Why Is Our Nation So Divided Today?

I have a theory about why our nation feels so divided today.  I've been pondering this because it feels as if we are as polarized as I have ever seen in my half century of adulthood.

Here's my theory and a thought about how to make it different.


We ARE polarized

It is no news that we are polarized.  Americans voted last fall for two of the most polarizing presidential candidates in our history.  The candidates and the worldviews they represented could hardly have been more different, and the national popular vote was nearly equally divided.

Families and friends continue to deal with tensions stirred up during the political campaigns, election, inauguration, and first year of a new presidency.  Some relationships ended because of it.  Others remain on life support.

There is always a tension between conservative and liberal political views.  The wise are able to maintain relationships with people with different views.  But many of us surround ourselves with those of like opinions and hold at arms length those with conflicting views.

Social media exacerbate the polarization

Pew Research reported that in 2016 approximately 70% of Americans were FaceBooking, and the majority of Americans now report social media are how they get their news.   Therefore, this information channel and its quality and content of it have a great impact on how we view the world.

But the content is not the same for everyone!  FaceBook automatically creates a kind of echo chamber for each of us.  Every time we "like" a post or visit a sponsor page we are telling FaceBook what we prefer.  And FaceBook knows that we will spend more time if we like what we read.  If I am a liberal, FaceBook will dutifully provide more posts, ads, and other material that fit that perspective on the world.  If I am a conservative, the same happens with conservative material.  My "feed" will be largely comprised of stories and shares from friends and advertisers who agree with me.

This means that on any major issue, FaceBook is constantly juggling our individual feeds to provide the best mix of what we seem to want to see......which has the salutary (for FaceBook) effect of creating more revenue.

I'm not mad at FaceBook.  It's just a company doing what companies do: making money.  They aren't trying to create problems over in Menlo Park, but they are.

Mainstream news media provide misleading information

Neither am I mad at the news media.  They are also just doing what companies do.  They aren't trying to make problems either (well, some like Russia Today, are) in newsrooms all over the world, but they are.  Here's how: crisis, conflict and blood provide the most eyeballs and therefore the best revenue.  "If it bleeds it leads" is still the rule of thumb in newsrooms.

Where there is a march or a civil disturbance, for example, the coverage centers on the tiny minority burning flags, breaking windows, fighting, or generally rioting.  The coverage of the main march where people put feet to their strongly held beliefs is limited.  No arson, no blood: no coverage.

To me, this means that the news media have an inherent context bias.  At worst, the political and cultural biases of individual reporters, producers and owners provide us with a skewed view of what is really happening world.  Some deliberately disinform.


The trust of Americans in the mainstream media touched a new low in 2016, Gallup reports.  Only 1 in 3 Americans reported "a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media."

Foreign actors are stirring up dissension 


We thought the Russian government was trying to influence the election.  Recent reports suggests they WERE trying to do just that, but that was and is only one of their intentions.  They want to create tears in the fabric of the institutions and culture that sustains our republic.  They want to inflame racial tensions, sow distrust of leaders and create chaos.

We have mislaid our ability to honor one another

The final part of my theory is that we as a people have mislaid our ability to honor one another.  Instead of listening to one another with respect, we sharpen our knives.  Honestly stated opinions are often met with unkind words and even ad hominum attacks.  I know that there have always been those who attack others with words, but somehow it seems to have been less common in times past.  We were once a more civil society.  Today, with the shield of Internet anonymity, unkindness or even viciousness is common.

Towards a solution

I believe the answer to these problems is simple: a return to honor.  But simple is often not easy.

Honor is multifaceted, of course, but if we could find our way back to civil discourse, if we could treat others as we would like to be treated, if we could.....well.....love,  much could be changed for the good.

Finally: America has weathered worse (think Civil War era) and today there is more that unites us than divides.  I have every expectation that we shall pass through these dark days into a greater society that gives hope.

So....there's my theory and ideas towards a solution.  I would really like to hear your thoughts on how we can move towards a society that goes forward together, regardless of our differing political and cultural opinions.   Please leave comments below.

