Division

Many years of partisan politics, increasingly divisive language, finger-pointing, and inflammatory speech have contributed to an environment of fear and uncertainty, affecting the priorities and perceptions of young people.

This was brought into sharp relief through the results of a survey with 1,644 young people across the U.S., ages 10 to 24. The study was a window into what truly matters to adolescents. They were asked to rate the importance of a list of personal goals. These included classic teenage desires such as “being popular,” “having fun,” and “being kind.”

None of these ranked as the top priority. Instead, the No. 1 answer was “to be safe.” (The rest of the top 6 goals were: 2) To be kind; 3) To have a lot of fun; 4) To accept myself; 5) To be in great shape; 6) To change the world and achieve great things.)

Whereas previous generations may have taken safety for granted, today’s youth are growing up in an era of compounded crises — school shootings, a worsening climate crisis, financial uncertainty, and the lingering trauma of a global pandemic. The constant exposure to crises, amplified by social media, likely plays a significant role in fostering a pervasive sense of worry.

For instance, the rise in school-based safety drills, while intended to provide a sense of preparedness, may unintentionally reinforce feelings of insecurity. Similarly, the apocalyptic narrative around climate change may create a sense of powerlessness that could further compound their fears and leave them wanting to bury their heads in the sand.

Growing up amid a series of compounded global crises, today’s adolescents will likely carry the imprint of this period of heightened fear and uncertainty well into adulthood. This formative experience could shape their mental health, decision-making, and even their collective identity and values for decades to come.

Two days after the attempted assassination of former President Trump, The Wall Street Journal ran an article with the following title:

“‘I’m Tired. I’m Done.’ Nation Faces Exhaustion and Division After Trump Assassination Attempt, Americans express dismay about the state of the country: ‘The world has gone to Hades in a handbasket.’”

They spoke to four dozen Americans across the country and gave the following summary:

Nearly to a person, they expressed a sense of dread, saying there seems to be no good news on the horizon. Their list of concerns is endless: The lingering effects of a socially isolating pandemic; violent protests over disagreements about war; three election cycles of increasing polarization; and decades of escalating gun violence. That is not to mention economic turmoil and inflation. And unlike other times of crisis, after 9/11 or Sandy Hook or George Floyd, this event left few Americans hopeful that any good might come out of tragedy.

Towards the end of the article, they quoted Clement Villaseñor a 32-year-old electrical maintenance, who said, “There’s a hole in the country, and this is a part of that. We’re not sticking together,” he said. “There’s so much separation, it makes me feel far apart from people.”

Journalist Derek Thompson is lamenting the decline of church attendance in America. As an agnostic, one would think he would be pleased. In a piece for The Atlantic, he writes: "Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall to hold back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence."

Thompson paraphrases social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his book, The Anxious Generation:

Many Americans have developed a new relationship with a technology that is the diabolical opposite of a religious ritual: the smartphone. (To) stare into a piece of glass in our hands is to be removed from our bodies, to skim our attention from one piece of ephemera to the next. Digital life is disembodied, asynchronous, shallow, and solitary.

Religious rituals put us in our body, requiring some kind of movement that marks the activity as devotional. Christians kneel, Muslims prostrate, and Jews pray. Religious ritual also fixes us in time, forcing us to set aside an hour or day for prayer, reflection, or separation from daily habit. Finally, religious ritual often requires that we make contact with the sacred in the presence of other people.

I wonder if, in forgoing organized religion, an isolated country has discarded an old and proven source of ritual at a time when we most need it. It took decades for Americans to lose religion. It might take decades to understand the entirety of what we lost.

Almost 690,000 couples reported getting divorced in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about half the number of couples who reported getting married. Most couples file for what is called a no-fault divorce, which means you can dissolve your marriage without showing that either party has committed any wrongdoing.

