Standing For Love
The other day, while driving and flipping through SiriusXM, 7 by Prince came on. I’ve always loved Prince. Who doesn’t? His music is this fascinating fusion of spirituality, sensuality, mysticism, and sheer artistic genius. 7 in particular blends apocalyptic imagery with a sense of righteous triumph, and that combination sparked something in me as I listened.
One lyric especially stood out:
All 7 and we'll watch them fall. They stand in the way of love and we will smoke them all
It struck me how unapologetically destructive the language is. Prince is doing something artistic here, and my point isn’t to theologize his lyrics. But hearing that line made me realize something much bigger:
Christians today often treat their theological “enemies” with the exact same energy.
Not musically.
Not poetically.
But emotionally.
In how we talk about people we disagree with.
I’ve heard Christians, sometimes in casual conversation, and sometimes in heated debate, say variations of:
“Well, I can’t reach them. They’ll end up in the lake of fire anyway.”
“God will sort them out in the end.”
“When Revelation happens, the wicked will get what’s coming.”
These statements are said with resignation, or worse, with satisfaction.
It is a deeply unloving way to look at your neighbor, your interlocutor, or your ideological opponents. It’s a way of emotionally washing our hands of them. It’s a theology of escapism rather than engagement.
And the heart of it is this:
Weaponizing apocalyptic literature makes it easy to avoid the hard work of compassion.
When we treat Revelation like a divine revenge fantasy, it becomes a tool for dismissing people rather than loving them.
What many people forget, or never learned, is that Revelation wasn’t universally accepted in the early Church. It took until the late 4th century for it to be firmly established in the Christian canon.
Why?
Because people struggled with it.
It’s not written like the Gospels.
It’s not a pastoral letter.
It’s resistance literature, written in a time of oppression, fear, and longing for justice.
Many scholars even describe it as a coded message for persecuted Christians, a kind of apocalyptic hope poetry. It makes sense in its historical context. What doesn’t make sense is lifting it out of that context and using it as justification to emotionally discard people we disagree with today.
This is where Prince’s 7 becomes an unexpected mirror.
The song imagines enemies, the symbolic “7,” who will ultimately fall. Prince uses that imagery artistically and metaphorically.
But some Christians use similar imagery literally.
When we secretly (or not so secretly) cheer for someone’s destruction, we are no longer following Jesus.
Jesus never said:
“Love your enemies… until they annoy you.”
“Love your neighbors… unless they’re wrong.”
“Be patient… unless they reject your worldview.”
He said:
“Love your enemies.”
“Bless those who curse you.”
“Do good to those who hate you.”
Not: “We will smoke them all.”
Listening to Prince reminded me how easy it is to slip into an “us vs. them” mentality and how easy it is to imagine ourselves as the righteous protagonists and others as obstacles to be removed or ignored.
But the Christian path is harder than that.
It calls us to compassion, patience, presence, and the kind of love that refuses to write people off.
Even the difficult ones.
Especially the difficult ones.
If apocalyptic literature leads us to excuse ourselves from loving our enemies, we’re reading it incorrectly.
If our theology gives us permission to stop caring about people, it’s not Christian theology.
If Revelation makes us feel triumphant rather than humble, we’re missing Jesus entirely.
Prince wasn’t trying to preach when he wrote 7 (well maybe a little), but the song became a strangely helpful mirror for me. A reminder that the Christian calling is not to stand triumphantly over our enemies, waiting for them to fall.
It’s to do the much harder work:
loving them while they stand.