Christian life about living in grace of Christ

Dear Editor:
Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. … And love your neighbor as yourself.”
It would be a large task to respond to many of the troubling points in Pastor Hawkins’ letter to the editor last week. I won’t attempt that, but I do hope he receives several reminders that the Christian life is not about doubling down on human effort or political alignment, but about living in the grace of Christ.
The Church should be a place of refuge from the storms of politics, an oasis of grace for both right and left. It should be a balm of forgiveness, not a battlefield of ideology. We are called to unity, even knowing we will never agree on every issue. What we share — the love of Christ and the salvation He offers — is more than enough to bind us together.
What leads us astray is when we confuse allegiance to Christ with allegiance to a political vision. Whenever we exalt a nation, party, or ideology above Christ, we give it an allegiance it does not deserve — and history bears painful witness to where such confusion leads.
The task before us is not to win arguments, but to bear witness. If we are known for anything, let it be for how we love our neighbors, how we forgive one another, and how we embody the grace of Christ in a divided world. That is the light our towns, our nation, and our world most desperately need.
Mitchell Lyon,
Aurora