Episode 7 | A Plague on Both Your Houses: Why the Church Traded Mercy for Disgust

What if the feeling in your gut isn't righteous anger but a biological trap? Pastor Nathan McWherter explores how politics and the church have co-opted our primal disgust mechanism to turn brothers and sisters into contaminants and why the Jesus Way is the only path out of the tribalism destroying our souls.Episode DescriptionWe live in a world of star-crossed families. Just like Romeo and Juliet, our modern tribes (left and right, conservative and liberal) are locked in a tragedy where everyone loses simply because we have been taught to hate the other side.In this episode of You Still Belong, Nathan McWherter pulls back the curtain on the "disgust mechanism": a biological response designed to keep us from eating poison, which is now being used to make us see other humans as poisonous.Inside this episode:[02:02] The Spiritual Refugee: Why the "one" didn't wander off. They were forced out by the other 99.[03:38] Weaponized Disgust: How both ends of the political spectrum use biological triggers to gain power and rally their bases.[12:50] The 2020 Breaking Point: Reflecting on the moment churches chose "issues" over the hearts of the people sitting in the pews.[21:13] The Prison Visit Test: Why loving the "least of these" includes the people we find morally or politically reprehensible.[25:18] A Better Way, Not a Third Way: Why the Kingdom of God isn't a point on a political spectrum, but a different plane of existence entirely.Whether you have been pushed out of the church or you are currently inside feeling the "bite of the sheep," this episode is a call to take a breath, acknowledge the gaps in our understanding, and return to a faith that refuses to make enemies of humans.