I was watching a show a few weeks ago where two characters were arguing about whether someone who is in love should let that relationship interfere with their ambitions. In this case the ambition was getting into the White House. One character said love never matters and should be given up without question because your gaining the Oval office. Basically power is worth pursuing and gaining at all cost even if that means giving up the chance at being with someone you love.

This made me think about the unfortunate bargain Christians in U.S. have made in the hopes of retaining influence in this country. To paraphrase a well known quote ‘carry a big stick and make people do things your way’. Why do we feel the need to force our beliefs onto people? Because we stopped loving them the way Jesus taught us to love people. He told us how to change the world and we fell back into the age old trap of believing that power is the best, surest and fastest way to ‘change’ things. Love is hard, takes time and may not get you the results you hoped for. Whereas power can force change quickly and get you the results you want (though you have to ignore the damage you’ve created in the process).

You generally can’t change people through having more power. If anything you’ll just make them fear or hate you. But you likely haven’t changed things for the better. Take abortion as an example. Calling women who seek abortions and abortion doctors baby killers hasn’t changed anyone’s mind as far as I’ve seen. And gaining conservative supreme court justices with the hopes of changing the law still doesn’t address any of the many reasons a woman might seek an abortion. Oddly enough recent studies indicate that the abortion rate has dropped and that seems to be a result of efforts made by those considered liberal not conservative.

Christians may believe they have the moral high ground but they’ve lost respect in just about every other area because of their harshness and inability to empathize and work on other solutions on issues like abortion.

So when will we learn that when given the choice between love and power we should always choose love?