The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

John Pavlovitz
  • 4.9 (77)
  • Society & Culture

Authentic words for everyone trying to figure out the best way to be human. johnpavlovitz.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    If There’s A Male Loneliness Epidemic, MAGA Masculinity Is The Reason.

    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 male loneliness epidemic itself feels a bit like a media fabrication, if such a debilitating emotional malady is indeed afflicting adolescent men, we really shouldn’t be surprised. Widespread male alienation and disconnection from society aren’t elusive, freak occurrences requiring deep, thorough forensic investigation; they're simply cause-and-effect. If we’re going to talk about lonely men, we’re gonna need to address the orange elephant in the room. For the last decade here in America, tens of millions of parents have elevated a vile, cruel, serial predator to a gilded throne of cultic adoration. They have rooted their politics, theology, and identity (and by extension their children) in a human being embodying the very worst of what it means to be a man; a court-adjudicated rapist whose contempt for women is one of the most well-documented in our nation’s history. It should have been obvious what this misplaced idolatry would yield:Young men with a dangerous sense of entitlement when it comes to the bodies of women.Young men who are unable to tap into a compassion they have been repeatedly told is a sign of weakness.It’s birthing young men violently allergic to sexuality that doesn’t match the rigid confines of their parents and pastors.Young men who imagine whiteness and maleness are the pinnacle of human evolution. Young men who believe they will get rewarded for their misogyny and dishonesty, because they’ve watched it happen for so much of their lives.Young men incapable of taking accountability or apologizing. In other words, it’s yielded young men who are becoming their fathers and their grandfathers, and the emotionally stunted man-children they’ve been told are role models. Boys weaned on dudebro podcasts, twisted sexist theology, and the suspended adolescence of the Conservative manosphere have little chance of developing brains that evolve into mature adulthood. They are the unwitting heirs to a sad and hollow MAGA manhood that breeds bullies who sacrifice everything on the altar of power and brute force. The entire MAGA movement is rooted in the most toxic of masculinities; perpetuating knuckle-dragging, emotionally fetal alpha male posturing; a culture of endless grievance and relentless aggression that rewards the crass, coronates the cruel, and celebrates the sexist. There isn’t a great deal of investigative work necessary to draw the line from this kind of prehistoric, morally stunted male ideology to a generation of young men who can’t seem to figure out why women avoid them and why none of the other dudes around them give a damn about them or anything else. The cause and the cure are staring MAGA America in the mirror. If parents want to inoculate their sons from a lifelong lonely existence, they need to stop raising them to be horrible human beings. They need to give them better role models at home and in the men they present as worth emulating from a distance. They need to teach them that emotions aren’t emasculating, that kindness isn’t weakness, and that caring deeply about other human beings is actually the highest thing they can aspire to. The figurehead of the MAGA movement is an incredibly lonely human being who, by all accounts, lacks a single healthy relationship. Though cradled in wealth and influence most of us will never know, he is clearly incapable of meaningful connections with anyone, unable to care deeply about anyone but himself, and desperate to be loved while having no loving impulses whatsoever. As long as a massive segment of our nation’s young men are being raised to see malignant narcissists like Donald Trump and like him as role models, a lifetime of emotional desolation, broken relationships, and great isolation is all but guaranteed. If parents want to stop the male loneliness epidemic, they need to help tear down the Conservative manosphere, so that we can teach boys, not how to be “real men,” but how to be good, loving, empathetic humans who happen to be male. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

  2. 2d ago

    Republicans Are Trying To Disenfranchise Us, America. Let’s Not Help Them.