There are a handful of commonly cited factors that couples feel put a strain on their marriage, according to a Forbes Advisor survey. These conflicts include (in ascending order):

#6 – Finances

#5 – Relationships with Friends

#4 – Relationships with Family

#3 – Division of Household Labor

#2 – Parenting differences

The biggest conflict divorced couples encountered, with 46% naming it:

#1 – Career choices

Only 5% of divorcees say there was no way their marriage could have been saved, the survey says. A whopping 63% said that having a better understanding of commitment prior to marrying could have helped them avoid divorce. And 54% said that if they had a better understanding of their spouse’s morals and values prior to getting married, they might still be together.

Editor’s Note: The Forbes Advisor survey is well worth looking at for its wide-ranging statistics on the state of marriage and divorce in 2023. You can access the results of this survey here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is important to keep in mind that this survey was taken of society as a whole. With proper guidance through premarital counseling and personal growth toward spiritual maturity, a believing couple would be much more likely to establish a solid marriage for life.

Set adrift into the vast expanse of amorality, where do people turn? Where within modern society can one find a moral compass that imbues life with meaning? For some, the overwhelming choice made is politics, which, like any idol, consumes everything it touches.

If you put people in a moral vacuum, they will seek to fill it with the closest thing at hand. Over the past several years, people have sought to fill the moral vacuum with politics and tribalism. American society has become hyper-politicized.

According to research by Ryan Streeter, at the American Enterprise Institute, lonely young people are seven times more likely to say they are active in politics than young people who aren’t lonely. For people who feel disrespected, unseen, and alone, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. It offers them a comprehensible moral landscape: The line between good and evil runs not down the middle of every human heart, but between groups. Life is a struggle between us, the forces of good, and them, the forces of evil.

If you are asking politics to be the reigning source of meaning in your life, you are asking more of politics than it can bear. Seeking to escape sadness, loneliness, and lawless disorder through politics serves only to drop you into a world marked by fear and rage, by a sadistic striving for domination. Sure, you’ve left the moral vacuum—but you’ve landed in the pulverizing destructiveness of moral war.

Possible Preaching Angle

1) Church, conflict in; Disagreements; Could we retitle this illustration “How the Church Got Mean?” Have church members allowed taking political sides to divide their unity in Christ? Have we changed our cornerstone from Christ to a political leader we hope can set America right? 2) Arguments; Politics - When the moral anchor of biblical Christianity is abandoned then the tyranny of politics can take its place. People begin to fight political battles with outrage, exaggeration, and censorship. But life is far more than politics and perhaps the revolutionary message of Christianity can still be found by the walking wounded of the world.

These days, Americans seem divided by almost everything. But you know what has proved successful at bringing Americans of different backgrounds together? Unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks. Also, riblets, onion rings, chicken crispers, and other crowd-pleasers from affordable chain restaurants such as Olive Garden and Applebee’s.

Though sometimes banned by municipalities wanting to "preserve neighborhood character” or slow gentrification, these chains actually provide a hidden social service: They promote much more socioeconomic integration than do independently owned commercial businesses—or, for that matter, traditional public institutions.

That’s according to a provocative new paper from Maxim Massenkoff and Nathan Wilmers. The authors analyzed a massive trove of geolocation data to assess where Americans come into contact with people of different income classes than themselves—if they do at all.

Sadly, the paper also found that many public institutions we might associate with facilitating encounters across class lines instead reinforce seclusion. Parks, schools, libraries, and churches. There are exceptions, but on average, each of these establishments leads to less socioeconomic mixing, more within-income-group hobnobbing, and even more class isolation.

A total of 689,308 divorces occurred in 2021. That’s about half the number of couples who reported getting married, with subsequent marriages failing at higher rates. Understanding why marriages fail can help you to make your own union stronger if you are married. It can also guide you in making choices about entering into a marriage and it can help you support the married couples in your life.

Forbes Advisor commissioned a survey of 1,000 Americans who are divorced or who are in the process of divorcing to discover why marriages fail. Based on this data, here are some of the most likely reasons marriages come to an end.

