[Intro: The Digital Dust-Up]

Today, we’re wading into a topic that usually makes people want to either throw their phones into a lake or hide under their blankets until 2028: Political Divisiveness. But we’re approaching it through a back door. We’re talking about the "Quiet Grace of Not Knowing."

See, we live in an era where having "no comment" is seen as a moral failing. We are pressured to have a 10-point white paper ready for every headline before we’ve even finished our morning coffee. But what if the most "Jesus-like" thing we could do is lower our voices, unclench our fists, and admit that while we don't know everything about the state of the union, we know exactly who we are called to be in our own neighborhood? Let’s talk about how Jesus disrupted the world not by winning the debate, but by changing the game entirely.

[Section 1: The Pressure to be a Part-Time Pundit]

Let’s be honest with each other: there is a weird, itchy kind of pressure that comes with being an adult in the digital age. It’s the feeling that if you aren't perpetually "informed"—which is usually just code for "perpetually agitated"—you’re somehow checked out. We’ve turned "staying informed" into a competitive sport, and the prize is usually just a high-functioning ulcer.

I’ve caught myself in the "midnight scroll" more times than I care to admit. You know the one. You’re lying in bed, your face glowing blue in the dark like a radioactive ghost, scrolling through news feeds and social commentary. You find yourself reading a 45-part thread by a guy named "LibertyEagle77" or "SocialJusticeJan," and suddenly, your heart rate is climbing. You didn't even know what a "supply chain tariff on mid-grade semiconductors" was five minutes ago, but now you’re pretty sure it’s the end of Western civilization and you’re ready to fight anyone who says otherwise.

Suddenly, we’re all experts. Or at least, we feel like we need to be. There’s this crushing weight to have a definitive, biblical "stance" on complex geopolitical shifts, tax codes, and every micro-controversy that flares up on the timeline. We feel like if we don’t have a take, we don’t have a voice. And if we don’t have a voice, do we even exist? We’ve traded the "peace that passes understanding" for the "anxiety that comes with over-analyzing."

This is where the "Quiet Grace of Not Knowing" comes in. And let’s be super clear: this isn't about being ignorant. This isn’t a "get out of jail free" card to be lazy or apathetic. It’s not about sticking your head in the sand while the world burns. It’s about intellectual and spiritual humility. It’s the grace to say, "I am a finite human being. I have 24 hours in a day, a limited brain capacity, and a primary calling to love the actual, physical image-bearers in my hallway and my cul-de-sac. I cannot carry the weight of the entire world’s arguments on my shoulders."

There is a profound spiritual relief in admitting you don't have a solution for a three-thousand-year-old conflict, but you do know how to be kind to the person in the cubicle next to you who votes differently than you do. The world tells us that "not knowing" is a sign of weakness. If you aren't certain, you're "lukewarm." But in the Kingdom, realizing our limitations is actually a prerequisite for grace. Think about it: If I think I know everything, I don't actually need a Counselor. If I think I have all the answers, I stop asking God for wisdom. I start asking Him for an audience.

We’ve become a culture of amateur judges, banging our gavels on our kitchen tables every time a news alert dings. We’ve been led to believe that our "opinion" is our most valuable contribution to the world. But is it? When we stand before the Creator, is He going to ask us for our stance on the 2024 agricultural bill, or is He going to ask us how we treated the "least of these" in our own zip code?

And let’s talk about the "high" of being right. It’s addictive, isn’t it? Being right feels like a warm blanket. It makes us feel safe. If I can categorize everyone into "good" and "evil," "informed" and "ignorant," then I don't have to do the hard work of actually loving them. Outrage is a cheap substitute for power. It makes us feel like we’re doing something when we’re actually just vibrating with stress. We think that by being "right," we are being "faithful." But Scripture suggests that God is much more interested in the fruit of our spirit than the fire in our feed.

When we insist on "knowing" and "winning" every political argument, we lose the ability to be curious. Curiosity is the death of divisiveness. But when we’re certain, we stop listening. We start seeing people as "voters" or "demographics" or "threats" rather than "Imago Dei"—bearers of the image of God. We stop seeing a person with a story, a family, and a struggle, and we start seeing a talking point in a fleece vest.