    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 deportations, on the war in Iran, on the genocide in Gaza, on healthcare, on data centers, on human rights, and that the vast majority of the American people, including many lifelong Republican voters, have had it with them. This is why JD Vance is making pathetic, about-to-be-broken-up-with “just give us another chance” pleas to an electorate they know they’ve burned their bridges with. It’s why Donald Trump is brazenly promising Americans $5,000 bribe checks and threatening to withhold FEMA funding from states in the event of a Democratic victory. Knowing the desperate state of their political fates, they are marshaling every resource available to prevent the people from reaching the polls: continually declaring war on supposed election fraud, gerrymandering maps into Swiss cheese, purging voter rolls, assaulting voting by mail, and threatening ICE and polling sites. Republicans are doing all they can to disenfranchise us from voting—and the worst part about it is that we’re helping them. It’s been frustrating seeing content creators and media hosts on the Left continually inundate their readers and viewers with a steady stream of sky-is-falling histrionics lamenting in minute detail just how screwed we apparently are in November. Day after day, from podcasters to writers to influencers, a disturbing number of people seem to have moved into a kind of perverse nihilism that churns out unrelenting despair-bait, lamenting what they say is the impossibility of a free and fair election. Whether driven by genuine fear, the desire to keep an audience that is growing apathetic, or the pull of an algorithm that rewards chaos, over and over the message to Americans from too much of the Left increasingly seems to be: we’re cooked. And this heavy hopelessness has trickled all the way into the heads and hearts of good people all over the country who are in danger of resigning themselves to dire results of a democracy-determining election that is still weeks away.I say to hell with that.Yes, Donald Trump and the Republicans are openly cheating. Yes, they are rigging the system and fixing the game. Yes, they’re using every legal and illegal tactic to steal the midterms, and have said as much publicly. And no, the election will not be free and fair, because they’ve already poisoned so much of the process and tampered with the system that this is an impossibility—and yet, none of that matters. Because the simple, unadorned truth, friends, is that if we, the sprawling multitude here who reject this sickening cadre of grifters and traitors looking to write the epitaph for our Republic, show up in November, there is no way they can win. We have numbers that simply cannot be manipulated away, that no malfeasance can overcome, that no intimidation can silence. Seriously, those morally inverted MAGA Christofascists are the ones who are cooked. And all we have to do is show the hell up: to stop our handwringing and our doom-prophesying, and get about the work of getting every single fed-up, pissed-off human being to the polls and to make sure they are counted. Yes, there is going to be all manner of hell unleashed by Trump and his cronies over the next few weeks, and most certainly in the aftermath of election day when they are going to thrust this nation into chaos through the courts and through Congress and through whatever other monstrous stuff they can conjure up. We will cross that bridge together when the time comes. But right now, the task is simple: put aside our squabbling, throw out both-siding nonsense, ignore their gaslighting desperation, toss hopelessness into the toilet, and make our voices heard—every single one of us. No excuses, no justifications, no abstaining. We either care about America enough to fight for it, or we voluntarily silence ourselves, cede the election, and seal our fates. This treasonous, democracy-averse, soon-to-be-politically extinct extremist minority party is trying to disenfranchise us out of the midterms.Let’s stop helping them. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

