The Us is Them

Remember this kid?

In 2002 this picture exploded all over the internet.  The first time I saw it the child had an Ohio State "O" on his cheek.  Since then I've seen him as a Virginia Tech fan, Boston Red Sox fan, Michigan Wolverines fan, LA Lakers fan, Manchester United fan, and Alabama Crimson Tide fan, thanks to various different photoshopped versions of this 5 year old and his face paint.

You can read the whole story and what the picture is really about here. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mikey-wilson-middle-finger-kid

This is actually a young dutch soccer fan by the name of Mikey Wilson.  Overnight his picture became a symbol of extreme fandom among various sports.

You'll see from the link the story is in fact a little more awkward and delicate than just a 5 year old boy hating on his opposing team.

It became a sensation for many reasons, it's funny, it can be photo manipulated to look like he's a fan of any team anybody wants, but there's one more reason, maybe the biggest one.

Us vs Them.

In Psychology, it's well documented how powerful Us vs Them mentality can be.  We love feeling like we're part of one group, and that our group is better than the others.

It happens in sports which is one of the purest forms of Us vs Them, but it's also found in many other facets of life.  One of the more notable ones is Christianity.

Christians, some of them anyway, take Us vs Them to an entirely new and previously unknown level.

Yes there's the obvious expression of Us vs Them among Christians, namely Christians (us) vs The World (them); but for many Christians that's not even the most extreme form.

Many Christians are experts at explaining to you how they're different or even better than other types of Christians.  The Christian world is full of phrases like, "We do things like this, the other Christians do things like that, this is better and that is worse."

There are dozens kinds of Christians, and many of them have a 3-5 min explanation of how they're different and perhaps better than the other kinds of Christians.

Two interesting ironies here; The first is that many of these differentiations are often defined and adhered to completely by people, in other words they're not Biblical or given to us by Jesus.

The second irony comes from Jesus himself, namely John 17, or what many people call the Unity Prayer.

Here, Jesus prays that his believers "may all be one", literally one of the last things he says before he's arrested.  I find the timing of that specific prayer very intentional.

You tend to remember last words, final instructions seem to be more important than other instructions.

Jesus meant this specific prayer to stick.  Not just for the men who heard it in the room, but for everyone who would read it after.

Jesus, in his last prayer before being arrested, tells Christians that Us vs Them mentality should not exist among them in any fashion.

It goes without saying that Christians have essentially failed at this instruction.  Obviously, Jesus believes the Us vs Them mentality to be dangerous when it seeps into groups of people who have different visions of living out their faith.

There was never supposed to be Us and Them.

It's just Us.

Frail us, broken us, confused us.

Many of these same Christians take it upon themselves to seek out the most exact forms their lives can take to live out the instructions of Jesus while at the same time seeming to completely disregard this essential passage.

What if Christians decided to think of everyone as "us".  Not just other Christians, but all other people.  Would it change the way we interacted with the world around us?

Frail us, broken us, confused us.

How can we seek to disrupt this Us vs Them mentality among various forms of Christianity when it's been in grained in the Christian culture for generations?  Is it sometimes good?  Is it at a point where it will be impossible to effectively change?  One things for certain; giving the finger to each other is just as bad as giving the finger to the world.