Martin Luther's Spark and an Explosion that Changed the World

October 31st is the day that we remember as the beginning of the Reformation — the day 500 years ago that the corruptions of the Church of that day began to be exposed for all to see. 

Lucas Cranach's painting of Martin Luther

Traditionally, October 31 was the day that Martin Luther “nailed his 95 theses to the door” of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. 

It was the beginning of a powerful change that restored to Christendom Jesus’ message of faith as the pathway to God, rather than the stony and impossibly uncertain path of works. (Romans 1:17) 

Eric Metaxes puts it this way, “the reason the story of Luther is unlike any other, is that he felt that after tremendous and agonized searching he finally—by God’s grace—had found that thing for which every human since Eden had pined. He had found the hermeneutical lever with which the whole world could be raised to the height of heaven. This had been the principal problem of all humanity—how to bridge the infinite abyss between imperfect mankind and a perfect God, between earth and heaven, between death and life.” (Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World) 

The reformation was many things, not just a few changes in how we are the Church. Metaxes again: “the quintessentially modern idea of the individual—and of one’s personal responsibility before one’s self and God rather than before any institution, whether church or state—was as unthinkable before Luther as is color in a world of black and white; and the similarly modern idea of “the people,” along with the democratic impulse that proceeds from it, was created—or at least given a voice—by Luther too. And the more recent ideas of pluralism, religious liberty, and self-government all entered history through the door that Luther opened to the future in which we now live.” 

It is safe to say that the reformation made possible the democracies of the West, with their vast advances in civilization. Freedom of religion, and even the freedom from religion, that we experience in the West today springs from the changes sparked in those momentous days half a millennium ago. 

And it’s not over. The recent explosion of the Gospel across the earth, the rising again of apostles, miracles and prophecy, and a great growth in love in the Church are a few of the signs of world-changing seasonal shifts happening in our day. 

The best is yet to come!

Only Love Will Drive Out Hate

Ulysses S. Grant -- Civil War General and U.S. President

In these days of intensifying tribalism in America, it's helpful to look back to earlier hard times in our nation.   I was struck recently by something moving in the recollections of President Ulysses S. Grant as he wrote of his experience as a Civil War general, the general who, along with Abraham Lincoln, saved the Union.

Grant was traveling on horseback in late June, 1862, on his way to Memphis.   Except for various outposts, this was Confederate territory, only lightly held by Union troops.

Watch what happens when men of honor meet; men who hold quite different perspectives (emphasis added):

I halted at La Grange. General Hurlbut was in command there at the time and had his headquarters tents pitched on the lawn of a very commodious country house. The proprietor was at home and, learning of my arrival, he invited General Hurlbut and me to dine with him. 

I accepted the invitation and spent a very pleasant afternoon with my host, who was a thorough Southern gentleman fully convinced of the justice of secession. 

After dinner, seated in the capacious porch, he entertained me with a recital of the services he was rendering the cause. He was too old to be in the ranks himself--he must have been quite seventy then--but his means enabled him to be useful in other ways. 

In ordinary times the homestead where he was now living produced the bread and meat to supply the slaves on his main plantation, in the low-lands of Mississippi. Now he raised food and forage on both places, and thought he would have that year a surplus sufficient to feed three hundred families of poor men who had gone into the war and left their families dependent upon the "patriotism" of those better off. 

The crops around me looked fine, and I had at the moment an idea that about the time they were ready to be gathered the "Yankee" troops would be in the neighborhood and harvest them for the benefit of those engaged in the suppression of the rebellion instead of its support. 

I felt, however, the greatest respect for the candor of my host and for his zeal in a cause he thoroughly believed in, though our views were as wide apart as it is possible to conceive.

Grant could have had the gentleman imprisoned.  Instead, they listened to one another with honor, and, no doubt, took their leave with courteous words.

Today, it feels as if we a nation degenerating into rival tribes based on perceived identities.  One pictures tribesmen with shields and spears shouting and brandishing their weapons in defiance at one another, each tribe nursing grievances toward the other.

Martin Luther King wrote this: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

If Dr King is right, and I believe he is, then it also seems right that "We will never with hate drive out the hate of those who hate from the left or from the right.  Only love will drive out hate."