  3. 3d ago

    Here Lies Donald Trump

    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 of slander, fibs, and fabrications against his political adversaries and peaceful protesters and immigrants and journalists and muslims and democrats and transgender teenagers. As easily as breathing, he will traffic in unrelenting, corrosive utterances not bound by reality or humanity or conscience. He will lie about the robust health of an economy he has intentionally destroyed. He will lie about his success in a reckless and illegal war he cannot extricate himself from. He will lie about the character and conduct of people with brown skin whose murders and kidnappings and torture he is authoring.He will lie about the human beings of an entire nation whose extermination he is willfully partnering in. He will lie about the security of elections in an attempt to disenfranchise the disgusted multitudes soon set to begin his political demise. He will lie about matters of consequence, and he will lie about the trivial. He will pile lie upon lie upon lie, until the truth is impossible to unearth He will irresponsibly wield his toxic mother tongue for emotionally dependent sycophants who care not for the veracity of his claims, only that he has made them. He will engage in fantastical, narcissistic ramblings, congratulating himself for achievements he has not accomplished, declaring victories he has no rightful claim to, and celebrating the end of crises of which he has been the sole genesis. And he will do all of this without reservation, without conscience, and without the guilt that would convict a normal human being’s heart, because a lifetime of unearned privilege and undeserved wealth has left him unencumbered by decency. He will do this because over eight decades he has never faced accountability befitting his illegality and immorality. And for as long as he lives, he will poison the planet with words intended to wound and divide and endanger. But this will not last forever. One day, nature will bring a welcomed and healing silence to a world so in need of it. On that day, his forked tongue will finally be stilled, his twisted lips will close for the final time, and his last corrosive fabrication will fade into the ether. There will be no more nonsensical word salads, no mindless diatribes of grievance, no vicious assaults on strangers, no reckless conspiracies, no desperate pleas for attention. And when he is finally lowered into the ground, he will be covered by the very earth he spent his lifetime polluting with impunity. And a gleaming slab of granite, likely far larger than he deserves, will be set into the dirt to mark his body’s resting place and to sum up his existence. And if there is any justice in this world, any sense of rightness, his true epitaph will be chiseled into that stone and into the history books, and it will be preserved so that humanity never forgets, and it will read: Just as in every second that he was alive… here lies Donald Trump. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Sep 18

    Ed Sheeran and The White Privilege of Neutrality

    I know singer Ed Sheeran. (Well, in a way I do, and so do you.) In the wake of the whirlwind of controversy over rapper Macklemore’s removal from Sheeran’s tour for his pro-Palestinian statements on stage, the Shape of You singer issued a lengthy statement on social media to justify his apolitical stance. In his address, Sheeran attempts to position himself above the fray of the rest of us, writing, “I am not complicit. I have my personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly doesn’t mean I don’t have them. Nor does it mean I don’t support causes in my own personal way.” Denying complicity is a confession that Sheeran is aware there is something barbaric to be complicit in. His fervent defense is actually self-incrimination. The singer declares that he has personal views on the Palestinian people that he chooses not to make public. (I’m sure that’s a comfort to those strewn among the blood-stained rubble of Gaza.) I’d love to ask Sheeran what private convictions do to help anyone, what unspoken words do to bring justice or restoration, precisely how silence is instrumental in liberation. Further, the singer sermonizes, “If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will change.” Macklemore didn’t shout from the stage. He spoke with direct, unflinching conviction about a people being systematically driven to extinction. There were no histrionics, no profanity, and no politics. Sheeran’s creating some wild, screaming straw man out of the sober demand for an end to a genocide is an effort to shut down conversation by setting up a false equivalency between power and the powerless, all couched in avoiding “politics.” If this sounds familiar to our ears, it should. We all have people like Ed Sheeran in our lives: people who believe that staying out of politics is somehow virtuous, as if silence is a show of restrained maturity that the rest of us lack. We all live alongside family members, friends, neighbors, and coworkers who seem to believe one can separate “political” things from the rest of their lives, as if there is a set time and place reserved for speaking with clarity and specificity on human rights. That these people feel a choice in these moments is even possible shows the subtle and insidious ways privilege works. It allows a person to have urgency as an option, where for others it is a necessity. When you believe yourself safe from harm and immune to violence, the fence of neutrality feels like a righteous place to sit, even if that position is deadly to those not afforded such comfort. But Ed Sheeran and the Ed Sheerans around us don’t realize that there are times when our morality requires an outside voice that says without ambiguity, “This is a threat to humanity, and this is wrong.” In these moments, vulnerable human beings are pushed to one side, with unrelenting brutality against them on the other—while the silence of remaining apolitical declares us conscientious objectors in that war. The fights for justice and equality always work this way. Sometimes life necessitates a decisive choice; something that pushes us out of neutrality because the situation demands it. In such times of consequence, to not make that choice isn’t an act of tolerance or maturity, but of cowardice. Despite the vehement protests of Ed Sheeran and the people in our lives who share his view, being apolitical is being complicit in the atrocities we refuse to publicly confront. Because of the volume and the relentlessness of the dangers we’re facing, there must be a similarly loud and steadfast response to them. Because each morning a different attack comes on the safety and worth of human beings, then each morning there must be those of us who unequivocally oppose it all. The power holders of this planet are testing how much inhumanity the people will tolerate, and saying nothing only emboldens them to seek a deeper moral bottom as silence becomes more commonplace. There is no protection in a fascist regime: not silence or wealth or apathy or position. Eventually, they’ll come for all of us. We are tethered together. Remaining silent in turbulent times is a luxury privilege affords, but it a temporary one. That passivity is born out of the illusion of our safety, but none of us are safe forever, as all liberation is collective. The Ed Sheerans in all our lives need to understand that privilege is currency that we are responsible for spending in a way that stands with and defends those without that privilege, something Macklemore chose to do on the biggest stage he had been given. The rest of us need to be doing this on the smaller but still critical platforms we’ve all been given, in our homes, our social circles, our communities, our workplaces, and social media profiles. Staying out of politics is an impossibility; the politicians are making sure of that. The war is or will soon be on all our doorsteps despite how much we’d like to avoid it. And the only way we’re gonna survive and save this place is by not looking away, by deciding what matters to us; by getting off the fence of neutrality and out of the cover of politics, and speaking so that there will be no doubt as to who we are and what we will not stand for. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 17

