All we got were distractions and division, like magicians directing our attention elsewhere while the real problem went untouched. Americans did not need more confusion. We needed truth, and we needed some way back toward unity. Instead, MAGA promised to make things as they once were. To me, that looked like more war, deception, and corporate immunity at the cost of freedom—the same habits that helped leave us trillions of dollars in debt. The left offered its own deceptions, groping for a candidate who seemed less like a leader than a pawn in a democracy already frayed and failing.

I had already come to believe that the deepest problem in this country was not the one either party was campaigning on. The problem was division. I have seen it before. I am old enough to remember the country tearing itself apart over Vietnam, and I carried a conscientious objector’s card through the middle of it. Left against right. Religion against religion. The woke movement and the backlash against it. War abroad feeding anger at home. All of it keeps us from coming together. Jesus warned about a house divided against itself long before Lincoln used the image.

I want you to understand what I was hoping for in that moment. Not politically, but spiritually. When a man comes that close to eternity, we hope something changes in him. The old-timers called it being sobered. Scripture connects the fear of the Lord with the beginning of wisdom. I watched my television hoping to see a humbled leader—a man who might look at a fractured country and decide that he did not want to leave it more divided than he found it.

He was not entirely wrong. We did have a fight on our hands. We still do. But the enemy was not a visible army. The enemy was division itself, and division cannot be defeated by striking back harder. That fight required humility, the one weapon that never seemed to enter the arsenal. What I saw that day was more defiance, delivered with a bloodied ear and a clenched fist, while the crowd roared.

I did not give up right away, and I want to be fair about why. Maybe the raised fist was a reflex. A man gets shot at, adrenaline takes over, and the body moves before the soul catches up. I have said things in the heat of a moment that did not represent my better self. If God judged me only by my first reactions, I would be in trouble. So I kept watching. I told myself that the humbling might come later, in the quiet, where it often does.

But I need to be careful, because this could easily be read as a partisan piece, and that is not my intention. I could not vote for the other side either. Its divisiveness was often quieter and dressed in gentler language, but I believed it was still there. The whole election felt like a shell game. A party can speak of unity while sorting people into opposing categories, and that does not heal a country. It can become the same disease with a better bedside manner. I stood before that ballot like a man facing two doors that seemed to open onto the same hallway.

That was a hope-filled mark of agape. It was a woman trying to react like Jesus at the worst moment of her life. It called to mind Christ asking the Father to forgive those crucifying Him (Luke 23:34). Her act of mercy seemed almost out of place amid the spectacle, like a pearl dropped in the middle of a rally. It was the truest Christian act I saw that day, and the stage nearly swallowed it.

Then President Trump spoke. He appeared energized, as though he had entered a campaign rally rather than a memorial. He spoke of himself, his enemies, and his hatred for his opponents. He drew a contrast between his own response and Charlie Kirk’s willingness to forgive.

I have watched American presidencies since Eisenhower. For me, that was one of the lowest moments. I do not mean the most criminal or the most incompetent. I mean low in a spiritual sense. The contrast could hardly have been clearer: a widow had just offered forgiveness, and a man with power answered by speaking of hatred. The crowd cheered.

Look at those works again and notice what they require. Each one asks us to look at another human being—including an enemy, a stranger, or a prisoner who may deserve his sentence—and see a person made in the image of God. Not merely an opponent. Not a demographic. Not one of them. A person whom Christ loves and for whom He died.

And here is the hard part, the part that helps me understand what I watched over those two years: mercy requires humility. There is no proud path to it. The temptation of pride runs through the story of the fall and through every human heart. It tells us to raise the fist, name our enemies, strike back, and enjoy the roar of the crowd.

Deny yourself. Not promote yourself, brand yourself, or avenge yourself. A cross is not a weapon to swing at an enemy. It is a burden accepted in love. The fist and the cross are two very different postures, and I do not think we can hold both at once. Our hands are not built for it.

I have a fist too. I raise it at the television, at the other party, at drivers on Route 41, and at people I have decided are the problem with this country. The division I diagnosed in the nation also lives in me, and my own cross is heavy. I can only imagine what a public leader must face and the temptations surrounding him. These times may demand more than a human being can bear alone. A leader today must anchor every decision in something greater than himself.