Loving You Is Killing Me

Samson, the Misbehaver-in-Chief, and a Moral Nation We Owe to Ourselves

Friends’ Reflect on the eve of the 2026 U.S. Midterm Elections

This essay is an attempt to use the gifts Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III names in his sermon on Judges 16 with brutal economy: “Loving You Is Killing Me.” It compiles recent conversations with F/friends and Moss’ interpretation in which Samson’s tragedy is not merely that he loved Delilah. For Moss, his interpretation it is that he loved power using affection as a weapon. Delilah demands proof of love through surrender to the power of a gift making Samson who he was. This is not love. It is extraction dressed in intimacy.

Moss’s prophetic genius is to see Samson as a mirror for a people seduced into loving the systems that bind them. A question for this election eve is not simply whom we will vote for. It is: What are we loving that is killing us? How does this come through today?

We have a misbehaver-in-chief who has made our plain answer painfully clear. Trump’s second term is defined by global aggression, transactional discontents, contempt for international law, a morality that answers only to self. Amnesty International documents in him recognizable patterns of authoritarian practices—executive actions to shrink civic space, undermining of the rule of law, and eroding rights at home and abroad. This administration has launched hundreds (1,000’s) of “unnecessarily violent and abusive raids,” deployed federal agents against protesting cities, continuously waged what Human Rights Watch calls “blatant disregard for human rights”. This is not strength. This is Samson asleep on Delilah’s lap, waking stripped of moral authority. Power sick.

The seduction is real: the promise of safety through submission, of belonging through silence, of love through the surrender of our prophetic edge. How many of us are being sung to sleep by the lullabies of a nation that has never fully repented of its violence? The state violence visited upon Black, Indigenous, and marginalized communities is not abstraction. It is over-policing, voter suppression, environmental sacrifice zones, and the daily humiliations of a democracy promising equality while practicing hierarchy.

Here our Quaker witness rekindles and becomes urgent. Friends know “there is that of God in everyone.” But, in this world, it is a claim making every policy, ballot measure, and budget line a theological question. Our Quaker peace testimony is not passive. It is a disciplined refusal to love any instruments of death. South Jersey Quakers proclaim, “Peace is not passive. The goal is not victory but Beloved Community.” This conciliation is needed: not reconciliation rushing past harm, but patient, listening love seeking repair.

Moss offers a practice: liberation listening. He defines it as “faith that if we will truly listen, then your liberation will be my liberation, and mine will contribute to yours.” Delilah says, Prove your love by giving me your power. Liberation listening says, Your freedom is bound up with mine; I will not trade your life for my comfort.

To become a moral nation—one seeking balance, harmony, and progress among the nations—we need more than a change of administration. We need a principled framework for transformation. The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) offers exactly that. Its anti-racist organizing principles are a blueprint for a great principled organization of nations and peoples. [Go to: pisab.org/our-principles ]

PISAB begins with analyzing power: “Through the analysis of institutional power, we can identify and unpack the systems external to the community that create the internal realities many people experience daily”. A moral nation does not blame individuals for conditions created by systems. It dismantles those systems.

It demands learning from history: “History is a tool for effective organizing. Understanding the lessons of history allows us to create a more humane future”. A nation that refuses to teach the truth about slavery, Indigenous genocide, and Jim Crow cannot build a humane future. It is condemned to repeat Delilah’s betrayal.

It requires maintaining accountability: “Organizing with integrity requires that we be accountable to the communities struggling with racist oppression”. A moral nation is accountable not to the powerful but to the least of these.

And it insists on undoing internalized racial oppression—both the inferiority imposed on the marginalized and the superiority embraced by those who hoard unearned privilege. Trump’s politics thrives on both: stoking white grievance while telling Black and brown communities their pain is imagined. PISAB names the lie.

These principles are not abstract. They are seasoned and weighty pathways of Truth. Seeds already planted by justice-seekers—organizers, artists, preachers, and quiet Quakers who refused to love the thing that kills. Our Quaker Coalition for Uprooting Racism trains Friends to map power and dismantle unjust systems. Quakers create NEW practices across this to country hold democracy in Light, offer election protection, poll chaplaincy, and encourage voter engagement grounded in worship over panic.

But the invitation of Judges 16 is also a warning. Samson’s strength returned only after everything was stripped away. The question for this election is whether we will wait for catastrophe before naming the Delilahs in our political and spiritual lives – seductions of respectability, the comforts of silence, the false loves demanding complicity. Moss’s final word is not despair. It is –  ‘dance!’ Even in darkness, practice love-plus-justice, compassion-plus-joy, forgiveness-plus-grace. We remain possible. No darkness may be around us. It may be in us. Vote as liberation listening. Organize as prophetic grief. Build a moral nation through which Beloved Community is already breaking in. Because it is. And no misbehaver-in-chief can cut a strength rooted in the God of the least of these.

Key Queries for Reflection:

• Where in our public life are we asked today to go forward and “prove our love” surrendering to a ‘knowing’ of our prophetic voice?
• How does liberation listening change or challenge the way we engage with integrity/disintegrity of neighbors who vote differently?
• What would it mean for our Meeting to hold this election season in Testimonies of Equality and Community in a Light without fear?