There are moments in life that divide time into "before" and "after."

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For me, one of those moments was the election of Donald Trump.

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Since Election Day 2024, I have carried a deep hurt that I could not seem to put down. As I watched Donald Trump return to power and his administration begin reshaping our country, I became convinced that I was witnessing something profoundly evil. Starting on day one we saw cruelty elevated as strength, dishonesty celebrated as truth, and the vulnerable treated as disposable. Most painfully of all, I watched these things be defended, applauded, and even glorified in the name of Jesus Christ.

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Clearly, the values embodied by this administration stands in direct opposition to the Gospel. The Jesus I have spent my life trying to follow calls us to love our neighbors, welcome the stranger, care for the poor, tell the truth, practice humility, and reject the temptation to seek power at the expense of others. What I saw instead was a vision of Christianity wrapped around grievance, domination, exclusion, and fear.

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But the part that really began to erode my peace was the people. People who I cared about, respected, and worshiped with. People who spoke passionately about Jesus while enthusiastically supporting what I could only understand as something fundamentally contrary to His teachings.

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That realization wounded me more deeply than I expected or realized. I found myself asking the same questions over and over: How can they not see this? Why aren't more Christians speaking up? How can something that seems so obviously contrary to the Gospel be embraced so wholeheartedly by people who sincerely claim to follow Christ?

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Those questions became anger.

The anger became outrage.

The outrage became obsession.

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I found myself constantly reading the news, scrolling social media, looking for the next argument, the next debate, the next opportunity to expose hypocrisy or convince someone they were wrong. I told myself I was defending the truth. Perhaps, in part, I was. But if I'm honest, something else was happening. My inner life was changing. I was becoming reactive, restless, suspicious, and quick to judge. My spiritual life slowly began revolving around everything I opposed instead of everything I believe. Then one day a different question interrupted all the others: What is all of this doing to my heart?

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That question changed everything.

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My convictions have not changed. I still believe evil must be named, injustice resisted, and truth defended. But I came to realize that I could spend my life fighting for justice while quietly losing my own heart. I could be right about politics and become less like Christ in the process. Following Jesus means confronting evil, but it also means refusing to let evil shape us. If outrage becomes my spiritual home, then I have surrendered something precious.

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That is why I started Communion of Hearts Ministries. Not because I have found the perfect way to live this tension, but because I need companions on the journey. I long for a community committed to resisting injustice without becoming consumed by it, to speaking truth without abandoning compassion, and to asking the question that changed my life: How's your heart?

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I have come to believe that the deepest battle of our time is not only for our democracy, our institutions, or even our churches. It is for our hearts. And if we lose those, we lose far more than any election.