It’s not easy to stand in the middle. Our social discourse has become increasingly polarized over the last couple years, with society and social media perpetually seeking to pull us to the extremes. We’re told we either have to view the pandemic as an overblown hoax or order our life around it. Either trust the science implicitly or reject it wholesale. Either view the person sitting in the oval office as a savior or a traitor to America. 

Sadly, this polarization of society has come at a steep cost. Though we communicate using state of the art technology, our social discourse has regressed to trench warfare. We’ve dug into our hyper-polarized perspectives and then we take potshots at the other side via social media. And as a result, the middle ground has become a no man’s land where you will likely be shot at from both sides if you go there. 

But we need people to go there. We need people who don’t ascribe to either extreme to stand up and say, “Wait a minute. Let’s reason together. Neither extreme holds the solutions to the problems that plague us all, and so long as we stay dug into our trenches, we will never truly advance.” 

The people who are willing to risk their social standing to resist the polarization of our society and inhabit the middle ground are modern-day peace makers. They are the sort of people who are willing to listen to both sides and seek to identify the common ground. They are the ones who invite people to get out of their trenches and move towards one another so that we can work together toward viable solutions, rather than continuing to mock and villainize the other side. We desperately need more peace makers, because as long as we focus on what divides us and treat those who disagree with us as the enemy, we will never come together. And a nation divided cannot stand. 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:19)