Love thy rivals

It’s Thanksgiving night, and I am sitting on my couch with my Saints jersey on and my lucky spoon in hand. This game isn’t an ordinary game — it is a special matchup. A matchup that makes my leg shake and my heart pound regardless of whether my team is winning. This is a rivalry game between the New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons.
The Saints ended up winning this game 26-18, and I was so happy. You get a special feeling when you see your rival lose, but also a heartbreaking feeling when you see your team lose, which is what happened four weeks prior. On Nov. 3, the Falcons had defeated the New Orleans Saints 26-9 in their own stadium, leaving fans furious. The Thanksgiving game was perfect payback and just another spark in the flame of this ever intense rivalry.
To give you a taste of how bitter the relationship is between these two teams, the news commentators had asked players from each team how they felt about their opposition. Players said they would only go to the towns of opposing teams for games; they wouldn’t want to be caught there any other time.
Rivalries can be very intense, and they create a passion that sometimes seems absolutely unreasonable: But they are very real. My ears get red when I see a Falcons jersey or if I see that crimson “A” plastered on a poor fan’s hat. It creates a separation between me and that person because I automatically associate them with a group that I can never get behind. Only recently did I realize rivalries could be much quieter.
In school, I never found a way to fit into the popular kid crowd. I was the kid randomly muttering Shakespere to himself in the hallway while others walked past discussing whether or not their heads were too big for a prom king crown. While I never had any outright conflict with the popular kids, I definitely avoided them. I created this rivalry in my mind — that they live their lives, and I live mine.
My friends and I joked to ourselves about the elite, and they probably joked about us, but in my mind that was high school. It wasn’t until I escaped the high school scene that I realized this rivalry had much deeper roots.
There was an expectation from my parents to stay in line, and if I did anything wrong, I was punished for it. What started this rivalry, was the popular kids’ seeming ability to get away with any of the bad things they did without punishment. This even strained my faith at some points, as I thought God would humble them.
This rivalry created such a large distance between me and them. I wouldn’t talk to them, and I wouldn’t form relationships with them because I believed they were on the other team. I lost so many opportunities to show Christ to them, and it was due to my own comparisons.
The scary thing about rivalries is how silent they can be. It can even be something as small as the apathy we show toward certain groups of people. While some rivalries can be small and fun such as Star Wars vs. Star Trek or Marvel vs. D.C., we need to stay focused on the simple goal of being a unified body of Christ.
Life is full of people with different opinions and backgrounds than yours, but despite our differences, we are still on the same team. We need to show love to one another and embrace each other’s differences. So whether you are Republican or Democrat, old or young, rich or poor, right Twix or left Twix, Coke or Pepsi, we need to come together and care for each other.
There are going to be many more rivalry matchups between the Saints and the Falcons. I’m sure the Saints aren’t going to win all of them, and I’m sure I’ll run into a Falcons fan every now and then. But I will always remember that they are children of God, and what jersey they wear doesn’t change that.