![]() Salt is good, but if the salt should lose its flavor, how can you season it? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to fall away, gouge it out. It is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your foot causes you to fall away, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell, the unquenchable fire. And if your hand causes you to fall away, cut it off. “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall away- it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. ![]() Jesus is not only rebuking them for their misplaced identity he is redirecting their passion toward their true enemy. Mark 9:33 Find our deepest sense of identity and belonging in him, not in people or groups. And whoever welcomes me does not welcome me, but him who sent me” Sitting down, he called the Twelve and said to them, ‘If anyone wants to be first, he must be last and servant of all.’ He took a child, had him stand among them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, ‘whoever welcomes one little child such as this in my name welcomes me. When he was in the house, he asked them, ‘what were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, because on the way they had been arguing with one another about who was the greatest. He was comparing people to people, rather than people to God. Mark 9:39 John was defining himself and other people horizontally rather than vertically. And whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ– truly I tell you, he will never lose his reward” “Don’t stop him,’ said Jesus, ‘because there is no one who will perform a miracle in my name who can soon afterward speak evil of me. “John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.” The result is a politics of fear and rage, where policy differences often take a back seat to the list of grievances that red possesses against blue and blue against red” We live separately, snarling at each other across a growing divide. It is clear that partisan Americans dislike each other a great deal. America is becoming extremely efficient at creating superclusters of like-minded citizens… Now, let’s throw in another ingredient–enmity. As geographic separation increases, ideological divisions are magnified. If likeminded environmental activists gather, they grow more committed to fighting climate change. If like-minded Second Amendment advocates gather, they grow more opposed to gun control. ![]() His “law of group polarization” holds that people who agree with each other grow more enthusiastic in their beliefs and agreement. As Cass Sunstein articulated, when like-minded people gather, they tend to grow more extreme. Thanks to the decades-long “big sort”–a phenomenon outlined by Bill Bishop in his excellent 2009 book–Americans are increasingly clustering in like-minded communities, and surrounding yourself with people who think like you think has a profound effect. This phenomenon is geographic, ideological and spiritual. ![]() Multiple social, cultural and religious factors are converging to create a particularly toxic political stew. “For the past several years, I’ve been watching the increase in partisan enmity in the U.S. ![]()
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