Polarised misrepresentation hurts God: today’s debates aren’t simply two-sided

As society becomes increasingly polarised, we’re tending to divide people up into two teams: my team, and the enemy team.

This is a problem because, in reality, a lot of our issues are more complex than having simply two teams, and such division can grieve the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians teaches us that the Holy Spirit is saddened by our disunity (Eph. 4:30), and in the context refers to unwholesome talk, bitterness, anger, slander and brawling (v.29, 31). Sadly we’ve seen plenty of this in the last year as people have bitterly argued over issues such as Brexit, BLM, and Covid-19, slandering and name-calling in the process. Whilst Christmas is known as the time for family arguments, 2020 might become known as the year for arguments!