My heavens, what a difficult couple of weeks it’s been. Amen?

The Charlie Kirk assassination dropped a match into what was already a box of incendiary material that was passing as coexistence in our society.

Seemingly, now even more of us are willing to draw ideological lines in the sand, and to further identify as “us” and “them.”

Judging by the number of posts on Facebook boasting about how many people were “unfriended” this past week, it makes me wonder whether the platform’s algorithms will ever recover. The vibe on other social platforms was the same, I assume.

And while all that gnashing of teeth may superficially make us feel better, listening to the gospel might not in a moment like this.

Because here’s the truth few of us want to accept: You’ve never looked into the eyes of a person God doesn’t love.

The people who you consider your political or ideological “enemies” — those who attend a different church than you; those who don’t attend church at all — and those of different faiths, colors, nationalities or economic backgrounds. … Yep, all beloved children of God.

A difficult truth to swallow, no? … How God, just how?

I know I find myself asking that very question a lot.

I didn’t know who Mr. Kirk was until the day he was killed. I later learned that ideologically, we wouldn’t have agreed on much. But I do know that he was still a beloved child of God.

The same is true for the two young students who were killed, and the many more injured, in the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting just weeks ago. … All beloved children of God.

State Sen. Melissa Hortman and her husband, who were shot dead in their Minnesota home in June, too, were beloved children of God.

And you know what is also true? … All of the shooters in those cases, too, were beloved children of God. … Lord have mercy, that was difficult to write.

As faithful people, this is an uncomfortable truth we need to come to terms with. Because it is exactly right now when we are needed to play a critical role in uniting the larger Body of Christ.

The world’s values tell us that we can’t coexist, that our beliefs are the “right” beliefs and that anyone who disagrees with us is evil.

This is most certainly not the gospel speaking. Rather that siren call toward isolation and division is the great sin that simultaneously exists in Creation. And that sin is the act of separation from each other, which is actually separation from our universal Creator.

Friends, if your faith or ideology drives you to spend more time finding differences with other people than what you have in common with them … well then, respectfully, maybe it’s time for a healthy review of both. Amen.

Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.