More than two centuries ago, a young pastor preparing to publicly challenge another minister asked John Newton for advice.
Newton, the former slave ship captain who wrote “Amazing Grace,” believed the young man had truth on his side. But he was more concerned about what the argument might do to the man making it.
Newton gave him this warning:
“What will it profit a man if he gains his cause and silences his adversary, if at the same time he loses that humble, tender frame of spirit in which the Lord delights?”
Newton’s question is one every American should ask before the next political fight:
What will winning cost you?
You can gain your cause and lose your soul in the same afternoon. Newton warned that victory itself could leave us wounded. “If you cannot be vanquished, you may be wounded.”
So how should we fight? Because fight we must. The stakes are real. Bad ideas ruin real lives.
Newton’s answer is a distinction our politics has forgotten: Fight ideas with full force, but treat people with gentleness.
Socialism has failed wherever it has been seriously imposed, and we have a duty to say so plainly. But the young voter drawn to socialism because she can barely afford her rent is not our enemy.
She is our neighbor, and possibly someone we have failed to persuade.
Newton’s hardest line applies here: Had things gone differently, “you might have been as he is now.”
Hamilton recognized the same danger in Federalist No. 1. He warned against the intolerant spirit of political parties and acknowledged that honest, honorable people could land on the wrong side of an important question.
Our constitutional system allows free people to fight over consequential ideas without treating every disagreement as a civil war.
In war, the enemy disappears. In a republic, your opponent is still your countryman on Wednesday morning, and you will need to persuade some of them if you hope to win again.
That is why contempt is not just a sin. It is bad strategy.
Speaking of an opponent who was also a fellow believer, Newton offered one final thought. One day, he said, the two men would meet in heaven, and that opponent would be dearer to him than his closest earthly friend was then.
That does not require surrendering the argument. It sets a floor under how we conduct it.
So fight.
Fight hard, fight smart, fight to win. But run Newton’s audit at the end of each day:
Is this still God’s cause and the country’s, or has it quietly become mine?
JD Vance: "There is a Christian idea of political economy that's actually been lost in American politics. One of the best interviews that Charlie Kirk ever gave was right before he died, where he talked about the fact that if you don't give young people a stake, if you don't give them ownership, if you don't give them a sense of the American dream, and of possibility in the future, they're going to become socialists."
Episode 6 of the Lantern Podcast.
Rachel Atwood is a stay at home mom from Grand Rapids, MI who works on the side for Premier Jewelry.
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