In his sermon “Take Your Best Shot,” Gordon MacDonald uses a negative approach to warn of evils we must avoid.
“Here are two major forms of evil erupting out of the human experience. One is the crowd’s irrational, angry, brutal resistance against God, his purposes, and his people. The other is Pilate’s saying, ‘I don’t want to be identified with it.’ In silence and complicity, he backs off, washes his hands, and decides it would be better to do nothing.
“What bothers me most is my strong suspicion that I could have been in the crowd…. I can see the possibility of being so defiant against God that I would have joined the crowd saying, ‘Crucify him!,’ self-righteously justifying myself. I can also see myself as Pontius Pilate saying, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this,’ and letting it happen.”