I stepped away from the Christian faith years ago, but this says so much of the ideals of love and forgiveness that I still have a good deal of respect for in the better portions of scripture and in those trying to live as they believe Jesus lived. It's been interesting to me personally to have left that life behind and now see it fading away in so much of the U.S. today, gradually being replaced with a form of Christianity that could arguably be considered idolatrous in the way it places political commitments and affiliations front and center to what it means to be a 'true' believer.

That felt like it might be a little hyperbolic back in the Bush era, but not these days, when you are far from the only Christian I've heard telling a story like this. It makes even an atheist wonder how so many American Christians and the American church itself have lost their understanding of a passage like Romans 12:3-5. Let alone the notion that the Christlike example for today would not be sitting with tax collectors and Pharisees, though it certainly could be sitting across the political, racial, or socio-economic aisle.