I remember teaching my daughter how to ride a bike. She wobbled up and down the cul-de-sac as I ran close behind, holding onto the back of the seat. When she was ready, I let go. The first time we did it, the ride ended in a crash and tears. But she got back up and tried again.

I ran beside her calling, “We can do it this time!”

As I prepare my little church for 2024, an election year, a year fraught with the potential for conflict, I find myself running alongside the church calling, “We can do it this time!”

We didn’t do great in 2020, when most everyone caved in to anger and anxiety, conspiracy and mutiny. Some people responded with grace and charity, but not most of us. The church honestly has not done great for several decades, in which people who call themselves followers of Jesus have joined in secular mud-slinging and turning a blind eye to the sins of their own parties and candidates.

But I think we can do it this time!

I’m spending time reading the words of Jesus captured in Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount. His teachings are powerfully counter-intuitive and counter-cultural. I am envisioning a people who are “Sermon on the Mount Christians,” Christians who behave as though these teachings were the only thing they ever heard Jesus say. Can you imagine a Church in which people refuse to call other people fools, refuse to cheat on their spouses, refuse to break promises, and refuse to get revenge? I can imagine it, but I realize there is a group of people out there who can’t – the secular public who has watched the Church fail at these things through all of recent memory.

What if, this year, we pledge to be a people of grace in seasons where win-lose decisions threaten to divide our country and our culture? What if, in 2024, we tried to be Sermon on the Mount Christians?

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Stay tuned for my new book, “Jesus Is Not King,” a Christian look at political engagement.