“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

–President Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

“I knew the person I nominated would be put through a painful and difficult confirmation process. But I have to tell you, what (she) was put through was well beyond that. The most vile, baseless assertions and accusations.”

Those were President Biden’s words the day after the most recent Supreme Court nominee was confirmed, and, yes, he was referring to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

But he could have been referring to then Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 nomination hearing, or the one Biden presided over as Chair of the Senate Judicial Committee when then Judge Clarence Thomas sat before the members in 1991.

Unfortunately, Mr. Biden is just the tip of, and most visible of, the many politicians who use demagoguery and vitriol against their opponents.

I was disappointed with the weak support Judge Brown Jackson got from Republican senators. They disapproved of her ideology and potential rulings as a future justice.

This, after they railed against the Democrats for their treatment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett when she was before the Senate, mostly over their concern for how she might rule on abortion.

Conservatives may be apprehensive about Brown Jackson, just as liberals feared how Coney Barrett might judge, but neither of them had anything in their judicial past that would disqualify them from service.

The truth is, both parties behave badly toward the other, often using the other’s dubious tactics to their advantage, and then complaining when those tactics are used against them.

They could and should know better. Why do we accept behavior from those in the highest positions of government that we wouldn’t accept from our own grade school children?

We Christians just celebrated the most sacred event of our religion. Jesus died for the remission of our sins, and by his death and resurrection we are sanctified and redeemed. The divine plan predicted in the Old Testament was fulfilled. (I know, weird segue, but stay with me!)

In His ministry, Jesus called on us to love and treat our neighbors as we do ourselves. To fulfill this commandment, we must honor, respect, forgive, and, yes, love our neighbors–our actual neighbors, but also our colleagues, friends, and even our enemies.

This is a basic Judeo-Christian ethic, but it really applies to all of us. Do we all fall short? Of course. If you think you’ve failed at it, get in line–behind me. But it is incumbent on us to try.

In his eponymous New Testament book, James wrote, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry (James 1:19 NIV).” Good advice, if only we would follow it.

Abraham Lincoln delivered some of the most iconic speeches in our nation’s history. It was not unusual for him to use references to the spiritual. (Ironically, he was shot on Good Friday and died the morning of April 15, 1865–the day before Easter.)

Near the conclusion of Lincoln’s first inaugural address, delivered at a time when he was trying to pacify the North without totally alienating the South, he said this: “…every living heart and hearthstone…will yet swell the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Oh to hear such poetic rhetoric in today’s political climate! It could happen. We should demand from our political leaders their “better angels,” but first we must search for our own.

This, I’m confident, we can do.