• 43% - Lack of family support
• 34% - Infidelity
• 31% - Lack of intimacy
• 31% - Too much conflict/arguing
• 24% - Financial stress
• 20% - Parenting differences
• 10% - Marrying too young

Key Facts About Divorce

• The majority of divorces are initiated by only one party, with only 27% of respondents indicating the decision to end the marriage was mutual.
• Just 4% of couples divorce after 10 years of marriage.
• 63% of divorcees believe a better understanding of the commitments of marriage could have helped them to avoid divorce
• Only 5% of divorcees say there was no way their marriage could have been saved, the survey says.

You can access all the results of this survey here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is important to keep in mind that this survey was taken of society as a whole. With proper guidance in premarital counseling and personal growth toward spiritual maturity a believing couple would be much more likely to establish a solid marriage for life. Remember, 63% said a better understanding of commitment prior to marrying could have stopped their union from collapsing.

Will more money make your marriage better? Maybe or maybe not. Many couples discover that a financial windfall can rock their relationship just as much as any hardship. According to recent research, big changes in finances often shake the foundations of a relationship. But it isn’t just the loss of money that provides a test. Both gaining and losing money can hurt a marriage. But, surprisingly, competing visions for how to use a windfall can be more harmful than financial hardships.

A marriage counselor told journalists about working with a couple who came into a windfall from the husband’s splashy new job. However, working together to decide how to spend the money revealed enormous gaps in their communication. The counselor said, “All the joy and the excitement got wiped out, they were so focused on what the windfall will buy from a materialistic standpoint, and not focusing on the accomplishment. That really rocked their marriage.”

So, all the new research suggests big financial swings in either direction can shake couples much the same way. Both scenarios can expose fault lines in the marriage that had previously been withstood or ignored.

A recent news article featured the story of three restaurant-owning brothers in India who constantly compete and bicker for business.

B. Vivekanandhan, the 51-year-old owner of a popular restaurant called Moonrakers, competes fiercely for customers in this southern Indian holiday town. So fiercely, in fact, that fists have flown. His chief foes are his own flesh-and-blood. His older brother operates a seafood joint called Moonwalkers right across the street. Just down the same lane, his younger brother runs Moonrocks. The menus are nearly identical.

At one time, all three brothers and their families would sit down for dinner. The three brothers behind Moonrakers agree it began as a true family endeavor. No more. One of the brothers said, “When money comes, comes, comes, love goes away.”

A couple of times in 2020, two of the brothers brawled with each other in the street in front of befuddled customers. “Sometimes it’s like a street fight,” one brother said. “People say, ‘This is a complicated family. We just came down to eat.’”

It’s all proving baffling to tourists, who frequently are stopped on the street by two of the brothers who were giving pitches for their rival restaurants. One resident said she wanted to eat at the original Moonrakers, but was bewildered by the competing eateries. Her husband, who swore he had dined at Moonrakers years ago, was even more confused.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The church looks just as petty and ridiculous when we don’t walk in unity in Christ.

It’s in political news to note that Americans are hopelessly divided, and that this division is manifest in the lack of collaboration across the aisle in Congress. But Washington Post columnist Amanda Ripley might disagree that our situation is hopeless.

That’s because Ripley did a deep dive on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, a bipartisan collection of twelve lawmakers. This year’s committee has made over 200 recommendations to revamp Congress processes and practices, most of which have already been accomplished or put into motion. By comparison, the last committee assigned to do similar work disbanded in 2018 after making exactly zero recommendations.

So, what made the difference? A series of bold steps to overcome the toxic division and promote dialogue and cooperation. Committee chair Derek Kilmer met with each committee member separately to gauge their willingness and/or optimism. Initially, it seemed bleak, particularly in the wake of the events of January 6, 2021. One Democrat told Kilmer: “I feel like not only was I in a relationship with someone who cheated on me; I was in a relationship with someone who cheated on me with someone who was trying to kill me.”

