Daily A Better Political Imagination

Dear God of all nations and neighborhoods,

When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with a question about politics — "Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?" — He held up a coin and asked whose image it bore. Caesar's, they said. Then give Caesar what bears his image, He replied. But the unspoken question hung in the air like incense: and whose image do you bear?

That is the seed of a better political imagination. Every face we encounter — the immigrant waiting at the bus stop in the February cold, the neighbor whose yard sign makes our blood pressure rise, the city council member we've written off — each one bears the imago Dei, the image of the Living God. The Orthodox tradition calls this theosis, the understanding that every human soul is on a journey toward divine likeness. How differently we would speak at school board meetings if we truly believed the person across the table was becoming God's icon.

Lord, when Matthew 22 tells us to love You with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, You are not offering two separate commands. You are revealing one indivisible reality. We cannot worship You on Sunday and dehumanize our opponents on Monday. We cannot sing "Holy, Holy, Holy" and then scroll through feeds that teach us to despise.