A quick scroll through any social media platform will likely present a bleak picture. Division and arguments abound. Reaching some consensus on anything looks like an impossible task – from pineapple on pizza to the merits of wearing a mask.

This new stay-at-home, work-from-home, learn-from-home landscape means that we’re spending more time than usual on the internet. With the pace and availability of information in such a visibly divisive era, a few things are bound to happen.

Bravery abounds behind the keyboard.

It’s much easier to pick a fight with someone when you’re safely behind a keyboard. It’s even easier to keep that fight going digitally than it is in person. Every hour you can passive-aggressively share a new article or half-baked YouTube video proving your point, to provoke your opponent.

Everything becomes political.

Our world is over-politicized. Chances are, you’ve had a conversation with where the term “the left” and “the right” or “liberal” and “conservative” came up. We’re quick to associate someone’s entire worldview with the candidate or party they support.

Everything becomes personal.

The art of conversation is fading. We’re not listening to understand, but listening to respond. The pace is so much faster, meaning a discussion quickly devolves into a debate and debate into personal attacks.

I look to the Church in seasons of distress like this. If we truly believe the solution to the broken state of our world is the life-transforming Gospel of Jesus, this should be a season of thriving. We could use this pandemic to tangibly show the love of Jesus and bring hope to a world so desperate to grasp it. We could bring home an extra bag of groceries for a frontline healthcare worker, buy coffee for a neighbour; the ideas are endless.

I’ve seen incredible examples of this.

But something I see far more often than this tangible display of God’s love through his people is believers taking to the internet to stir up division and let controversy breed.

It seems as if more Christians are concerned about evangelizing their latest conspiracy theory, their newest political opinion or starting a fight with someone in the comments section of a post.

This is not the Gospel of Jesus. This is anti-gospel.

Paul advises a young Timothy:

“Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil.” [2 Timothy 2:23-24 ESV]

Dear Christian, do not be mistaken. The fate of the world does not hinge on you sharing a video, post or winning a debate. If Jesus is truly our hope; conspiracies true or false and leaders good or evil, are completely and totally irrelevant to our state.

C.S. Lewis wrote in 1948 of the Atomic Age, a time where the world was on edge in the wake of the Second World War and the unknown nuclear threat. Of this, he wrote:

“This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

As Paul told the Philippian church – to live, is to labour for Christ a day longer, and to die is immeasurable gain.

In life and death, if Christ is indeed our hope, let us not carry division, but the Gospel to a broken world.