Scroll through the headlines and you can feel the tension. Protesters clash on college campuses. Neighbors glare at one another over yard signs. Social media seethes with accusations. Families split apart at Thanksgiving over politics. The rifts are not merely about policies but basic definitions of reality and identity. In such an atmosphere, people retreat into tribes, political, racial, sexual, ideological – seeking security and belonging, yet when tribes rise against tribes, as the headlines attest, hostility escalates as each struggles to prevail over one or all of the others.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently gave voice to that frustration when she called for a “national divorce,” arguing that conservatives and progressives are so far apart that reconciliation is impossible. Her lament reflects a genuine reality: our nation is deeply divided. Many of her critics rushed to condemn her rhetoric; many of her supporters quietly agreed. Both camps missed that she was naming something most Americans feel in their bones: we are living through a season of estrangement unprecedented in our lifetime. Yet Christians cannot stop at diagnosis. Where some see irreparable separation, the Gospel offers a remedy. The cross does not deny division; it overcomes it. It is one thing to lament the chasms in our society. It is another to stake our lives on a power great enough to bridge them.

The late Dr. D. James Kennedy captured this vision in his sermon “What if America Were a Christian Nation Again.” He said, “If all the Christians in America simply led one person to Christ this year, this nation would once again be overwhelmingly Christian, and most of all society’s problems would vanish like snow before the rising sun. If Christians would become involved in our culture and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, this nation and this world would be transformed almost overnight. It would be glorious.”

Kennedy’s words are a clarion call: the answer to national fracture is not withdrawal but a fresh surge of evangelism and engagement. He believed that a nation’s divisions could “melt like snow before the rising sun” if the Church did what Christ commissioned her to do.

The confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh beautifully illustrates that God’s truth swallows up falsehood. When Moses cast down his staff, it became a serpent. Pharaoh’s magicians threw down their staff, and they became serpents, too. But then something remarkable happened: the serpent from Moses’ staff swallowed up the serpents of Pharaoh’s magicians. God’s sign didn’t merely match the counterfeit; it didn’t simply make peace with it and live alongside it; it consumed it. This is what the Gospel does.

The apostle Paul wrote that in Christ God “has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” and created “one new humanity” (Ephesians 2:14-15). In the first century, the cross brought Jew and Gentile together – something completely unthinkable at that time. The Gospel can do the same now as it did then. It can still bridge our twenty-first-century chasms. Our neighbors are weary of division and hungry for belonging. They are searching for an identity that cannot be canceled, revoked, or lost. That is precisely what the Gospel offers: forgiveness, adoption, a new name, a new family, and a new citizenship in the kingdom of God.

Skeptics will say, “That sounds idealistic. Society is too far gone.” But history gives us living parables of this very thing. In community after community, darkness loses its grip when the Gospel is proclaimed with power and lived with integrity. God’s truth swallows up the devil’s lies.

After all, the Hebrides Islands off Scotland’s northwest coast were once marked by spiritual lethargy and cultural drift. In the late 1940s, two elderly sisters began praying fervently for spiritual awakening under the ministry of Duncan Campbell. Meetings spread from parish churches to barns and fields. People walking to pubs or dance halls were suddenly gripped with a sense of sin and turned aside to pray. Entire villages gathered spontaneously for worship, often lasting until the early morning. Police records showed a dramatic drop in crime. Taverns were emptied, family prayer was returned to homes, and young people who had been disinterested in religion were converted en masse. God’s power didn’t merely offset the darkness; it swallowed it up.

In the 1990s, Rwanda was drenched in blood after one of the worst episodes of ethnic slaughter in modern times. Yet thousands of Rwandans, including many perpetrators, entered church-based reconciliation and forgiveness programs. Evangelical and Catholic leaders taught repentance, confession, and forgiveness rooted in the Cross of Christ. Today, some of the very people who killed their neighbors worship alongside surviving family members. It is not utopia; nevertheless, it is a living picture of Christ breaking down the dividing wall of hostility.

In the 1970s and 80s, communist regimes across Eastern Europe tried to suppress Christianity. Yet underground churches kept evangelizing. By the time the Berlin Wall fell, vibrant evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox networks were ready to fill the moral vacuum. Christian movements and leaders were at the forefront of peaceful protests in several countries. When the political “Pharaoh” lost its grip, the Gospel infrastructure was already there to start the healing. A re-emerging faith in Christ swallowed up the counterfeit serpents of Marxist ideology.

Even on American streets, we have seen the same principle on a micro scale. Programs like Teen Challenge, Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, and Nicky Cruz’s outreach showed hardened gang members becoming believers, reconciling with rivals, and mentoring the next generation away from violence. “We used to mark our streets with blood,” one former gang leader said. “Now we mark them with prayer.” The phony serpents of hate and revenge were devoured by a new life in Christ.

These stories of what happened are not utopian myths. They are documented episodes of God’s Spirit at work in the world. They show that an entire culture can be turned around when the Church does what Christ called her to do – pray, proclaim, disciple, and forgive. Crime can drop. Hatreds can be healed and abandoned. Ideologies can crumble. Addictions can break. Enemies can embrace.

Moses’s serpent still swallows the magicians’ serpents. In each case, the transformation didn’t begin with governments, policies, or programs. It started with ordinary believers – often anonymous, praying, evangelizing, and refusing to give up on God’s power to change hearts. This is the hope of our nation.

America in 2025 is not ancient Egypt, but it is a place where fakery abounds. Ideologies, identities, and movements promise liberation yet deliver only new forms of bondage. However, the most significant problem in our nation is that the Gospel of Christ is not generally being preached. Mainline churches, in pursuit of cultural approval, have surrendered the authority of Scripture, rebranded sin as virtue, embraced false sexual ethics, mingled the Gospel with worldly ideologies, and silenced the call to repentance, abandoning the offense of the Cross for the fleeting applause of men.

The frightening reality is that a church may continue holding services, maintaining programs, and maintaining buildings yet be of no effect because the Lord has already removed its candlestick (Revelation 2:5). Without His Spirit, the glow of Gospel witness is extinguished. All that remains is a religious shell with no power to transform as the Lord intended.

Before we pronounce a “national divorce,” we should remember the Gospel of Christ reconciles sinners to God and, through changed hearts, to one another. God’s truth always swallows up the devil’s lies, and His power to transform society has not diminished in the slightest. Suppose Christians, even being a minority, take seriously their call to evangelize and courageously live out the Gospel. In that case, we will yet see the rising sun melt our nation’s divisions “like snow,” and the serpent of truth will swallow up every counterfeit. That would indeed be glorious! This is the path forward, not a national divorce. God forbid!