The "Quiet Grace" is the decision to opt out of the outrage cycle. It’s the permission to say, "I’m not sure about that policy yet, but I am sure that I’m called to be patient, kind, and humble today." It’s a shift from the global noise to the local ripple. It’s realizing that the most "disruptive" thing you can do in a divided world isn't to post a clever zinger; it's to be a person of peace when everyone else is a person of war.

We have been sold a lie that we must be "all in" on a political identity to be a "good" person. But as believers, our identity is so much deeper and more ancient than any political party founded in the last 200 years. If we find ourselves more offended by a political slight than we are moved by a neighbor's suffering, our "knowing" has become an idol.

Because when we look at the life of Jesus, we don't see a man who spent His time trying to win a seat at the table of Roman power or trying to out-maneuver the political activists of His day. He wasn't interested in the "take." He was interested in the "person." He was a master of the "Third Way"—a way that didn't just pick a side, but completely redefined the field of play.

He was disruptive, yes. But He was disruptive because He refused to be categorized by the political bins of His day. He was a man of "Quiet Grace" who knew exactly who He was, which meant He didn't have to prove how much He knew to the people who hated Him.

So, if Jesus wasn't trying to "win" the political system or join the local Zealot branch, what exactly was He doing? And how did His specific kind of "personhood" make both the left and the right of His day equally uncomfortable?

[Section 2: The Original Political Pressure Cooker]

If we think our current climate is uniquely polarized, we probably need to give the first century a closer look. We tend to imagine the world of the New Testament in soft focus, like a Sunday School flannel board where everyone wears bathrobes and speaks in King James English. But the reality was a jagged, high-stakes political minefield.

In Jesus’ day, you didn't just have "political differences"; you had literal occupied territory. On one side, you had the Romans—the global superpower, the "empire" in every sense of the word. They were the law, the tax collectors, and the heavy boot on the neck of Israel. On the other side, you had a fractured Jewish community trying to figure out how to survive.

You had the Pharisees, who thought the answer was moral purity and strict religious boundary-marking. You had the Sadducees, the pragmatists who decided that if you can’t beat the Romans, you might as well lobby them and keep your status. Then you had the Zealots—the "burn it all down" party. They were looking for a military Messiah who would sharpen a sword and start a revolution.

Enter Jesus.

Everyone wanted to draft Him onto their team. He was drawing crowds, performing miracles, and speaking with an authority that made the "pundits" of the day nervous. They kept trying to pin Him down, to force Him into a "Yes/No" binary. They wanted to know: "Are you for us, or are you for them?"

One of the most famous traps is found in Matthew 22. It’s the "Tax Question." Now, this wasn't just a debate about fiscal policy; it was a trap designed to get Him killed or canceled. If Jesus said, "Yes, pay the tax," the Zealots and the common people would see Him as a Roman collaborator—a sellout. If He said, "No, don't pay it," the Romans would arrest Him for sedition and insurrection. It was the ultimate "Gotcha" question.

And Jesus does something brilliant. He asks for a coin. He doesn't even have one on Him—which is a subtle, humorous flex in itself. He looks at the denarius and asks, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They say, "Caesar’s."

Then He drops the line that still echoes today: "So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s."

With one sentence, Jesus didn't just dodge a trap; He redefined the entire landscape. He was saying, "Sure, give the Emperor his little metal discs. They have his face on them. But you? You bear the image of the Living God. Your soul, your allegiance, your primary identity doesn't belong to the state. It belongs to the Father."

Jesus was a political disruptor not because He had a better policy platform, but because He refused to let the political structures of the day define His worth or His mission. He was "in the world," navigating the Roman occupation and the religious infighting, but He was absolutely not "of it."

He ate with tax collectors (the Roman collaborators) and He invited a Zealot (the anti-Roman revolutionary) to be one of His twelve disciples. Can you imagine those dinner conversations? You’ve got Matthew, who used to work for the IRS/Empire, sitting across the campfire from Simon the Zealot, who probably spent his weekends plotting how to stab people like Matthew.

