This morning, I did a little social experiment.

I looked at an Instagram connection who leans pretty far in one political direction. Which direction doesn’t matter. If you’re already trying to guess, hang with me. That’s part of what I want us to think about.

I picked one of the political accounts this person follows. More than a million followers. Clearly, a lot of people are listening.

It was eye-opening, although probably not in the way my Instagram friend would have hoped. I came away thinking about how easy it is for Americans to become so divided when we spend our days looking at completely different versions of the world.

And before anyone gets comfortable, I’m including myself in this.

Your social media feed can mislead you. Mine can, too.

Even accurate information can paint a dishonest picture when you’re only getting the pieces that support one conclusion. You see the other side’s worst moments, your side’s best arguments, and enough people agreeing with you to make you wonder how anybody could possibly think differently.

Spend enough time there, and disagreement starts looking like stupidity. Or worse, evil.

I think that ought to concern us, especially when we begin enjoying the contempt.

Our pastor, Dallas, recently preached on a warning Paul gave Timothy:

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

—2 Timothy 4:3–4

Paul was warning about people turning away from sound teaching in the faith. But the appetite he described is painfully familiar: we want someone to tell us what we already want to hear.

Dallas illustrated it with a little experiment of his own. He Googled something deliberately ridiculous: evidence that the earth is triangle-shaped. A few results down, he found a theory involving triangles forming a cone-shaped earth.

Apparently, even that idea had somebody willing to make the case.

Then he brought it closer to home. He loves ice cream, so he searched, “Is ice cream healthy for you?” Up came the warnings about added sugar, fat, and processed food.

He didn’t particularly care for that answer.

So he changed the search: “Evidence that ice cream is good for you.”

Sure enough, he found articles supporting that, too. One even described it as a superfood of sorts.

As a fellow ice cream lover, I appreciate the effort.

But I also recognize what happened. He changed the question until he got an answer he liked.

We can laugh about that when it’s ice cream. It gets harder when we realize we may be doing the same thing with our politics, our grudges, or a decision we know we ought to reconsider.

How often do we go looking for the truth with our minds already made up about what we’ll accept?

That question matters to me as a Christian because I don’t fit neatly into one political ideology. I have strong convictions, and some of what I’m saying may earn me criticism from people who share my faith. I’m okay with that.

My allegiance belongs to Jesus Christ. Every other loyalty has to answer to Him.

I believe we should vote, participate, and take our civic responsibilities seriously. Our decisions affect real people. We ought to think carefully about them and examine them through our faith.

That also means giving Jesus authority over the political beliefs we feel most certain about.

Political parties change their positions. Culture changes what it celebrates. Leaders and institutions can become corrupted by money, power, and self-interest. Jesus identifies Himself as the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). His authority doesn’t depend on an election result or public approval.

Following Him requires a willingness to surrender a belief when it conflicts with His truth, even if we’ve spent years defending it.

Scripture calls us to feed the hungry, care for people who are hurting, and treat the foreigner with dignity. It also affirms the value of human life in the womb and teaches us to honor God’s design for marriage. Those convictions belong together. We should be able to embrace them without first checking which party agrees.

Faithfulness will sometimes make us uncomfortable with our own side. We need to let it.

If I demand honesty from a politician I oppose while making excuses for one I support, I’m applying a standard that serves my loyalty.

If I share something because it makes the other side look terrible, without caring whether it’s true, I’ve become part of the problem.

And if my politics are teaching me to despise people Jesus calls me to love, then my politics need to change.

We can hold firm convictions and debate policies seriously while treating people with dignity. Christians ought to be showing others how to do that.

When Paul writes that “the greatest of these is love,” he gives us something far more demanding than a nice sentiment. In that same chapter, he says that impressive words, knowledge, and even extraordinary faith amount to nothing without love. He describes patience, kindness, humility, and a love that rejoices with the truth (1 Corinthians 13).

That reaches into ordinary life: how I speak to those I love, how I respond when someone challenges me, whether I listen long enough to understand, and what I do when helping somebody becomes inconvenient.

Sometimes love costs us the satisfaction of having the last word. I suspect a few of us find that more expensive than we’d like to admit.

My good friend, Walter, shared an analogy this morning that stayed with me. You can name a cat, dress it up, and treat it like a person. But put a mouse in front of it, and you’ll find out pretty quickly that it’s still a cat.

Its response reveals its nature.

Put a hurting person in front of a Christian, and something about who we belong to ought to become visible, too.

Compassion should move us toward that person. Their need should matter before we know how they vote, where they come from, or whether they agree with us.

First John 3:18 calls us to love through our actions. Somebody who is hungry, lonely, grieving, or afraid needs that love to become real.

I started this morning looking at somebody else’s political feed. But the question I’m left with belongs to me, too:

Am I willing to let Jesus correct the beliefs I keep asking everybody else to confirm?

I want to be willing. I want to recognize the lies that make contempt feel justified and the loyalties that make corruption easier to excuse. I want my faith to shape what I believe and how I behave when those beliefs are challenged.

And when someone needs me, I want my response to make it clear who I follow.