The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

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I am a person of profound privilege. As a White, cisgender-heterosexual man born in America and raised in the Christian faith, I have been afforded every benefit this nation offers: education, opportunity, freedom, options (the kind most will never experience), while having very little required from me other than to show up. I have never known marginalization of any kind, never been oppressed by a...

An estimated 89 million registered voters did not vote in the 2024 general election. I know many of them. They are family members, friends, neighbors, and people I meet in passing at high school football games, in checkout lines, and at the gym. I meet hundreds more of them every day on social media. And despite the abject chaos we find ourselves immersed in, a terrifying number of them are promis...

Most morally compromised men of faith don’t sell their souls all at once. Sometimes it happens in a billion tiny moral transactions; a series of infinitesimal compromises over time that are invisible to them, but not to others. They can’t see from the inside what is so apparent from a distance. Moment by moment and choice by choice, they begin to slowly drift from their calling, and no one close t...

We are a people in peril. The damage our Republic has sustained over the past two years is incalculable. There is no way to accurately quantify the irreparable harm done to the connective tissue of this nation, to our systems of support, to our electoral processes, to our safeguards against foreign and domestic threats, and perhaps, most of all, to the relational tethers we have to one another. Ev...

I am a semi-retired optimist. I used to believe that things would always be okay: that no matter how bad circumstances seemed in the world, I trusted that people would eventually do the right thing, that goodness would prevail, that the rational center would hold. I used to believe that our Constitutional checks and balances would protect us from overreaching parties and mentally unstable presiden...

They say God works in mysterious ways. I’m gonna co-sign that sentiment. Our decidedly purple North Carolina town recently held its third Pride festival. The first two incarnations were, by any metric, glorious successes, with residents pouring in for a celebration of diversity, inclusion, and community. Thousands of people supported local businesses, enjoyed amazing entertainment, and met their n...

Like hundreds of millions of Americans, I am preparing to go to the polls to cast my vote in the most consequential election of my lifetime, perhaps of this nation’s lifetime. And while I will enter the voting booth by myself, I will not be there alone. I am bringing a silent multitude with me. I am bringing the Dominican father shot in his car by ICE agents while his terrified child screamed in h...

No King’s Day Episode 4 went off pretty much as predicted. Cities all over America were filled with a massive, ebullient mob of families, schoolteachers, ministers, parents, grocery store clerks, college students, business owners, grandparents, and toddlers on shoulders. Highways and overpasses were lined with exuberant, sign-waving throngs of joyfully defiant human beings loudly declaring their s...

The sickening Déjà vu is here. “How dare you politicize a tragedy like this!” ” This is not the time to talk about guns!” ” You can’t even wait until the bodies are in the ground!” Predictably, I’m hearing these sentiments again today from Conservative gun lovers, in the wake of another mass execution , this time in the hallways of Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon. I knew I would. And honest...

Today, an alarming video surfaced of a woman being assaulted at a Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, for wearing a shirt that said, “Release The Epstein Files’ while heckling the President as a fascist. The video shows a group of large, grown men violently pushing the woman around, one punching her, wrapping her in a headlock, attempting to rip off her shirt, and knocking her down. Around the woman,...

I feel like we’ve read this book before… Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently stated that for the first time in nearly one hundred years, the United States plans to broadcast the execution of a human being. Ft. Hood mass shooter Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people, is set to die by firing squad on December 6th, an event that would be live-streamed if the Pentagon has its way. In the wake of the a...

Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes they wear Primus t-shirts. This morning my newsfeed was filled with videos of a woman in a yellow jacket and concert tee being escorted by police from a Trump rally in my birthplace of Syracuse, NY. As she moves through the sneering, jeering, glassy-eyed mob raining boos down on her, she walks proudly, makes a strident double middle finger salute, meeting their...

Warning: this piece contains profanity and references to sexual assault that may be disturbing to some. “That’s it; he’s done for.” Those were the words an older relative spoke matter-of-factly ten years ago this week, as we listened to then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s vulgar ramblings to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. As the conversation with Bush begins, Trump brings up TV...

Dear Evangelicals, Growing up in the Church, I’ve often heard you extol the virtues of “speaking the truth in love,” so I hope you’ll receive this in the spirit in which it’s offered. You’re supposedly familiar with the words of Jesus, so I know I’m not telling you something you don’t already know, but you might benefit from a reminder. He said that the single greatest aspiration, the very highest...

So, here’s the bad news: fascism isn’t coming to America; it’s here. We are long past the warnings of an approaching existential threat looming on the distant horizon of our story. The nightmare is no longer a future improbability but a present reality. The current President kept his 2024 campaign promise to be a “dictator on day one,” wiping out decades of protections and partnerships with the st...

Warning: this piece contains language regarding sexual assault that may be triggering or uncomfortable to some. In October of 2024, a then 20-year-old young woman alleges she was brutally assaulted by 7 of her Cornell University classmates , at least one of whom she considered a friend. Right now, in the wake of her decision to speak publicly and file suit in an effort to bring her abusers to just...

I am grieving right now, and my family members, former friends, and neighbors who support him don’t understand why, though they think they do. The accumulated sorrows I’ve been carrying have almost nothing to do with that repugnant, needy, narcissistic bigot in the White House who has never had a single noble impulse in his privileged existence. This was never about him. He is who he has always be...

I am a beta male. Sometimes, I’m apt to forget that. In the course of my ordinary days, I rarely question whether I’m masculine enough. I usually move through the world thinking I’m a reasonably normal adult human man, believing I’m adequately meeting the job description: doing my work with care, being a loving and emotionally available husband, showing up faithfully for my kids, helping the peopl...

I don’t imagine Jesus was the litigious type, but if he were on the planet right now, I’m pretty sure he’d sue JD Vance for false association or identity theft. At the very least, he’d violently flip the tables of the entire Trump Administration and him along with it. Vance, a professed Christian, is stumping through Texas today, where he continues to demonize and dehumanize undocumented immigrant...

“You shouldn’t let politics get in the way of your relationships.” As we approach one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s 250-year lifespan, I see this sentiment pop up on social media a good bit in think pieces and news stories: the idea that family members and friends are too important to lose over a political position, a party affiliation, or a ballot choice. This may have been...

Warning: this piece includes references to sexual assault, as well as words many may find offensive. Everything discussed is alleged in a civil lawsuit filed by the family of Jane Doe. One good man. Just one decent human being. That is all a then 20-year-old Jane Doe needed to save her from the monsters encircling her in that frat house of ghastly, unrelenting violence few of us can comprehend. Th...

We’re in the middle of a male loneliness epidemic, or so we’re told. Our social media feeds are filled with news stories, think pieces, and video commentaries lamenting the apparent pervasive sense of isolation our young men are afflicted with; the absence of deep friendships with other men and meaningful connections with women; the higher rates of depression and addiction. And while the idea of a...

Republicans know they can’t win in November. We can tell this because they are spending every waking hour trying to convince us that, despite a lame-duck, barely able to stay awake, sitting president whose approval rating is hovering somewhere between death and explosive diarrhea, they are on the ascent. They have the data. They know they are hopelessly underwater on the economy, on mass deportati...

Here lies Donald Trump. Again today, through thin, sneering lips he will be found spewing out a toxic torrent of abject falsehoods. He will recklessly slither through the world, effortlessly manufacturing disinformation intended to sow chaos and engineer despair. He will gleefully vomit out staggering untruths to distract from his prolific criminality. He will bring forth a violent verbal emesis o...