The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

What makes someone a Christian? I’ve been asking myself that question a lot lately. I feel like I should know the answer. I was a pastor in the local church for over two decades. I attended seminary, read, studied, and taught the Bible; delivered hundreds of sermons, and led more retreats and conferences than I can recall. And despite that wealth of experience as a member of the clergy, I’m still...

Dear Dr. Dobson, In the wake of your passing, I felt like I needed to acknowledge the immense contribution you’ve made to my ministry and work, as you were integral to my journey. In some ways, you’re the reason I do what I do. Thirteen years ago, I was a megachurch pastor, working with hundreds of young people in one of the largest Methodist churches in the country. I’d recently started writing a...

I have to confess that on many days, I wish I were a MAGA. I imagine how liberating it must be not to have to think critically about the events of the day; to cede my opinions on immigration, healthcare, the economy, and every other critical matter to those of a single man and a single network. I could turn off my mind and live inside a comfortable, curated fiction, unfettered by anything that mig...

In the words of the incomparable Ron Burgundy, “Boy, that escalated quickly.” As someone who's spent the past few years working tirelessly to warn people about the implementation of Project 2025 and the arrival of authoritarianism all but assured with a second Trump term, even I have to admit that it’s unfolded far more rapidly than I could have imagined in the most terrifying of my nightmares. He...

When you understand what motivates people, you can easily manipulate them. Once you’ve figured out their vulnerabilities, all you need to do is apply consistent pressure, and you can lead them wherever you want. Right now, the Republican Party is performing a master class in such collective coercion. Knowing that their white Evangelical base has been weaned since birth on a steady diet of fear, pr...

Trump supporters, are you seeing this? He’s lying to you. This is all a sham, a mirage, an elaborate piece of performance art, all of it. When you side with the Kremlin, you've sorta said all you have to say, haven't you? There's no gray area there, no red, white, and blue veneer of patriotism that can make this right, no star-spangled distraction to parade in front of it all. If you love America...

They say that the truth hurts. I'm inclined to agree. Recently, in trying to talk about the state of our nation with people whose primary source of information is Fox News, I’ve been reminded once again that they are living in an alternate reality. They are operating with core truths that simply do not exist. In this media-constructed fictional narrative in which they now live, Trump is not a conv...

Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed in 2015 for refusing a marriage license to a gay couple, has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court to reconsider its landmark ruling on marriage equality. It is one of countless challenges the law faces by Christian Nationalists. The court may not comply with the request of Davis (who, incidentally, has been married four times), but it is y...

Yesterday, while picking up lunch, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in a few months. After exchanging surprised greetings and a fierce hug, she stopped abruptly, looked genuinely concerned, and said, "Are you OK? You look tired today." After weathering the initial sting of her honest but uninvited commentary, I assured her she was somewhat incorrect in her evaluation. "Not just today ," I remarke...

Back in 2016 I wrote a book called 'A Bigger Table.' It was the continuation of my then twenty-year journey as a local church pastor, trying to craft spiritual communities where all people would be truly welcomed, especially those most often excluded based on gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religious tradition, nation of origin, or a less rigid theology. Given the clarity with which I'v...

One time, after we lost a family member, my wife and I were talking about funerals, and she asked me who I’d want to give the eulogy at mine. I jokingly said, “It doesn’t matter, I’m writing it myself, so they just have to read well.” We laughed, but as with all humor, there was a touch of truth buried there. I think most of us would probably like to write the story that people tell about us after...

The calendar can be cruel sometimes. There is a rhythm to our lives; a muscle memory that develops over time as we live and develop patterns of being. The consistencies in our schedule become stabilizing beams that help us feel secure and safe when everything around us seems uncertain: meals with our families, nighttime routines with our children, daily early morning rituals, weekly meetings with...

