Love the Team, Hate the Fans

Have you ever heard an atheist (or some other person of another faith) say something like, "I don't mind God, I just can't stand his followers!". Well, I used to somewhat understand that sentiment, but now, living in Canuck central (and being a non-Canuck fan), I completely understand what they mean. I used to be indifferent to the Canucks. Growing up in Ontario, and being a Leaf fan (and still am...I know, pass judgement and ridicule), my hatred was more for the Sens and Habs. The Canucks, Flames and Oilers were teams that I didn't hate, didn't love, but wanted to see do decently well. Then I moved here to BC. EVERYONE is a crazy Canuck fan. Every game is meticulously scrutenized. Every hit by the Canucks is a clean hit, every hit against is the dirtiest hit in NHL history. Every loss is seen as the end of the world, and every win is viewed as the Stanley Cup winning game. Yes, I am emebellishing a little here, but I think you get my point. Also, I do want to clairify that, you can substitute any team for the Canucks. I know Leaf fans have a bad reputation so feel free to substitute "Leafs" for Canucks if it makes you more comfortable (or whichever team you want). Anyway, it gets frustrating. When all you hear on the sports radio is people calling in saying that this team is guaranteed to win the cup, and probably sweep their way there, you get really frustrated with it. I've gone from indifferent to the Canucks to wanting them to lose every game they play. I want them to fail, miserably bad. So that takes me back to the phrase, "I don't mind God, but I hate his followers". Christians sometimes (ok...quite often) act like bad fans of a sports team. When someone oposses our beliefs in some way, like wanting to take the Lords Prayer out of schools, teach evolution, promote gay marriage or whatever, we feel that it is a brutally dirty play. It's as if Daniel Sedin got blindsided when the puck was on the other side of the rink. We want blood. We call for suspensions. We call for the law to step in and stop these "anti-Christians" from taking away everything we stand for. We feel that our rights are being stomped on. But as soon as we try to oppose something. When we fight for abortion to be illegal, or for all Presidents and Prime Ministers to be Christians, or for prayer to be brought back into school. When we fight for "don't-ask-don't-tell", Creation to be solely taught as the origin of the world, and we try to ostracize the other faiths, we see it as a clean hit. We see it as "just playing the puck, a solid hockey hit". And it frustrates the hell out of everyone else. I realize that saying "hell" is proabably getting a bunch of you angry at me, but I feel that the words need to be strong. People who used to not really care about Christianity, either way, suddenly oppose it strongly, because of the "fans". It makes you wonder how badly we are screwing this up. Do we want to be known as the "worst fans in history"? Ranked up there ahead of the Red Sox, and Yankee faithful? We have to do something. It's not all about us. We have to keep our focus on God, on Christ, and on His message. We have to focus on LOVE, focus on compassion. I'm not blameless in this either. I mess up often and make Christianity look idiotic from time to time too. But we have to stop this. We have to make sure that, us "fans", us followers of Christ make sure to show true sportsmanship. We too often act like the Bieber fanatics who vandalized that girls Wikipedia page because she beat out Bieber in the Grammy's. Bieber didn't condone their actions at all, and it made HIM look bad and caused the haters to grow stronger. Or we act like the Habs fans who rioted after Maurice Richard was suspended for the rest of the season, casting a bad light on an otherwise classic and historical organization. The worse we the fans act, the worse it looks for God, and Christianity. Do we not understand that people reject God because of the way we act? Why does that not bother us more than it does? Why does it not cause us to change how we live? Why are we ok with the idea that people want to believe in God, but can't because of the way we treat them? Something has to change.