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I am reeling in sadness today, and I realize my sadness is multi-layered. The shooting and death of Alex Pretti on the cold streets of Minneapolis yesterday is tragic, regardless of the narrative anyone believes about it. The narratives we believe also expose the polarization in the United States of America and, more specifically, the dark and tragic reality of the polarization in the body of Christ in this country.

Yesterday, as I read how believers from other countries are responding to the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minnesota, I was struck by how united they were in their narrative of what happened – unlike believers in our country at the moment.

The narratives we are telling are wildly divergent, despite many videos from different angles. The narratives people began to tell immediately after live coverage was shared to a watching world diverged as dramatically as black and white, and people have planted Christian flags on both sides.

The President and the Department of Justice issued public judgments while the crime tape was still being stretched out to mark the area for investigation. Alex Pretti is a domestic terrorist, they said. He had a gun and intended to commit mass murder. He was at fault for opposing the efforts of ICE to carry out their duties. It was a tragedy that he he is dead but it was ultimately his fault for being there, getting in the way, and carrying a gun (which is ironic in itself).

At the same time, people immediately accusing ICE agents of cold-blooded murder while the blood still oozed out of Pretti’s lifeless body in the frigid street. Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse, they said. He was a great guy who cared for people. He had a conceal license protected by the 2nd Amendment. He stepped in to help a woman, and his hands were not on his gun. ICE, the President, and the DOJ are at fault for unjustly, mercilessly, and wantonly killing him for expressing his First Amendment rights.

I realize that people rush to judgment on these things because of their biases, including me. We have all seen the same videos, and we have reached opposite conclusions in keeping with our own beliefs and narratives. If you disagree with me on everything else, I hope you have the integrity and honesty to admit this much.

Christians who focus on Romans 13, law and order, the culture war, and support the President and governing authorities come down on the side of the administration’s narrative about what happened. Christians focused on the Biblical theme of justice for the poor and needy, not oppressing the foreigner, loving your neighbor, and caring for the least, come down on the side of the opposite narrative.

The facts are the same. We all saw the same videos. They differences lie in the the way we view the world and the basic assumptions that inform our worldviews.

But, how can that be? Shouldn’t Christians be unified in Christ? Don’t we all believe that Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity, the Word of God through whom all things were made who gave up his life on the cross to save sinners from their sin and death and rose again to give us hope for our own salvation? Why aren’t we all unified in our “biases” over this incident?

As Christians, we have sung, “They will know us by our love.” We have read the words of Jesus, who said, “The world will know us by the love we have for one another.” We have read that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life..” We follow a crucified savior who gave up his life because he loved us. We have all received by faith the righteousness extended to us by the grace of God, not because we earned it, but despite the fact that we didn’t.

Yet, we are divided by the narratives we have embraced as we watch the same videos and reach exactly opposite conclusions.

This troubles me, and it should trouble you if you are also a believer. Not necessarily because I think I am right or you think I am wrong about the narrative, but because it reveals that Christians, who claim to have a special hold on truth given by divine revelation from God with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are no different than anyone else in the world. Our unity in Christ doesn’t seem to matter. It doesn’t even seem to exist.

Most Republicans defend ICE and everything that they are doing, finding ways to excuse every action they take, and ignoring what I believe are obvious and dangerous violations of law and order, of constitutional protections that are embedded into the very foundation of our democratic structure, and the values that we historically have claimed to shine like a divinely inspired city on a hill. Democrats and people who have long been progressive and liberal lament and wail against the administration, and the Department of Justice, and ICE for what they see as flagrant violations of human rights.

There are clear political motivations in the different narratives that drive the immediate conclusions we reach when we watch those videos. Politics expose the underlying worldviews on which our politics are mapped, and they are divergent.

The poignancy of an article I read today percolates in my mind as I edit these words I recorded when I woke up with clarity in my mind this morning – The Religion Underneath Our Arguments, by Kevin Brown, Dispatch Faith, Jan. 25, 2026. “Sometimes our public debates make it seem as if we’re all arguing from different sets of underlying facts.”

Of course, the facts are the facts; we just see them differently from where we stand philosophically. And that means “the thing we are talking about is not really the thing we are talking about.” We are not on the same page in our view of the raw facts because of our “transcendent, world-shaping narratives underneath our beliefs and values.”

I think that Brown is correct when he says that our differences are not so simple that they can be settled by mere impartiality. Our logic flows from the basic premises that define our worldviews, and those divergent worldview foundations determine the structures through which we filter the facts that we observe. “Impartiality alone is … inadequate to sort out contestable moral traditions,” because we start from different places and use different worldview maps to arrive at our conclusions.

We have long ignored reality to think that “competing moral visions that are often incompatible and cannot be simultaneously true” can be set aside when we step into the public square—as if we could neatly separate debates about rights, privileges, laws, and social institutions from the larger bundle of inherently religious questions about meaning, purpose, and the good life.” There is no neutral, arbiter of truth standing in the public square to which all men bow.

