“It’s my ball and I will take it and go home if I can’t play quarterback.”
In a certain less-than-prosperous neighborhood in which I lived during junior high school, that was the profoundly irritating mantra of the only boy who actually owned a good football. We had other balls, but mostly they were ragged or too soft or had become waterlogged to the point where they were like throwing bricks. His family was the most prosperous, his house and yard the biggest and best to play in, and his football said “Official NCAA” right on it in big white letters. You just can’t ignore words like “Official NCAA.” We wanted to play at his house and use his football. The problem, of course, was that George, for that was his name, was far and away the worst player among us. Especially he was the worst quarterback among us, perhaps in the entire world as far we were concerned.
He was irritating, harshly critical of teammates far better than he and, worst of all, frequently intercepted. George never
won a single game in which he quarterbacked. The problem was he, nevertheless wanted to play quarterback. Always. Every game. And thereby hangs the tale.
The choice was always the same. Let him play quarterback or the rest of us go play with an ancient football in some overgrown, briar-cursed field. No one wanted that. At the same time, no one wanted to play on his team. No one liked him. No one wanted to play on a team that had no chance of winning. Yet if he wasn’t made the quarterback the whole game was banished from his yard and the shiny new ball was taken inside.
Some years ago I assisted a church though the pastoral selection process. Their pastor had retired and, after quite a vetting process, the search committee and I narrowed the field to the final two candidates. One group, the much larger portion of the congregation wanted the younger candidate. He was charismatic, obviously talented and creative but, just as clearly, less experienced.
The smaller group in the congregation, an older and more prosperous group, wanted, predictably I may add, the older candidate. He was also attractive in several ways. He was experienced, a good preacher and because he and his wife were empty nesters it might be assumed he could give more time to the church.
As far as I could see, the committee and I had presented them with two very good but very different choices. I felt either could do a good job at the church. The younger candidate could probably bring in more young families. The older chap had more mileage on his odometer and could probably hold the ship steady and pay down the debt. Neither was a bad choice, as far as I could see, and the search committee was proud of its work. The church documents required a congregational vote after both men preached on different Sundays.
The final vote was clearly and overwhelmingly in favor of the younger candidate. It appeared that the search process had come to a successful conclusion. Appeared, that is, until the older crowd who had “lost” the vote demanded their choice or they would leave the church. This was a serious threat because the church was paying the debt service on a new building and the crowd threatening to leave had most of the big givers.
I tried to reason with them. The search committee chairman tried to reason with them. Some of their own children tried to reason with them. Nothing we said made a dent. They were adamant. Their candidate or they were out of there.
Finally I asked them, “Are you willing for this church to go under if you don’t get the preacher you want?”
“Absolutely,” their chief spokesman said. “We are right. We know we are right. And when these people are facing bankruptcy they will know it too.”
My suggestion that they might consider staying in the church and help make the younger pastor successful was coldly rejected as a compromise which their consciences could not endure. Ultimately they left, and the church which remained did indeed struggle under the new, young pastor for some years before finally paying off the debt and heading into a new era of health and growth.
I thought of George. He did not really care about the game. He cared nothing for the rest of us. He also cared nothing about the opinions of the greater majority. He only cared about one thing. It was his football. He played quarterback or else.
The refusal to accept the process, the refusal to let someone else or even many “someone elses” make a decision I disagree with is a kind of democratic extortion. We will all vote but if the vote does not go my way, I will pout, be petulant and maybe even play on but in such a way as to make you lose. Then I will blame. Or I will take my football and go home. Then I will fervently hope you lose so you will see I was right.
The older members of that church took part in the vote and never claimed they had been cheated. They made no claim at all that the vote was rigged. They simply did not want to honor the outcome. They wanted their candidate or they would leave the church and gloat over its ruin. That is proof that they never really believed in the process clearly outlined in the church documents. If the process served their will, great. If it did not they were gone. And they left that group of young people and that new pastor to limp along for some years.
Here is the punch line.
If you believe in the democratic process going in, you should trust the outcome at the conclusion.
“What about all those people who voted the other way?” I asked the crowd that left.
“They are young and inexperienced and they are making a bad choice,” they answered
“We are older and wiser and they should accept our judgment.”
“But what about the vote? If you had won would you have expected them to stay?”
“Yes, of course,” they said, “But don’t you see that’s not the same?”
I did not see. I still do not see. They both agreed to abide by the results, but when the older, “wiser” group lost, they left. No, to be frank, I do not see.
Their only response to my every question was, this church is about to make a devastating mistake and we will not stay to endorse such a tragic failure. Our candidate did not win and we are going home, and we are taking our football with us. This new preacher and this group of young people who have voted so foolishly will go bankrupt without us, they said.
Why not stay and help that not to happen? I called after them.
Absolutely not. Our quarterback or their bankruptcy; that is the only choice. So they left.
Whether it’s backyard football or a pastoral selection process or even, say, a national election, that’s just petty. Everybody has the right to campaign hard. Everybody has the right to vote. Nobody has the right to win.
