Practice of nuance means asking painful, difficult questions—questions that might reveal something new or bring a position into different relief or otherwise illuminate our perspectives.

Learning to have healthy conflict with each other over political challenges is of utmost importance; in fact, it is a spiritual imperative.

Ultimately politics is about people. People are never boring, and people belong together. We are meant to hash out how we want to live in community with one another.

In many ways, the aspect of the story of Christ that we both find so compelling and relatable is God’s choice to experience the discomforts of being human as a sign of his love for us. … Living in community with other people … is uncomfortable. We have ideas that test each other. We have vigorous and painful disagreements. Rather than being discouraged, we can recognize our discomfort, ease into it, and share the experience of being human together.

Whenever we make one thing the central cause of a problem or the singular solution to that problem, the stakes are always too high to allow honest conversation or vulnerable reflection.

We have to stop fearing difficult discussions and start seeing them as opportunities for growth.

For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It’s not “integrity,” it’s “always do the right thing.” It’s not “innovation,” it’s “look at the problem from a different angle.” Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea—we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.

We have to let go of the idea that there is too much at stake or that one issue is too important to honestly and realistically question our positions on other issues.

When we don’t understand our “why”—the values behind our positions—we are too easily tempted to follow our confirmation bias down an amoral or immoral black hole of support for politicians who simply don’t deserve it.

Our driving force shouldn’t be ensuring that a particular party controls a particular wing of government. Our driving force should be the values that are most important to us in living in community with other people.