The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

Bigotry has always done its greatest damage in the shadows, below the surface, and beneath a disguise. It actually helps you when it shows itself: when it brazenly parades uncovered through your streets, when it announces itself in unapologetic social media rants; when it crowns itself in crimson and joyfully spews forth venom, when it adorns its lawn with the names of tyrants. Our nation's hatred...

As a longtime Christian and former pastor, one of the most common questions I’m asked is one I often ask myself: “Why are Conservative Christians so hateful?” The first thing I try to help them understand (and, to remember myself) is that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Despite the ways those who practice it here in America might frequently declare otherwise with their lives, Christianity (embo...

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 eternally the right one. We've all spent a lifetime learning how to defend ourselves against criticism, even when that criticism is justified; in those rare moments when even we begin to wonder if we're not who we say we are. We...

I love this country. I don't love it blindly, though. I don't love it unconditionally. I don't love it unreservedly. I love it with my eyes fully open. I see well, its every deep disfigurement and garish blemish, every grotesque part of its past and every ugly bit of its present. I see the crucible of colonialism it was formed in, the genocide and white supremacy it has been built upon and sustain...

This election, I’m voting. I’m voting for my wife,for my children, for my family,for my friends,for my neighbors. I’m voting for other people’s spouses and partners,for their children,their friends,their neighbors. I’m voting for the LGBTQ community. For people of every color. For people of every faith. For men. For women. For children. I’m voting for civility. For decency. For equality. For unity...

Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t sell Bibles with her name on them—because she’s actually read the Bible. She doesn’t put on religion like a strange, ill-fitting costume for awkward, once-in-a-campaign photo ops, because her spirituality is embedded into the very marrow of who she is, undergirding her daily humanity. She doesn’t need to continually and loudly broadcast her personal faith throu...

I’m not sure Americans really understand what this nation will look like in a few short months if Donald Trump wins this election. I do. I've spent most of the last twenty-eight years as a local church pastor, much of that in megachurches in the Bible Belt. I've been shoulder to shoulder in ministry and in life with white Evangelicals, I've sat in Bible studies with them, served alongside them in...

“I support him because I’m pro-life.” We’ve all heard these words in one form or another, so many times over the past decade from family members, church friends, neighbors, and strangers on social media that we’ve stopped even responding to them. We’ve long ago exhausted our willingness to confront a lazy, intellectually-dishonest catch-all statement that covers a multitude of moral compromises an...

Fact-checking website Politifact has determined that beginning with his 2016 presidential campaign and up until this week, Donald Trump has spoken lies, either substantially or completely—76 percent of the time. Only 3 percent of his statements have been labeled as fully true. J.D. Vance’s declarations have been deemed mostly to completely false 79 percent of the time. In other words, The Republic...

It’s a cult. It’s as simple as that. For a decade now, we’ve all tried to analyze it, to explain it, to make some kind of sense of it. We’ve parsed out every voting issue, every contributing societal factor, every possible justifiable explanation. We’ve microscopically studied the theological, political, and cultural influences. We’ve tried offering a listening ear, looking for common ground, shar...

I came across a social media post this morning from a former church friend. He was (as usual) carrying on about the LGBTQ community, arguing with folks while sharing Scripture excerpts and blurbs from favorite religious writers in an attempt to buoy his position. His lengthy responses feigned some sort of objective position and detached righteousness but they reeked of prejudice and privilege. Wor...

What is America worth to you? What would you sacrifice in order to stop the suffering you're seeing every day on the news and on your timeline and in your neighborhood and in your living room? How much would you be willing to lose if you knew you could alter the trajectory of this nation away from fascism and toward democracy? What courageous, selfless acts might you be capable of if you were cert...

Dear MAGA Parents, I’m reaching out to you in desperation as I have the sneaking suspicion that my teenage children are… I can barely even bring myself to say it— woke. In elementary and Sunday school everything they were hearing was safely benign: you know, Everyone is equal, God is love —vague enough to add caveats and conditions to; those if’s, and’s, and but’s to make sure they don’t get misle...