Jesus didn't make them agree on a political manifesto. He made them follow Him. He disrupted the system by creating a community where the "Third Way" wasn't a compromise—it was a new Kingdom altogether. He was showing us that being a person of "Quiet Grace" means your peace isn't dependent on who holds the gavel in the capital, because your King is sitting on a throne that no election can touch.

[Section 3: The Personhood of the Prince of Peace]

When we talk about being "more like Jesus" in a divisive age, we often jump straight to His words. We look for the "killer comeback" or the "perfect parable." But we have to look at the kind of person He was. Character is the container that holds the truth. If the container is cracked and leaking vitriol, the truth inside doesn't matter much to the person receiving it.

Jesus was a person of immense, focused presence. In a world that was screaming for a king to take charge, Jesus was frequently found stopping for the "one." He stopped for the woman with the issue of blood while on His way to a high-profile healing. He stopped for the blind beggar while the crowds were trying to shush him. He spent an entire afternoon talking to a Samaritan woman at a well—breaking every political, racial, and social "rule" of the time.

He didn't treat people as "cases" or "constituencies." He treated them as humans.

Think about the posture of Jesus. He is described as "gentle and lowly in heart." That’s not a description we usually see in the bio of a political firebrand. In our world, we value "strong and loud." We value "aggressive and certain." But Jesus’ strength was rooted in a quiet confidence that didn't need to shout to be heard.

There’s a beautiful irony here: Jesus was the only person in history who actually knew everything. He had every reason to be the most "know-it-all" person to ever walk the earth. He could have settled every debate, corrected every historical inaccuracy, and laid out the perfect 500-year plan for global governance. But He didn't.

Instead, He asked questions. He told stories. He washed feet.

He modeled a "Quiet Grace" that allowed Him to walk through a crowd of people who wanted to throw Him off a cliff without losing His composure. Why? Because His identity was anchored in the Father’s love, not the crowd’s approval.

When we say we want to be more like Jesus, it means we have to adopt His pace. Our political divisiveness is fueled by speed. We react in seconds. We judge in milliseconds. But Jesus was slow. He was deliberate. He took time to go to lonely places to pray. He took time to grieve. He took time to eat.

The "personhood" of Jesus tells us that our most powerful tool in a divided world isn't our "rightness," but our integrity. It’s the small, quiet choices we make when no one is recording. It’s the way we speak about our opponents when they aren't in the room. It’s the refusal to mock or dehumanize, even when it’s funny or when they "started it."

Jesus showed us that you can be uncompromising on truth while being overflowing with grace. We usually think those two things are on a sliding scale—if you have more of one, you must have less of the other. But Jesus was 100% both. He could tell the Pharisees they were "whitewashed tombs" and then weep over the city of Jerusalem in the same breath.

His disruption was a disruption of love. He loved people so much that He refused to let them stay stuck in their narrow, hateful categories. He called them into something larger.

So, when we find ourselves getting sucked into the vortex of "The Other Side is Evil," we have to look at the person of Jesus. He didn't see "The Other Side." He saw lost sheep. He saw brothers and sisters who had forgotten whose image they were wearing.

Being like Jesus means trading our "need to be right" for the "call to be righteous." And righteousness, in the biblical sense, isn't about being morally superior; it’s about being in "right relationship"—with God, with ourselves, and with our neighbors. Even the neighbors who have the "wrong" yard signs.

This isn't a call to be a doormat. Jesus wasn't a doormat. He flipped tables when the vulnerable were being exploited. But even His anger was "clean"—it was for the sake of others, never for the sake of His own ego.

If we want to practice this "Quiet Grace," we have to start by asking: "Am I becoming a person that people feel safe around, or am I becoming a person that people feel they have to perform for?" Jesus was the safest person who ever lived, and yet He was the most transformative. That is the ripple we’re looking for.

