Christians don’t have to avoid politics but here’s three things to help you debate in a Godly way

Author of Starved, Amy Seiffert offers her tips for tackling potentially volatile political conversations while keeping God at the centre.

Politics. The very word itself conjures up feelings of division, lies, and deceit. Add a pandemic and racial unrest? We have a recipe for the divisive political landscape in our culture today. So how do we do this? How do we move toward one another in a world starved for healthy and loving political conversations? How do we, as Christians who may have differing political views, tackle politics in a godly way? I humbly offer three ideas:

Commit to compassionately listening and learning

Can you imagine a world in which each person sought not to be right, but to listen and learn from others? A world in which we sought to hear and not just be heard? It would be a beautiful place! When we enter into any conversation—political or not—with an intention to listen, we wear the clothes Paul has called us to wear: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Colossians 3:12-13, ESV).