Everyone believes they're essentially a good human being. We all tell ourselves a story, and in that story our cause is always just, our motives are always pure, our side is eternally the right one. We've all spent a lifetime learning how to defend ourselves against criticism, even when that criticism is justified. In the name of self-preservation, we can gaslight the world and even ourselves when...

Republican friend, maybe you can help me with something, because I’m stumped here. I just do not get you. I don’t understand how you see the world. I don’t know what motivates you. Maybe we're wired differently, but I don't wake up in the morning burdened to be cruel to people; to actively push them to the periphery or place obstacles in their paths or deny them the things I have been fortunate en...

Racists always out themselves. American Eagle’s campaign featuring white, blond, blue-eyed actress Sydney Sweeney with the tagline SYDNEY SWEENEY HAS GREAT JEANS, has triggered explosive national conversations on race, with assertions made by many that the ads elevate whiteness as an ideal and center Nazi eugenics. This morning, a post sat atop my X feed, featuring a white man’s commentary on a vi...

Yesterday, a man walked into a Manhattan office building with an AR-15 and murdered four people before turning the gun on himself. I’m writing and recording this piece the morning after, knowing full well that soon this story will have vanished from the news and slipped from public consciousness. In a matter of days (if that), it will be replaced by yet another mass murder, the specifics of which...

One day, this will all be over. History testifies that all brutal empires fall, all hateful movements dissolve, all malevolent momentary victors eventually find themselves defeated and driven out. Every time in the past when the pendulum has swung toward inhumanity, it has invariably come back with even greater opposite force to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice again. This will be...

The Jeffrey Epstein files, if and when released, will expose Epstein, detailing his prolific atrocities once and for all. They will expose the monstrous human beings who collaborated with him in doing irreparable harm to untold numbers of girls and young women. They will expose a sprawling network of perverts and deviants who used their collective influence and wealth to violate humanity in ways t...

Yesterday, a MAGA Republican mocked me online for demanding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, laughing at me through condescending yellow emojis for being “desperate,” and assuring me that I and my other woke mobsters were never going to “take down” Donald Trump. That’s par for the course in this iteration of America. I can’t scroll an inch of my timeline without encountering a Conservativ...

Hey, good human, I wanted to remind you of some things that you might have lost sight of lately: The exhaustion you feel right now? The heavy sadness that you can’t seem to shake? The sense of dread that hovers over you like a drone? The Resting WTF?! face you walk around with every day? The scalding rage bubbling just beneath the surface? This is all by design. This is intentional. This is the fa...

This should be the final straw for us, America. Compassionate human beings should not tolerate this. People who claim to be pro-life should be brought to tears. Those espousing family values should be fully incensed. Anyone with children of their own whom they love should be sick to their stomachs. Men and women of every faith should be unequivocally condemning this. People of conscience and moral...

I just don’t know if I believe anymore—and I don’t know what to do about it. I hear words like these every single day from people from every corner of the planet, from every strand of the Christian tradition, and every segment of society. They are once-religious people who, for any number of reasons, are now finding the very ground of faith eroding beneath their feet, and they are panicking. And t...

The Republican Party is destroying the Department of Education because it needs stupid people. They are its lifeblood. Trump and his career sociopaths know that as the world shrinks, technology improves, and human beings evolve, they cannot survive as an entity without a steady stream of people who have been weaned on a contempt for knowledge, people who never develop the ability to think critical...

Words have incredible power. They can create narratives, perpetuate myths, and amplify propaganda. They can twist the truth, bury it altogether, or shout it through a bullhorn. They can appeal to our better angels or conjure the worst of our demons. And in these moments when our Republic is teetering precariously on the edge of a moral abyss, words can pull us back from a free fall from which we c...

America is dying. I’m not referring to the systemic collapse of our Republic or the slow suffocation of Democracy here, though these are certainly not unlikely outcomes at this point. This is far deeper than the seats of power or a congressional alignment, more than the structural implosion of this nation. The greatest, most grievous failure of America in this moment isn’t legislative but moral. T...