[Section 4: The Architecture of a Quiet Life]

So, how do we bridge this? How do we take the "Third Way" of a first-century carpenter and apply it to a world of 24-hour news cycles and neighborhood group chats that feel more like digital gladiator pits?

The bridge is built with the stones of our daily habits. If we want to have the "Quiet Grace" of Jesus, we have to recognize that we cannot consume a diet of 90% outrage and expect to produce a harvest of 100% peace. It just doesn't work that way. We are formed by what we gaze upon. If we spend three hours a day looking at why "those people" are ruining the country, and five minutes a day looking at the Word of God, it’s pretty clear which "kingdom" is going to win the tug-of-war for our hearts.

Being like Jesus in a divisive age requires a kind of "spiritual gatekeeping." It’s the realization that my attention is a sacred resource. Every time we click on a headline designed to make us sneer at "the other side," we are paying a tax on our souls. When I give my attention to every digital firestorm, I am essentially letting strangers move into my head and rearrange the furniture. I’m letting people who don't know my name tell me who to fear, who to hate, and what to be anxious about.

But the "Quiet Grace of Not Knowing" offers us a different architecture for our lives. It’s the architecture of **Proximity.**You see, politics—especially the modern, televised version—is almost always about "theology from a distance." It’s about people we’ve never met, in cities we’ve never visited, dealing with problems we only understand through a filtered, biased lens. We argue about "the homeless problem" while walking past the actual man sitting outside the grocery store. We argue about "education policy" while forgetting to ask our neighbor’s kid how their third-grade year is going.

But the Kingdom of God is always about proximity. It’s about who is within arm’s reach.

Jesus didn't just "love the world" in an abstract, Hallmark-card kind of way. He loved the person right in front of Him. He loved the leper who reached out to touch His hem—a man who was a political and social "untouchable." He loved the rich young ruler who couldn't quite let go of his stuff. He loved the disciples who kept sticking their feet in their mouths. He was a master of the "local."

When we shift our focus from "National Outrage" to "Local Obedience," the world gets a lot quieter. It also gets a lot more manageable. You might not be able to fix a broken immigration system or solve a global energy crisis from your kitchen table, but you can certainly bring a meal to the widow on your street who just had hip surgery. You can certainly choose not to repeat a piece of gossip about a coworker, even if that gossip would make you look "enlightened" or "right."

This is where the disruption happens. In a world that is obsessed with "the big picture" and "macro-trends," the follower of Jesus is obsessed with the "small ripple." We are the people who believe that a cup of cold water given in His name matters more than a thousand viral tweets. We are the people who believe that the "Quiet Grace" of listening to someone you disagree with—actually listening, with your heart open, not just waiting for your turn to reload—is a revolutionary act.

Humor me for a second: imagine if we were as well-versed in our neighbors' names as we were in the latest polling data. Imagine if we knew the struggles of the barista at our local coffee shop as well as we knew the scandals of a politician three states away. That is the architecture of a quiet life. It’s a life that refuses to be hurried by the world’s panic because it is anchored in the Father’s presence.

And let’s be honest: this is hard. It feels "unproductive." We’ve been conditioned to think that if we aren't shouting, we aren't helping. But the loudest noise in the world doesn't change a single heart. Love does. And love requires the quiet grace to put down the megaphone and pick up a towel. It requires the humility to say, "I am not the savior of the world. I am just a servant in the Kingdom."

When we build our lives this way, we become "un-outrageable." We stop being puppets of the latest news cycle. We start to develop a "spiritual thickness" that allows us to walk through a divided world without being divided ourselves. We become like the house built on the rock—the winds of political change blow, the floods of social media anger rise, but the house stands, because its foundation isn't in the shifting sands of public opinion.

[Section 5: The Ripple—Small Faithfulness in a Loud World]

So, what does this look like when you wake up tomorrow morning and your phone is already buzzing with a new "crisis"? How do we actually practice this "Quiet Grace"?

Our guiding philosophy here at Sunday Ripple is that small, faithful choices create lasting spiritual impact over time. We aren't looking for the dramatic protest; we’re looking for the daily practice. So, I want to suggest a few "ripples" you can start this week.

