It wasn’t so much the man who upset the Roman governor, but his ideas. Pilate understood the nature of ideas. Ideas are powerful, because they are the engines of potential change—and change can be dangerous. When gradual change is perceived as positive and in general keeping with the status quo, we call it progress. But radical, paradigmatic change is something else, something more dangerous. We call it revolution. Revolutionary change is precisely what those in positions of privilege and power—people like Pilate—are most threatened by.
