In this political season, “the dialogue between believers has gotten pretty venomous — tearing one another apart,” says The Stream‘s Sheila Walsh. It’s something any Christian can see just by looking at the comments section of many Christian websites. In this selection from an on-going series, she asks Stream publisher James Robison what we should do about it.

His 11 eleven grandchildren are very different from each other but they love each other because they’re family, he says, and that’s the way divided Christians should be. That’s what God wants for his family on earth. He sees that happening in The Stream, where strong-minded Christians from different traditions work together to create a website giving “a free flow of truth from many tributaries, full of wisdom and love and concern.”

None of us in the family of God are perfect, James continues, but we’re seeking the will of the perfect Father and trying to do that together. “So what we’ve got to do, we’ve got to cut each other some slack.” Love each other. Don’t tear each other apart over politics. For him, that’s the first step for imperfect Christians who need to learn to love one another and work together for a lost and hurting world.

What should those imperfect, slack-cutting Christians do now? Don’t opt out, James says. “Find the principles that are important and stand for those principles.” Decide who to vote for by looking at the candidates’ platforms and beliefs and “stand for those things that are right, and stand against those things that are damaging to freedom’s foundation, to the future, and to the family, to the things we all know really matter and that give us all hope.”

“No Christian opts out,” he concludes. “We’re ambassadors for Christ, we’re witnesses. We do it [witness] with all faithfulness.”