A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
“Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
“What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
“Crucify him!” they shouted. -Mark 15:7-13

The crowd is almost never right. In a crowd, people get emotional, they get riled up, and they go with the current. When crowd-think is controlling things, people get hurt, property gets damaged, bad decisions are made.

Do we really believe that every single person in that crowd was thinking, “Yeah, kill the guy who does miracles and heals people. We want the insurgent murderer back.” I don’t believe it for a second.

But I believe they got caught up in what they heard around them. I believe they heard others yelling, “Give us Barabbas,” and they chimed in, because at some point that mass hysteria takes over and it’s not even clear why we’re yelling anymore. And finally, Pilate, who didn’t see this as his battle anyway, probably thought, “Fine, give these stupid Jews what they want. This is what’s wrong with the world today.”

And he washed his hands.

Now think about what started it all: Jealous church leaders. Political figures who were mad that they couldn’t control the message. They saw something true that was unraveling their whole power structure and because they were unable to debunk it, they killed it.
They got among the crowd and they incited mayhem. They manipulated the message until those people were deceived enough to kill the Son of the God of the universe instead of a rebel killer. And these church leaders and Jewish politicians saw it as a victory.

It’s cliche to say “Don’t follow the crowd,” but show me one great person in history who did. Show me one person in all of history who changed the course of the world by being just another voice in the melee.

Jesus certainly was not. None of the disciples were. None of the Old Testament heroes.

So I warn you in this: When it comes to religion and politics, come to your convictions between you and your creator. Don’t let the crowd, or some politician controlling the narrative tell you what’s true. I don’t care what party you are, I don’t care what denomination you are: As a staunch independent both politically and spiritually, I will tell you that every denomination and every party has something wrong with it. Most of them also have something right. But none of them are all right or all wrong.

Use the brain that God gave you. Stop choosing Barabbas over Christ. Stop letting people who don’t care about you make the decisions on what to support for you. Pray without ceasing, then cling to your convictions, but know WHY.

How often have you chosen Barabbas because you didn’t know WHY? For all of us, the answer is probably shameful.

And yet, Christ still forgives us, even when we get it wrong, and the actual moral of this story is grace. Accept it, and give it.❤️