Jan 8 • 📢 General
The Dangerous Confusion of Faith and Power
Freedom has never been comfortable.
The price of a free society is not consensus or moral ease, but the sustained discipline of living alongside people who do not think alike without reaching for domination. That discomfort is not a defect of democracy. It is its defining condition.
Moral language becomes most dangerous at precisely this point.
This essay does not ask readers to affirm doctrine, accept miracles, or claim a religious identity. It asks a more fundamental question, one that has followed power throughout history:
What happens when the language of virtue is used to justify behavior that contradicts the values it invokes?
History answers with unsettling clarity.
Before Christianity became an institution, Jesus of Nazareth emerged as a figure whose teachings challenged ego-driven power at its core. Across the canonical Gospels and early non-canonical traditions alike, the emphasis rests less on belief as membership and more on being as practice. The “kingdom of heaven” is not framed as a future destination or a tribal inheritance. It is presented as a present reality—within human conduct and human consciousness.
Jesus repeatedly rejected the use of moral authority as domination. “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… Not so with you.” “Whoever wants to be first must be your servant.” “By their fruits you will recognize them.”
Stripped of theology, the ethic attributed to Jesus is exacting. It elevates humility over dominance, truth over manipulation, mercy over exclusion, and service over self-promotion. The measure of faith is not what one claims, but how one lives when belief becomes inconvenient.
This understanding of Jesus was not lost on America’s founders.
Thomas Jefferson compiled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth by removing miracles to preserve what he believed mattered most: the ethical teachings themselves. Jefferson did not reject morality. He sought to protect it from distortion by power, superstition, or institutional control.
James Madison warned that the fusion of church and state corrupts both, arguing that religion loses its capacity to restrain power when power begins to speak in its name. Benjamin Franklin admired Jesus as a moral teacher while cautioning that religious authority, once weaponized, tends toward division rather than virtue.
This was not hostility toward religion. It was respect for conscience.
History shows what happens when that restraint collapses.
In the United States, slavery was openly justified by Christians using Scripture. Passages were selectively quoted to sanctify bondage, defend brutality, and silence moral objection. The result was not Christianity expressed faithfully, but Christianity hollowed out and repurposed to protect economic power.
In Europe, the Spanish Inquisition used Christianity to imprison, torture, and execute in the name of purity. The stated goal was faithfulness. The result was terror, fear, and the complete inversion of the teachings attributed to Jesus, who warned, “Those who live by the sword will perish by the sword.”
In each case, Christianity was not corrupted by its critics. It was corrupted by those who claimed to defend it.
The same pattern persists whenever moral language becomes a costume rather than a constraint.
Across spiritual traditions and modern psychology, a consistent diagnosis emerges: ego distorts perception. Ego divides the world into righteous and unrighteous, insiders and outsiders. Ego seeks certainty through opposition and security through dominance. When ego becomes collective, it hardens into ideology. When ideology acquires power, intolerance follows.
Jesus’s teachings move deliberately in the opposite direction. “Love your enemies.” “Judge not, lest you be judged.” “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”
These are not poetic flourishes. They are ethical disciplines designed to reduce suffering.
“Love your enemies” is not sentimental advice. It is a structural principle. A society that treats disagreement as treason will eventually destroy itself. A faith that requires enemies in order to remain coherent has already abandoned its foundation.
Viewed through this lens, the tension with much of contemporary political culture becomes unavoidable. Modern leadership often rewards grievance, celebrates domination, and frames cruelty as strength. When public figures claim Christian identity while openly embodying greed, deception, intolerance, or contempt, the conflict is not theological. It is ethical.
At this point, a fair question must be asked.
Are some leaders merely saying they are Christian to secure votes or donations, even when their actions run in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus? Are faith and patriotism being used as marketing tools rather than moral commitments?
History suggests this question is neither cynical nor new.
Another danger emerges alongside this pattern: the erosion of introspection. It becomes easier to condemn the moral failures of others than to examine one’s own life. Moral outrage replaces moral discipline. Accusation substitutes for self-correction.
This posture is not only anti-Christian. It is un-American.
The American experiment depends on pluralism, restraint, and the acceptance of difference. Freedom means neighbors will hold views one finds wrong, unsettling, or offensive. That discomfort is the cost of liberty. Treating large portions of the population as irredeemable undermines both the ethical teachings attributed to Jesus and the civic foundations of the nation itself.
Where unity collapses, suffering follows. Where dehumanization becomes routine, destruction is never far behind.
One of the quiet ironies of the present moment is that many people who do not identify as Christian—including atheists, agnostics, and those of other faith traditions—often live closer to the ethical heart of Jesus’s teachings than those who most loudly claim his name. Compassion, honesty, restraint, and care for the vulnerable are not owned by any belief system. They are human capacities and civic necessities.
This leads to an uncomfortable conclusion: declaring oneself a Christian is meaningless unless one lives in accordance with the teachings attributed to Jesus. Christianity is not a bragging right. It is a discipline. Supporting leaders who live in open opposition to those teachings simply because they claim membership in the same club is not faithfulness. It is confusion.
Belief alone has never transformed societies. Conduct has.
One does not need to accept Jesus as divine to recognize the coherence of the ethic associated with him. A single question suffices:
Does this way of being reduce suffering, or does it multiply it?
That question remains as urgent now as it was two thousand years ago. It remains inconvenient because it applies universally.
If anything is worth recovering from these ancient teachings, canonized or not, it is this: the “kingdom,” if the word is used at all, is not a party, a nation, or a leader. It is a state of being marked by humility, honesty, compassion, and courage.
A free society survives only when those qualities are practiced rather than merely proclaimed.
Author’s Note
This essay is offered as an ethical and civic reflection rather than a religious or partisan argument. It invites readers to examine alignment between professed values and lived behavior, both personally and collectively. The aim is clarity without contempt, courage without cruelty, and a renewed commitment to the moral discipline required by both faith and freedom.
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The Dangerous Confusion of Faith and Power
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