After those initial conversations, Kilmer said, “We’re going to have to do some stuff differently.” So, what was different? They engaged in practices that promoted listening and building trust in relationship. There was a joint retreat for mutual bonding. They created neutral zones for conversation and collaboration without the pressure of television cameras present, so that members could have real conversations. And they had another debrief and listening retreat after the January 6th attacks, so that each lawmaker could hear and be heard.

Several people commented on the results: “It felt like someone turned the air conditioner on. You saw people starting to be curious about each other again.” “The conversations were quite remarkable. They surpassed my expectations.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Being effective requires trust, empathy, and teamwork. When we respectfully listen and engage, we are modeling the behavior God desires.

If you attend a service in the small Roman Catholic church Sankt Maria in Carinthia, Austria, you might find that the pastor has to pause the sermon for an unusual reason: A road runs through the middle of the church. While the pastor preaches his sermon in the sanctuary on the east side of a one-lane road, the churchgoers sit in a building on the opposite side of the road.

As early as 1443, a Marterl (a wayside shrine erected on roads and paths to encourage prayer) was built at this point on the former Roman road. At the time, the road was an important trade route from Venice to Salzburg, and the Marterl gave travelers a place to pray.

In 1754 the roadside shrine was replaced by a chapel. Since there was not much space between the road and the slope, a chapel was built with the sanctuary about six feet above the road, and worshipers gathered on the street in front of the church.

Eventually, a pastor felt sorry for the pilgrims who often stood in front of him in the rain, and had a two-story structure built on the opposite side of the road about 15 feet from the chapel. In this building, there are two rooms with chairs and benches. This building is also open on the side facing the road and the chapel, and the open side of both buildings have wrought-iron safety fences.

Services now took place in two buildings: the priest stood in one, and congregants in the other. If a vehicle came by, he had to interrupt his sermon. This happened more often up until 1905, because up until then the road had been a federal road. Then the bypass road, which still exists today, was built. Even today, local traffic still passes through the church.

You can see a picture of this unusual chapel here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This church in Austria is unique because it is divided physically, but the sad fact is that many churches are divided spiritually. Even in the first century Paul wrote to the Corinthian church that he had heard “that there are divisions among you” (1 Cor. 11:18). Christ prayed “that they may all be one … so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21).

In an issue of CT magazine, author and musician Sandra McCracken writes:

I played softball in a community league when I was a teenager. We didn’t know each other the first time we stepped out under the lights together. We were strangers in gray polyester uniforms and orange baseball caps.

At the start of our opening game, there was a palpable feeling of possibility. My teammates were talented, and the coach was tough. As he invested time watching us throughout the season, he positioned and repositioned us in different roles, playing to our individual strengths. As each player lived into her giftedness, there was more synergy and success.

Today, instead of feeling like a single team with diversely gifted players, we find ourselves in a cultural moment where it often feels we’re on different teams altogether. This is true in society at large, and sadly, it seems just as true inside the church.

But there was a time when the church was like a brand-new softball team, stepping out onto fresh-cut grass in late summer, individual differences obscured by what they were as a whole: “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit ... All the believers were together and had everything in common” (Acts 2:4, 42, 44). God is so committed to this unity that Jesus prayed specifically for us, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you … so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21).

Jesus was not naive. He knew that finding unity is patient, slow work.

Let’s open up our echo chambers and build bridges instead of moats. Let’s listen for the still, small voice of the Spirit and attend to what he may ask of us. These are heavy times, but there is kingdom work to be done.

“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, later set to music. It was written over the Christmas of either 1863 or 1864, in the middle of the bloodiest war in American history.

The carol’s first verse is familiar and peaceful:

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play;

In music sweet the tones repeat,

“There’s peace on earth, good will to men.”

