Posted August 17, 2026
Three stories from the weekend caught my eye:
How did these stories make you feel?
If you’re on one side and vehemently think the other side is wrong, that makes you typical in a time when, as John Mac Ghlionn writes in The Hill, “Americans now hate each other more than ever.” The reasons point to a fact about our faith that is relevant to our souls and to the future of our nation.
Ghlionn is responding to a recent Marquette Law School Poll that found a sharp generational decline in trust across the US. By birth year, here are the percentages of people who said “most people can be trusted”:
As a corollary, here are the percentages of those who said people “would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance”:
For an explanation, Ghlionn turns to a comprehensive twenty-five-country survey published by Pew Research Center earlier this year. He notes that “53 percent of US adults explicitly stated that the average American has bad morals and ethics” and adds, “This matters enormously. A society cannot thrive when most people no longer believe their fellow citizens are fundamentally decent.”
According to Ghlionn:
Morality is the basic, invisible software that prevents human primates from tearing each other apart over grocery store parking spaces. It establishes the rules of engagement. When a population loses faith in that shared software, the entire social contract converts into a hostage situation. Viewing the opposing political or cultural faction as mistaken allows for regular political debate. Viewing them as beyond redemption eliminates the possibility of finding common ground. You do not negotiate with a monster. Instead, you try to destroy it before it destroys you.
I once worked on a Habitat for Humanity house with a pastor with whom I disagreed over the manner of baptism, security of salvation, church polity, and a host of other issues. But we spent a memorable Saturday morning together. In fact, he was a far superior carpenter; his tolerance of my inferior efforts was a sign of the grace we shared in common.
When I pastored in Dallas, my best ministerial friend was a colleague with whom I disagreed over the manner of baptism, doctrine of election, church polity, and other issues. But we became so close that we agreed to perform the other’s funeral (though he offered to do mine first, as he often reminded me with a grin).
Consider the disparate nature of the early church. Pentecost participants “from every nation under heaven” came to faith in Christ and then formed a single faith family (Acts 2:5; 37–47). In fact, “all who believed were together and had all things in common” (v. 44). Over time, the body of Christ came to include Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, all of whom are “one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28).
Their unity amid such wide diversity was in part a product of the shared morality that “establishes the rules of engagement,” as Ghlionn noted. It was even more a product of their shared worship of their shared Lord—the closer you draw to his throne, the closer you draw to others doing the same.
Most of all, however, Christian unity amid diversity is the result of Jesus’ prayer for his followers “that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:23).
Jesus is praying for our unity right now (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25).
How will you help answer his prayer today?
“I can do things you cannot; you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.” —Mother Teresa
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