But I’ve got him beat cold. I’m a Dawg fan by choice.
You see, I am not from Atlanta or anywhere else in the state of Georgia. I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My family is almost all diehard LSU fans, and I was too, while I was growing up. Then I moved to Atlanta during high school, and went to college at Georgia. I marched in the Redcoat Band for four years, and went to almost every football game during that time. As a result of my having such an up-close, personal view of Georgia football and being involved in something so close to the heart of Georgia school spirit, I have now identified with Georgia at a basic level and have a devotion that is perhaps impossible to shake. (I still have some partiality toward LSU, but not when they are playing Georgia. This was a bit of a struggle for me during my freshman year at Georgia, but ever since then I have had no problem cheering for Georgia when they play LSU.)
Now I have lived in Atlanta long enough to see that not everyone shares my level of devotion to Georgia. Atlanta is a very diverse and multicultural place, at least when it comes to college football. Every major SEC and ACC school within a day’s drive of Atlanta has a sizeable fan base here. Even schools as far away as Notre Dame, Miami, Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State are well represented here in Atlanta.
What’s more, I have found that there is not a lot of love for Georgia–at least, not outside of the Bulldog nation. This point was brought home to me in graphic detail last weekend at my church’s Labor Day singles retreat. The singles group at my church is a perfect microcosm of the general population of Atlanta–at least when it comes to college football allegiances; almost every major SEC and ACC school within a day’s drive of Atlanta is represented. At one point during the weekend they had a contest where they brought up a Georgia fan and an Auburn fan. Each one was given the opportunity to rally his fellow fans to cheer for their team, and whoever’s fans made the most noise was deemed the winner. Auburn won this contest, largely because there were a lot of impartial people who did not have any real allegiance to Georgia or Auburn, but who sure didn’t want to see Georgia win this contest.
Why is this? Part of this is because a lot of people are fans of staunch Georgia rivals (i. e. Florida, Georgia Tech, Tennessee, and in recent years LSU and South Carolina). It is perfectly understandable that these fans will want to root against Georgia. But a lot of this is because people just don’t like Georgia. The common perception is that Georgia fans are drunk, ignorant, obnoxious rednecks who will get down on their knees and bark, and do other crazy things like that. And to be perfectly honest, who in a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city like Atlanta wants to be associated with anything like that? Because of this, it is easy to see why impartial observers who have no allegiance to Georgia or any of Georgia’s rivals will gladly cheer for whoever is playing Georgia any given week.
Then I think about evangelical Protestant-dom and its relationship with the rest of the world, and I can’t help seeing the parallel. I see that there is not exactly a lot of love out there for us–at least, not outside the world of evangelical Protestant-dom. Now, part of this is because of the Gospel. The Gospel is by its very nature offensive, except to those whom God is drawing to Himself. I get this. But a lot of this has to do with the way we represent ourselves to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees us as loud, obnoxious, intolerant, ignorant zealots. The world looks at us and does not see a community of believers gathered together to lift up the name of Jesus and make Him known to all the world, but instead a group of people gathered together in opposition to drinking, abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, or whatever the hot political issue of the day happens to be. The world sees people who are so committed to the rightness of their ideas that they must overwhelm all other conversation taking place in our culture. The world sees people who are willing to sacrifice significant relationships for the sake of being right.
If we would just take an honest look at ourselves and the way we represent ourselves to the rest of the world, we would see that there are good reasons why the world doesn’t exactly feel the love, and these reasons do not have everything to do with the Gospel. When we take on the political issues of the day with the same zeal as the Gospel, we confuse people as to what we are really all about. Now I’m not saying that abortion and stem cell research are things that we ought not to oppose, or that gay marriage is not a violation of God’s created order. But must we act as if these issues are fundamentally part of the Gospel? Must we act as if it is impossible to be a Christian without absolute agreement with us on these issues? We worry that if we are not loudly proclaiming our position on these issues to the rest of the world, that we will slide toward apostasy and acceptance of immorality. But we have done such a splendiferous job of articulating our beliefs to the rest of the world that there is really no danger of this, and our obsession with it borders on outright hilarious.
And what of our obsession with drinking? For some reason this has become a very hot issue over the past year, especially in the SBC. We are hell-bent on excluding all those who do not agree with us that alcohol is of the devil and that total abstinence from it is a mandatory discipline for all believers–based on what is nothing more than a cultural prejudice with precious little if any Biblical support. The same goes for our views on smoking, cussing, gambling, tattoos, body piercings, and a myriad of other such things. The end result of all this is that a lot of people come away thinking that they could never be Christian because they are not like us and don’t want to be like us.
Our relations with others on an individual basis could stand a lot of improvement as well. A lot of what we call evangelism, or “witnessing” in some circles, involves confronting others with the wrongness of their beliefs or actions and impressing upon them the urgency of the need for them to get right with God. Even if we are not confrontational in our approach to evangelism, we still show a marked level of urgency, as if it means the entire world to us that those whom we evangelize make a decision for Christ that fits within the parameters of what we would call an acceptable declaration of faith.
I have heard horror stories about Christians who go out to eat and leave the waiter/waitress a tract in lieu of a tip. Some waitresses who are subjected to this treatment complain that this is precisely the reason why they are not Christians and don’t want to be Christians. Also, I heard recently that a big part of the reason why Promise Keepers has not been back to Atlanta lately is that a lot of restaurants complained to the Chamber of Commerce that the attendees do not tip well and treat the waiters/waitresses badly. I don’t know if there is any truth to this, but if there were I would not be surprised.
I could never bring myself to be like this. I just don’t feel the need to be urgent or confrontational in my relations with others, even if the end is to bring them to Christ. I tried the confrontational approach once, and it did not work out well at all. God was gracious; the person with whom I tried this approach became a Christian shortly thereafter, and credited my approach as being the thing that pushed her to the point of making that decision. But as I look back on it now, I can’t help feeling regret over the whole thing, and thinking that if that is what I have to do to bring others to Christ then I want no part in it. And I am sure that many others feel the same way; that they can’t or don’t want to be Christian if it means that they have to be like this in their relations with others.
I am still a diehard Georgia fan. It doesn’t matter to me that the rest of the world doesn’t exactly feel the love for Georgia. Football is football, and it will not carry any weight in eternity. But if the world doesn’t feel the love for us as Christians, and if their reasons don’t have anything to do with the Gospel, then that is a big problem.
