OK, I’ve got an exercise for you (and me). Private. Personal. Don’t share with me. Don’t post on Facebook. Just do it for yourself.

Ready? Choose the political position you most closely align with. In the U.S., you’ll probably do best choosing one of the two major parties. Even if you consider yourself an independent, choose one for this exercise.

Now let’s go through some questions:

• Which points in their platform or standard talking points do you feel strongly about? Not just agree with, but feel some degree of passion/emotion about.
• Which points in their platform or standard talking points are the least important to you?
• Which points in their platform do you disagree with them? This point is important; you need to be able to spot some separation between your views and those of people in the world. There will probably be some overlap with the previous two points.

Now look at the views of the opposing party. Go through the same questions.

Hopefully, if we will do this honestly, we can find ourselves less dominated by partisan positions. In all matters, we need to ask what God wants us to think, not what this or that political party thinks.