Not even Christ followers, apparently, bow to the same arbiter of truth. That is my lamentable realization today. We have separated from each other somewhere along the way, and that separation runs through families, through churches, and through the Body of Christ as a whole in these Unites States of America at the moment.

In retrospect, they always have. We have faced similar divides before. Christian brothers fought against each other on both sides of the Mason Dixon line in the Civil War. Black brothers and sisters in Christ stood on opposite shores from their white brothers and sisters (to a large extent) in the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s and 70’s. Cain fought Abel. Peter opposed Paul. Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the church door in defiance of the Catholic Church.

I am strongly tempted to wail and lament this morning, as I wake up from a fitful sleep, to push the narrative I see of Christians embracing the “Empire” characterized by the age-old idol of strength and might that is bolstered by a strong sense of self-preservation and desire to protect the comfortable status quo that allows us to sleep easy and satisfied. I am strongly tempted to let my bias carry me again today after the tidal wave caused by the tsunami of that earth-shattering event I watched play out yesterday.

But I am just sad for the American church today. I’m sad for my brothers and sisters in Christ on both sides of that continental divide that has risen up in the middle of the body of Christ.

I want to defend myself today. I have not arrived in the position where I stand based on political influences. I have not been carried along by allegiance to the flag or any political platform. I am a lifelong conservative. I have voted straight Republican tickets. I have picketed abortion clinics and marched for life on Right to Life Sunday in Washington. In my formative Christian years in early adulthood, I experienced the bureaucratic morass and inefficiency of large government up close. I have great admiration for the way Ronald Reagan was able to inspire a nation. I believed in the American city on a hill narrative.

In 2014, during the Obama presidency and the Syrian refugee crisis, I was troubled by the fact that President Obama refused to accept Christian, Syrian refugees who had lived in their homeland since the time Jesus walked the dust of the earth. I recognized that he was being politically expedient. His devotion to political correctness would not allow him to take in Christian refugees and keep out Muslim refugees who were overrunning western Europe at the time.

I was torn as I watched fathers beheaded and lifeless children washed ashore on the Turkish coast as the boats that promised to carry them to safety capsized in the turbulent waters of the Mediterranean Sea. I was torn as I watched hoards of angry Arab men pouring into European villages on roads and rails with anger and emptiness in their eyes and read the stories of German and Dutch women groped and violated these men roamed the streets.

I realized that my views on immigration were not well grounded in Scripture at that time. I didn’t even think to consult Scripture on the subject. I was tossed in my own sea of turbulent waters as the competing eddies of political, philosophical, and biblical principles swirled chaotically in my mind and heart. I finally turned to God and the Bible for grounding. I set aside my political leaning and emotional ambiguity, and I submitted to what God would show me through His word with the help of the Holy Spirit.

The fact that I did that doesn’t make me right in my thinking today, but I can say with confidence that I did this with integrity, and I came away with a different view and more certainty than when I started. My views were not influenced my political leanings (which have always been to the right). My views were not dictated by my emotions or gut feelings of what is right. I prayed for and made every attempt to yield to and allow God to wash and renew my mind through His word.

The clarity I gained at that time remains with me today, sharpened now by the iron of faithful brothers and sisters in Christ who rubbed against some of the sharp edges that calcified quickly in my thinking. I am strongly tempted to shout from the mountaintops as I did yesterday, but I am not going to do that today, as I realize we are facing a deeper problem.

To parrot the words of Kevin Brown, “[T]he thing we are talking about is not really the thing we are talking about.” The killing of Alex Pretti, as tragic as it is, is not what divides us. We are divided at a much deeper level.

Let’s be honest, Christians are divided by our politics. The basic premises that govern our thinking seem to fall into one of two ways we sort and prioritize Scripture to support our political tastes. The basic differences between liberal and conservative drive the narratives most of us embrace. Liberals fall into one narrative. Conservatives fall into the other.

To most liberals, Alex Pretti was a compassionate ICU nurse who cared for people. He was peacefully filming ICE agents in the street when he saw them shoving a woman. He stepped in to ask if she was ok. He had one hand on his phone, and the other hand was raised in submission when ICE agents shoved him to the ground. They piled on. They hit or pistol-whipped him in the head. As he was on all fours, one agent pulled the gun out of Pretti’s waistband, and then another agent shot him in the back. The other agents stepped back as one of them fired more bullets into Pretti’s lifeless body.

Most conservatives follow the official narrative publicized by Border Patrol Chief, Gregory Bovino. According to this narrative, Alex Pretti was a domestic terrorist. He approached Border Patrol officers with a weapon, and he interjected himself into a law enforcement operation with the intention to assault ICE agents. According to Bovino, Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” ICE agents were the victims. They saved themselves from bring shot. It was a justified act of self-defense.

These two narratives could not be more different. Ask yourself: how did Jesus prioritize these things? Don’t answer that until you have examined the Gospels to provide chapter and verse. Mere proof texts can be used to support about anything you want to support. Put the Scriptural case together. Check your preconceived notions at the door. Let the Holy Spirit guide you. If we do all of that, we may still disagree on some things, but our disagreements will be embedded in our scriptural understanding and not in the politics of our day.