The Great Divide Between Judgment and Mercy: What Christians Can Learn from Noah Kahan's New Album

by Aprille Hanson-Spivey 

Photo: Mercury Records

While sitting in the darkened over-100-year-old Rialto Community Arts Center in Morrilton, Ark., I was told for the first time in my life that I was going to Hell. 
​
“If you’re trusting in the made-up, man-made system that Rome has built, and by the way codified in 1546, you have no hope of Christ,” a Baptist preacher spouted on stage to a sold-out theater partly made up of Catholics like me. Later, he called the Catholic Church a “demonically influenced system.”

I was covering a debate on May 22, 2025, as a freelance reporter for the local diocesan newspaper between a priest and a Baptist preacher. An online rant by the preacher calling the late Pope Francis the “anti-Christ” following his death sparked the debate, culminating in two hours of mercy and truth preached by the priest, combating the condemnation and hatred spewed by the pastor. 

It was the first time someone so fervently and publicly stood in front of me, believing and saying I was bound for Hell. My body tensed, my blood pressure certainly rose and I remember thinking, how dare this man, who does not know me at all, stand up on that stage and pretend to know where my soul is destined to go? 

It was also the moment I got a brief glimpse of the religious trauma so many of my friends endured growing up. 

As a born-and-raised Catholic, I’m consistently taught that Jesus loves me. I have never once heard a priest condemn anyone to Hell because they can’t — it’s not Catholic teaching. In fact, the Church can only say for certain that the saints are in Heaven. Everyone else is left to God’s mercy. Regardless of if you agree with everything the Catholic Church believes, it always teaches a consistent message of human dignity and love for God’s creation. It’s one of many reasons I believe there was an uptick in the number of people joining the Catholic Church this year. I won’t pretend people have always had positive experiences with Catholicism — priests are people, and people can sometimes be the worst. But it’s certainly not what Jesus intended when he instituted the Church. 

I have many close friends who no longer attend a church because of what they were told and the hypocrisy they saw. I would not want to sit in a pew week after week, hearing what I heard from that preacher in that theater. And I know now that for some friends, that was their reality. No wonder they left. 

It’s why songs like Noah Kahan’s “The Great Divide,” the first single off his much-anticipated album of the same name, should pierce the heart of every Christian. 

I was drawn to Kahan’s music a few years ago after hearing “Paul Revere” pop up on my husband’s playlist. I immediately wanted to know who sang it, and quickly devoured the music from Stick Season. 
While there were moments on that album that addressed religion, “The Great Divide,” both in song and as a full album, speaks more to religious trauma. 

When I first heard ‘Divide,’ I felt uncomfortable the first time I heard the chorus lyrics: 
“I hope you settle down, I hope you marry rich / I hope you’re scared of only ordinary shit / Like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin / And not your soul, and what He might do with it.” 

I wasn’t sure where to go with this. How could I sit here and sing this song, which felt like an insult to Jesus, who is all good and merciful? Because a person should be concerned about their soul, not from the perspective of being terrified of God, but from a healthy understanding of his love and what it means to follow him. 

And then I remembered that preacher’s words.

There’s a difference between hearing preaching about following God’s will and bringing our sins to God in his great mercy and being told you’re going to Hell if you don’t repent. It’s not the same, and these song lyrics are a direct result of the latter. 

Our misunderstandings of this and what we say to people can ultimately lead to lyrics like, “I hope you threw a brick right into that stained glass.” The lyrics should make Christians uncomfortable. 

Jesus told us, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” And how good are we as Christians at sharing our personal story of Jesus and how he is our way, truth and life? Are we trying to get people to convert, or are we radiating the light and love of Christ by our actions? 

The great divide in how Christians share their faith in today’s society is between judgment and mercy. Each person has to make the daily decision to let Jesus judge and work in someone’s life, or try to take that power away from the Lord and become a judge themselves. I have not always done a good job with this call, but God is ever patient, working on my heart each day. 

Now, when I hear the lyrics, “And not your soul, and what He might do with it,” I think of all the people hurt by a human distortion of God. As I listen, it’s a gut-check for me and how I’m doing walking the walk as a sinner, but also a beloved daughter of Christ in the way I interact with others. It’s a chance for me to pray each time I hear it for those who are listening and no longer follow Jesus because of the pain they’ve experienced. I pray that people are not terrified of what God may do with their souls, but instead that they get to know him in this life and understand how deeply they matter to him. 

Having that perspective is how we can begin to lessen the great divide.