This morning I woke up to the aftermath of Apple’s latest event. On the one hand, you had people crying “Android had it first” and the other “look at this great new feature. It’s better than the Android version (where relevant)”. Sometimes it was in good fun, most of the time it was preaching to the choir and unfortunately it was occasionally vicious and bitter.
This fanboyism made me think about the church and how we can sometimes be like this.
Why Do Fanboys Exist
It’s easy to criticise the blind fanboys, but they are really everywhere in all aspects of life. The football fan whose team is the best (while they are on a long losing streak), the political activist who knows that if everyone followed their ideas, the world would be better, or the phone user who knows that the one he didn’t choose is worse. But there are some factors which make fanboyism hard to deal with.
“Us vs Them” marketing
A lot of companies like to have an enemy as it means they can set themselves up as saviours or the only alternative. Apple did it with Microsoft and IBM, Samsung has done it with Apple, and left and right politics do it to each other. This helps stir up the core support and generates a lot of news. News groups love this kind of controversy as it brings them more views/reads.
Defending our choices
When was the last time you made a bad buying decision? I can tell you mine, I picked the wrong flavour of sauce to go on my bacon sandwich last weekend. Nothing big, so it’s easy to admit; but imagine you made a hundred or thousands of dollars mistake. It would be much harder to admit, right?
Now change that to an even deeper and more personal factor like faith, politics or career. To admit you’d wasted time, backed the wrong cause, or been deceived is incredibly difficult. In fact there are studies that the closer you connect an idea with your identity, the more closed you are to contradictions. So if you call yourself an Apple fan who spent thousands on products, you will probably be more biased than someone who never bought an iPhone. Or the long term political activist who doesn’t even listen to the oppositions arguments anymore, they just belt out their soundbites.
Community
When you are part of a team it feels great to be working with everyone. The same is true of fanboyism. It feels good to be part of the team of fans who all like the same things. It’s safe in crowds.
Christian Fanboys
There’s no doubt that there are Christian fanboys. I’m not talking about people firm in their faith, in fact, the more certain we our of our faith, the less people usually have to “defend” it (aka attack anyone who dare question it rather than having an answer for every question). This fanboyism can break down into different denominations and groups, but also includes between faiths, too. It might look like nothing strange to us, but just as the whole Apple/Android thing all looks rather silly to the non fanboy, so does Christian fanboyism.
Defeating Fanboyism in the Church?
1. Recognise attacks on ideas as not personal attacks
When someone attacks an idea, belief, creed or even truth, that does not make it an attack on the person who holds the view (even if the person is attacking the person or both!). By not taking attacks on statements personally, it helps us to avoid fanboyism. Of course, people will attack other people, including God and Jesus, and just as you’d expect someone to get annoyed if someone attacked their friend, it is no different here.
2. Attack the idea not the person
Make sure you don’t fall for the trap of attacking the person behind the idea rather than the idea. It’s so easy to call people of other faiths stupid or say that this shows that people of no faith have no morals. It’s much more difficult to attack the actual ideas that people are holding to. By attacking the ideas (and pointing out we aren’t attacking the person, but the idea) we can help people notice stupid ideas and distance themselves from them.
3. Engage with people who differ from us
Fanboys only hang around with Fanboys (or at the weakest level of devotion “loyal fans”), they might sometimes shout abuse at people from the other side, but they never spend time with them or listen to them. Rising above fanboyism requires talking, and more importantly listening, to people from other groups. It requires us to have a two way dialogue. You’d be amazed at how much more willing to listen to you someone is when you listen to them.
4. Find Jesus in other ideas
Often there is a bit of truth in an idea. It might be the desire for justice, the need for redemption, the hope for a better future or the depravity of man. Whatever it is, we should look for it in what others say and then point where we agree (and differ). This shouldn’t be a “ours is better than yours,” but more, “look, this is important to you, and it is to us to. This is how we see it, this is why I think it’s better. What do you think about that?” This let’s a person agree and disagree and is better than just saying “you are wrong” which encourages them to disagree with you more.
5. Criticise our system and leaders when they go wrong
For the fanboy, there are leaders, products and ways of doing things which can’t be questioned. Any attempt to deserves death! But as we know leaders make mistakes, products fail and systems fall apart. Fanboys can wander into defend the indefensible or even saying that it wasn’t wrong at all. Admitting mistakes or things which are wrong don’t invalidate the gospel, they support it. We are humans, this life isn’t perfect, and the fact that we want it to be hints at the life which is yet to come.
That’s not to say that we should abandon people when they make mistakes, we should continue to support them and not simply kick someone out. However, we need to admit when things go wrong.
6. Admit our bias
Everyone is bias if they know it or not. Sometimes we think it’s better to know we are bias as that mean we can rise above our bias…but that can be used as a reason to excuse our bias. To help defeat fanboyism we need to admit that we are bias, our minds have been washed (clean) and we do see things differently because of our viewpoint (just as the person we are talking to does). Don’t use this to exert authority, but to recognise that the person you are talking to may not want to listen to what you are saying because of that bias.
Have you seen any examples of Christian fanboyism?
[Stormtropper image via Doc_Brown via Compfight cc & Superman vs Batman via Jordan Lackey via Compfight cc]
Eric Dye says
Interesting look, Chris. Great stuff. 🙂