First: The "Holy Pause." This is the discipline of the space between the stimulus and the response. Sometime this week—probably within the next few hours—you’re going to hear something or read something that makes your blood boil. It’s inevitable. It’s that "itchy" feeling of self-righteousness. When that happens, I want you to practice the "not knowing."

Before you reply, before you vent, before you even formulate your "rebuttal," I want you to pause and say to yourself: "I don't have to have a take on this to be faithful to God today." Give yourself permission to be "uninformed" for a moment so that you can be "spirit-formed." Ask God: *"How would You have me see the people involved in this story?"*This isn't about being passive; it’s about being prayerful. It’s about refusing to let your emotions be hijacked by someone else’s agenda. Sometimes, the most faithful thing you can do for the Kingdom of God is to simply not post. To let the silence be your protest against the noise.

Second: Presence over Position. We’ve become so good at knowing people's "positions" that we’ve forgotten how to be "present" with them. Find one person in your life—a family member, a neighbor, the guy at the hardware store—who you know sees the world differently than you do. Your mission this week isn't to convert them. It’s not to "win" the argument. It’s not to subtly drop a hint about why your news source is better than theirs.

Your mission is simply to serve them. Re-establish the "Imago Dei" connection. Remind your own heart that they are a person, not a demographic. When we serve someone we disagree with, we are performing a "political exorcism" on our own souls. We are casting out the demon of contempt and replacing it with the spirit of Christ.

Third: A Media "Sabbath." If you find that your "Quiet Grace" is being drowned out by the constant hum of political commentary, try a 24-hour fast from the news. Not because the news doesn't matter, but because your soul matters more. Spend that time in "productive ignorance." Read a Psalm. Go for a walk. Talk to a human being face-to-face. You’ll find that the world didn't actually end while you were away, but your capacity to love the world might have actually grown.

These are small things. They feel almost too small when the world is screaming about "existential threats." But remember the mustard seed. Remember the leaven in the dough. Remember the way Jesus changed the world—not by seizing the palace, but by walking the dusty roads and healing the broken.

When we practice these ripples, we are essentially saying that we trust God more than we trust our own ability to manage the world. We are admitting that we are limited, that we are finite, and that we are utterly dependent on His wisdom. That is the "Quiet Grace." It’s the peace that comes from knowing you aren't the judge of the world, you’re just a witness to the Light.

It’s about being a person of "gentle conviction" rather than "moral pressure." People are exhausted by moral pressure. They are weary of being told they aren't "enough" of this or "enough" of that. But they are drawn to gentle conviction. They are drawn to people who seem to have an anchor in the storm.

When you choose to be kind to the person who is being unkind to you, you’re creating a ripple. When you choose to pray for the political leader you can’t stand, you’re creating a ripple. When you choose to sit in the "not knowing" rather than the "false certainty," you’re creating a ripple. And those ripples, over time, change the very current of our culture.

[The Closing: Under the Surface]

As we close our time today, I want you to take a deep breath.

If you’ve been feeling the weight of the world—if you’ve been feeling like you’re failing because you can’t make sense of the chaos—I want you to hear this: It is okay to not know. It is okay to be quiet. It is okay to focus on the small, ordinary work of God in your own life.

The political storms will continue to rage. The kingdoms of this world will always rise and fall, making a lot of noise as they do. But beneath the surface, there is a deeper current. There is a King who is not nervous. There is a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.

Our job isn't to win the world for Jesus through our clever arguments or our political "victories." Our job is to be the kind of people who actually look like Him—people of humility, people of service, and people of "Quiet Grace."

So, as you head into your week, don't worry about having the perfect answer for every headline. Just worry about having a heart that is open to the person in front of you. Stay humble. Stay curious. And keep looking for those small ways to let the love of Christ ripple through your life.

I’m so glad we could spend this time together. If this episode was helpful for you, maybe share it with someone who’s feeling a little "itchy" from the news cycle this week.

Remember. Small ripples can make a big impact - so go make yours.