Booing the Quarterback

About a week ago I went to a BYU football game.  On one particular play the BYU quarterback threw an incomplete pass, and a fan (a BYU fan that is) a few rows in front of me started screaming at him, yelling how terrible of a player he was.  Of course the quarterback couldn’t actually hear him, so the words were mostly just a childish display for the fans around him.  And this was not a teenager but rather a grown man who had his young son sitting next to him. 

I was a bit troubled by incident and it reminded me of a talk by Elder Holland when he was president of BYU in 1986.  Apparently something similar had happened in that day (but to a larger scale) and it received national publicity.  Elder Holland remarked: “The date was November 16, 1985—just over two months ago.  We made history. Television covered it, the print media published it…. BYU booed its own quarterback.”  He continued, “There are a lot of reasons why that booing incident bothers me. First of all it bothers me that any BYU fan would boo anybody for any reason. If someone can explain to me the Christianity of that, I invite you to do so quickly….  It bothers me that we would do this to a fellow student, a neighbor, a friend, a convert to the Church in this case. Not to mention, of course, that he also led us to two of our greatest years in BYU football history….  It bothers me that a very small handful of individuals could cast a cloud over a very fine game….  At the same time I’m confident that this small handful of rabid fans on virtually every other day of the week are probably pretty decent folks who wouldn’t think of speaking so shamefully to anyone’s face but who somehow get caught up—or get caught down, as the case may be—in the fever of a game and watch their boorish behavior increase in direct proportion to the anonymity of the crowd and their own safe distance from a blitzing linebacker.”  I wish I had printed a copy of this talk to give to the fan in front of me at the game I attended.

                As I reflect on this incident I’m led to question how I use my own words.  It is easy in the heat of the moment—whether that is in sports or with friends or in stressful family situations— to let anger or frustration or disappointment translate into words unbecoming of Christians.  James wrote about the need for us to be able to tame our tongues in his epistle: “But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be” (James 3:8-10).  James was highlighting the hypocrisy of using our words to pray to God on the one hand and then turn around and curse our fellowman on the other.  Instead of being easily provoked to angry invectives we should strive to be “pure… peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits” (James 3:17).  If we really want to be known as Christians in our church, then we’ll have to do a lot better than what I saw in the game.  We must be able to emulate the example of the Savior who was able to stand as a prisoner before the Jewish leaders, be mocked and struck on the face, and yet still say in perfect calmness and humility: “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?” (John 18:23) Christ never did speak evil; rather it is all of the rest of us who must examine ourselves to see if we do.  What kind of pressure and stress would it take in our own lives to “boo” our own quarterback or, more importantly, those that we profess to love around us?