I spent most of my adolescent life in an Evangelical church in the South. I don’t know if this was a Southern thing or an Evangelical thing or some combination of the two, but a lot of the people I knew seemed ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Someone living unrepentantly and obviously in sin? Fight. Someone voting differently than most of the church? Fight. Someone struggling to find their footing after unfortunate circumstances forced them to make difficult decisions? You guessed it: fight. In a weird way, courage and boldness became idols that we worshiped just as highly—sometimes even more highly—as God himself.

Moving from that church to Church of the Resurrection was a breath of fresh air to be sure. Being a part of a church that truly did welcome everyone and sought to bring everyone together was a welcome change. But, after seeing the blatant push for boldness in my old church, I started seeing it play out in more subtle ways in many other areas of my life. Friends who dedicate themselves to inclusion can start daring each other to move closer and closer to attacking others who don’t go far enough with them. Friends who have dedicated themselves to the idea that America is a place where everybody’s got a shot at greatness can turn hostile when reminded that some people haven’t had quite the same shot that others have.

As humans, we’re hard-wired to want to stand for something. We’ll stand for an idea, or a religion, or a political party, or a social group, or any number of things, but it’s human nature to throw our identity into something bigger than we are and fight to protect it. In a strange sense, I’m grateful to the church of my adolescence for showing me that so plainly so that I can recognize it when I see it elsewhere in my life. And I have to admit that, far too often, I fall into this trap myself, thinking that people who don’t believe as hard as I do and fight as hard as I do are not worthy of the same level of identity that I have in that idea. If we’re honest, all of us struggle with that at times.

Looking at today’s passage and the similar passage in Matthew, we see a crowd of people so ready to fight that, when given the choice between Jesus Barabbas the murderer and Jesus the Christ, who preached pacifism, they overwhelmingly chose the murderer. It seems like such a foolish, even irrational choice. But I wonder if any of us was riled up to fight for an idea and was offered the choice between a fierce warrior or a pacifist who asked us to love our enemies would choose differently. When we’re so dedicated to fighting for our idea, or our religion, or our political party that we dare others to fight us, many of us are essentially choosing to release a killer over a pacifist in defense of our idea. That’s a dangerous spot to be in, but it never starts at that spot; the choice is made in every step along the way.

I don’t want to put forth the idea that every belief, even those that are truly vile, is equally valid and that there aren’t ideas worth fighting for. That’s not the case at all. But Jesus the Christ chose to change the world with love, where Jesus Barabbas chose to change the world with force. The point is to find an idea worth standing for, but to change the world with love rather than force. I can’t promise it will be easy—after all, they crucified Jesus—but that’s what Jesus the Christ is asking of us.