Refuse to Be Divided

Learning to Trust Each Other Again

I say this a lot when I speak: faith doesn’t mean we all believe the same thing. It means we believe in each other.

That might sound simple. But right now, it feels almost radical.

Because everywhere we turn, we’re being pushed to divide.

Turn on the TV, scroll social media, listen to political ads, and you’ll hear the same message: be afraid of them. Blame them. Don’t trust them.

It’s constant. And it’s not an accident.

Division has become a strategy.

Some leaders know that if they can keep us angry at each other, we won’t notice what they’re doing. If we’re busy fighting our neighbors, we’re not asking harder questions about power, money, or truth.

So they draw lines.

• Rural vs urban

• Left vs right

• Christian vs non-Christian

• Citizen vs immigrant

And the goal is simple: keep us separated.

Because divided people are easier to control.

That’s not leadership. That’s manipulation.

And you can feel the cost of it.

Families stop talking. Communities fracture. People start to see each other as threats instead of neighbors.

We lose something deeper than politics. We lose trust.

I’m running for Congress because I believe we don’t have to live this way.

We can disagree. We can debate. We can see the world differently.

But we don’t have to turn on each other.

Here’s what that requires:

• Leaders who tell the truth instead of spreading fear

• A refusal to scapegoat people just because they’re different

• A commitment to solving real problems instead of feeding outrage

This isn’t about pretending our differences don’t matter. It’s about refusing to let those differences be used against us.

Because when we start believing the worst about each other, it becomes almost impossible to build anything together.

And we have too much at stake to let that happen.

As a pastor, I’ve sat with people from all walks of life. Different beliefs. Different politics. Different stories.

And here’s what I’ve learned: most people want the same basic things. A chance to work. A safe place to live. A future for their kids.

But those shared hopes get buried under noise and fear.

Faith calls us back to something deeper.

It calls us to see each other as human beings, not enemies. It calls us to tell the truth about each other, not the worst version of each other.

It calls us to believe that we’re stronger together than we are divided.

Refusing to be divided doesn’t mean we ignore what’s broken.

It means we refuse to let division be the answer.

Because when we choose each other, we can actually solve problems.

And when we don’t, we stay stuck right where we are.

We don’t have to agree on everything.

But we do have to decide what kind of people we’re going to be to each other.

That’s the real test of faith.

And it might be the most important decision we make.