But the carol is not cotton candy; it is a beating heart, laid bare. It’s a carol that still rings true today. By the third stanza we sing:

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Longfellow wrote to his friend Henry Ingersoll Bowditch in 1866, “The death of the young men in the war . . . makes my heart bleed whenever I think of it. How much I have felt for you. Particularly on that cold December night when I came back with my son, and saw you at the station and knew that yours would come back to you no more.”

This is the landscape in which Longfellow wrote “Christmas Bells.” We aren’t currently entrenched in a literal civil war, but the cracks in our country’s foundation are splitting wider. People with power abuse it; people without it suffer. Day after day, the news cycles through horrors. Many days, it feels a little bit like the end of the world—like an apocalypse.

But then Longfellow brings the gospel to bear in the final triumphant stanza:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God is bringing his kingdom to us. The last thing we see in the Bible is an image of “a new heaven and a new earth,” with “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Rev. 21:1, 4). The world is always ending, but one day, it will end. Justice is never done, but one day, it will roll down like a river.

Fundamentally opposing views and values between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, have never been as visceral as they are today. Fellow Americans who one disagrees with are immediately demonized and often “cancelled” in our now pervasive cancel culture.

A new 2021 program called “Bridging the Gap” has been initiated by several liberal and conservative colleges. The process and goal is “deep listening.” Authentic engagement in all humility and curiosity can tear down seemingly impenetrable walls. The program is based in part on the Bryan Stevenson book Just Mercy, whose premise is that people on death row are more than the worst thing they have ever done. An advocate writes:

And so, I would ask us for a moment to consider the application of that principle to these 75 million Americans who voted for Trump and the 81 million who voted for Biden. While many of us have been convinced by the wisdom that people on death row are better than their worst deed, we are still quick to condemn “those voters” as worse than their worst vote.

Genuine listening is challenging but fruitful:

Listening deeply means silencing that noise, listening not just with your ears but with every sense you’ve got, every cell in your body. It means listening to all that is said and unsaid, to the body language, the tone, the eye movement. It’s full-body listening. This type of listening builds trust, opens doors, and offers a path to deep discovery and a sacred connection that forms the basis for new understandings and otherwise unimaginable possibilities. Study after study shows in sector after sector—in medicine, marriage, real estate sales, and more—that true listening generates better results. And yet most of us go through our entire education without having learned how to do it.

In Northern Ireland, there’s a city that’s so divided, part of the population calls it Londonderry and others calls it Derry. In this city Protestants live on the east bank and Catholics on the west bank. Many don’t like to mix; so, one of the solutions was to build a bridge. The 900-foot bridge curves like a snake and is for walkers, joggers, and cyclists. They named it “Peace Bridge.” That’s what they’re trying to do, build a bridge, build peace.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Be bridge builders in a world of walls. Work to bring social, economic, and multiethnic shalom to your community. Shalom is not just the absence of conflict, but the presence of wholeness and harmony, life as it should be.

Hungry patrons at a local buffet in Alabama took “hangry” (hunger combined with anger) to a new level when a fight broke out allegedly over crab legs. The unexpected brawl went down at Meteor Buffet in Huntsville as diners were waiting to feast on a freshly boiled batch of crab legs.

Among the restaurant goers was police officer Gerald Johnson, who recalled hearing yelling and tongs clashing. “Literally, as I sat down and maybe took two bites out of my plate,” Johnson said. “There’s a woman who’s beating a man. People are moving around, plates are shattering everywhere.”

“It’s not something you typically hear, if you can imagine a fencing match,” Johnson said of the guests allegedly using tongs as weapons. As for why the altercation took place, “Everyone was saying, ‘She cut me in line. He cut me in line. I was here first.' They’d been waiting there for the crab legs for a good 10, 20 minutes. When they finally came out, it’s very heated. Especially if someone is taking more than their fair share,” Johnson said.

Following the fight, police arrested John Chapman and Chequita Jenkins. Chapman sustained a cut on his head while Jenkins was uninjured. Both Chapman and Jenkins allegedly admitted to letting their temper cloud their judgment.