Yesterday, Donald Trump shamelessly, brazenly stood behind a makeshift podium fashioned of bricks from a Hurricane-ravaged furniture store in Georgia—and lied. He did what he has always done throughout his time here, yet seems only fully capable of and willing to do at this point: he inserted himself into situation of grief and trauma, of unthinkable suffering, loss, and death (a place he did not...

I can’t help but believe that if all the immigrants coming into America were white, things would be very different here right now. We'd never have heard anything about building a wall during the 2016 Presidential campaign. It wouldn't have become a Republican rally chant, a Conservative hashtag staple, a MAGA t-shirt favorite, a Donald Trump fixation. Republicans wouldn't be forever declaring a "n...

“I’m just so sick of politics.” I hear or read these sentiments hundreds of times each day, more and more frequently as we approach the election. I imagine that regardless of your political leanings, you also think you’re sick of politics—but you aren’t. I’ve been doing this public work for the last decade, work I began reluctantly as the 2016 presidential campaign began, and I’ve often thought th...

(Warning: strong language, NSFW) Men of America, we need to have some real talk about something. America is approaching one of the most important and consequential days in our history—and we are in danger of f*****g it up. I’m writing this on National Daughters Day and according to many polls, nearly sixty percent of us are still planning on voting for Donald Trump in the upcoming election. If the...

Dear MAGA Americans, we really don't think you've been listening for the past nine years. If you'd been listening you'd understand us. If you'd been listening you'd see us clearly. If you'd been listening you'd hear the honest cry of our collective hearts. If you'd been listening you'd know why we're doing this—you'd know why we have been fighting him and his plans and his message and his methods....

How can anyone still support this guy? If I had a dime for every time I thought, said, or heard this question, I’d be delivering this message from my expansive villa in Tuscany. Thousands of think pieces have been generated, books authored, documentaries assembled, and op-eds published, on understanding the reason otherwise decent, intelligent, goodhearted people continue to stand behind someone w...

To the Christians reading or listening to this, I hope you’ll take a few minutes and hear me out because this matters to me, because you matter to me. I’ve been a Christian for most of my life and a pastor for more than half of it. I’ve spent thousands of hours in worship services, Bible studies, prayer gatherings, youth group meetings, weekend retreats, and in quiet moments of study and prayer. M...

Life is exhausting these days for many of us and I think I've figured out why. I think it's the pretending we’re witnessing. You see, it's bad enough watching nearly half our nation becoming fully indoctrinated into a sycophantic cult of personality of the very worst kind of person; to see once reasonable people abandon any semblance of benevolence toward diverse humanity, to find themselves so de...

Yesterday a stranger left a very sweet comment on a piece I'd written, saying, "I wish I was half as good a person as you seem to be." My reply to her was, "I wish I was too." Her kind words revealed the universal flaw of humanity: we are chronically oblivious to our own goodness. We all suffer from comparison sickness , forever measuring the reality of ourselves against what we imagine about ever...

We all live within two stories: the story we tell ourselves about who we are, and the story our actions tell. As the sickening and intentional myths of Haitian immigrants eating animals in Springfield, Ohio perpetuated by Republican Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance engulfed the nation, they revealed with sickening clarity how many professed followers of Jesus have lost the ability or willingne...

In the wake of the Presidential Debate, in which Republican nominee Donald Trump launched into an unprompted, rambling tirade about people in Springfield, Ohio “eating the dogs”, social media has rightly exploded with memes, dance videos, remixes, parodies, and commentaries mocking him unmercilessly—giving birth to some truly hysterical content. And yes, the absolutely ludicrous nature of his base...

Desperate Trump Supporters, This is silly. Stop complaining about the debate moderators or ABC. Donald Trump’s debate disaster isn’t their fault. Did they fill his empty head with nonsensical stories about immigrants eating pets that he felt compelled to ramble on about, despite getting immediately fact-checked? Did they prevent him from coming up with a healthcare plan over the past nine years? D...