U.S. President Saves Children in First Day in Office

I want to say at the outset of this post that I do not judge women who have had abortions. There is only love in my heart and and hope for blessing for any woman who has been down that road. It is abortion organizations, and the idea of abortion for any and every reason that I find contemptible.

That said, on his first full day in office, President Trump by executive order has saved the lives of many children around the world by re-instating the "Mexico City Policy". These sons and daughters of other lands would have been killed by abortionists using American foreign aid funds......which come from your tax dollars and mine.

In 44 years (January 22, 1973), abortion organizations have killed 60 million American children. If that wasn't evil enough, we exported abortion abroad through foreign aid.

According to the San Luis Obispo Tribune, "the Mexico City Policy requires foreign non-governmental organizations to not provide or promote abortion services if they receive funds from the U.S. government. Specifically, the funds would come from the United States Agency for International Development, and abortion cannot be presented as a “method of family planning.” Promoting abortion services includes work such as counseling for women that includes language on abortions."

Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to kill our own nation's children.  For us to pay for or promote abortion in other countries with taxpayer dollars is flagrant hypocrisy at best.

Thank you, Mr. President. Well done.

Sex Slavery Flowers in Our Toxic Hyper-Sexual Culture

Recently, several hundred in our city attended a hard-hitting session on combatting sex trafficking.  We learned that dozens of girls have been trafficked from our community alone in recent years, and sex slavery is on the rise in America and around the world.  No family is safe from the impacts of trafficking.

After watching the short film Chosen, Benjamin Nolot, founder of the non-profit foundation Exodus Cry, spoke to the group.  Exodus Cry produced the sex trafficking documentary Nefarious: Merchant of Souls. (See below)

This image of "GIRLS" deeply troubles me because it
demeans my daughters, my sisters and my granddaughters.
It makes them "meat". How many of the girls in the establishment
that this points toward are sex slaves? I am asking
myself.....why are we allowing these signs on public streets???

Nolot said demand for illicit sex is rising because of our hyper-sexual culture and its impacts on young men who have learned about sex from entertainment.  The same hyper-sexual culture can lead vulnerable young women to believe that their sexuality is the basis for their worth.

Pimps enslave girls and young women by preying on their vulnerabilities.  They may shower them with affection, expensive gifts, and meals to gain their trust.  Once they have sex, the girls are captured.  Using promises of big money and threats of removal of affection, threats of violence against family members, or threats agains the girls themselves, they remove them from their family and social connections and move them into larger towns.  There the girls are sold repeatedly for sex.

Sex slavery pays.  Pimps can make more than $300,000 from a single girl, a Los Angeles study found.  Making trafficking too risky to operate is one way of fighting back, Nolot says.  Our county now has two staff in the District Attorney’s office assigned full time to sex slavery cases.  The D.A.’s office reported life sentences have recently been handed down for sex trafficking convictions.

Education is another way of pushing back.  Teaching girls in age-appropriate ways to detect lies in the culture and in entertainment is a first levels protection.  Later we can teach them to detect the moves of pimps is important.

Dealing with the demand side is something we must manage as a wider society, he believes.  If we abandon our young men's masculine education to the culture we are abandoning them to the pornographic culture…..and the pornographic culture feeds the social cancer of sex slavery.  Pornography contributes to sex trafficking and the ruin of lives of young women.   And.....prostitution is NOT a "victimless crime". 

We must begin to see prostitutes as victims — no woman on the planet ever really wanted to be a sex slave.  As long as we believe somehow in our hearts that prostitutes have thoughtfully chosen this lifestyle or that they are part of some lower class of humanity, they will continue to be bought and sold.

No one is safe from sex trafficking, Nolot said. Our daughters and the daughters of our families and friends are not safe as long as there is a demand for illicit sex and unscrupulous individuals are willing to prey on them for profit.  Slavers prey on girls from good homes, not-so-good homes, rich homes, and poor homes.  No one is immune.

We need a paradigm shift.  Now more than ever our culture is increasingly toxic in the area of sexuality.  Tens of thousands of young girls are enslaved because of our failure to confront these evils in our culture. 

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know. ― William Wilberforce