    If Christians Truly Are Pro-Life, They Should Reject This Republican Party.

    What does it mean to be pro-life? Really? For tens of millions of Christians, for their entire lives, it has meant voting Republican. Through their parents, pastors, and politicians, they have inherited and accepted a story that the GOP represents the values of the Bible, upholds the pillars of their faith, and above all, defends and protects life. But aside from a persistent and quite militant anti-abortion zealotry that seeks to withhold a woman’s body autonomy and legislate away her ability to receive the healthcare she chooses, exactly how is Donald Trump and his party pro-life in any substantial manner? Precisely what are we talking about here? Because if we look critically at the actual policies and practices of the Trump Administration concerning immigration, healthcare, grocery costs, food safety, foreign wars, racism, environmental protections, education, data centers, and child trafficking investigations, there is almost nothing there that results in anything truly life-affirming. Worse than that, MAGA Christian Republican politicians seem committed to doing as much damage to human life as possible: making medical care astronomical, eliminating food support, unleashing a torrent of pollution, making affordable housing and quality schooling unattainable. They are tangibly cutting senior benefits, widening the gap between a wealthy minority ruling class and an ever more impoverished majority, and casting aside the disabled, the mentally ill, and the foreign. How exactly is any of this pro-life? Or pro-family? Or pro-liberty, for that matter? If Christian voters could take off the lenses of political tribalism, church indoctrination, and family tradition that make voting nothing but an exercise in muscle memory, they might be able to see the myriad ways that the Trump regime is a rejection of the life and teachings of Jesus, and the antithesis of pro-life. With every piece of legislation, every announced initiative, and every quantifiable act, these so-called Christian Republican leaders seem to believe that life begins at conception but ends upon leaving the birth canal. Once a child enters this world, they have no impulse to provide care, no desire to support, none of the fierce compassion they expressed for them in the womb. What would Jesus actually say about all of this? Would he accept the excuse that the issue of abortion outweighs any of this systematic mistreatment of and violence toward the expansive multitude of living, breathing, walking around sentient human beings? I truly wonder if the professed Christians who believe they are affirming their pro-life stance by empowering Donald Trump and this parasitic, heartless Administration have really stopped to consider the consequences of their political affiliations. Have they considered that a Palestinian child lying beneath the rubble of their home is a life? Do they understand that a father kidnapped from his job site and sent to a foreign country is a life? Does it register that a veteran spending his final days on the street because his benefits were cancelled is a life? Have they ever stopped to realize that an exhausted single mother who cannot make a living wage from a full-time job is a life? Do they get that a disabled teenager is a life, that a Haitian immigrant is a life, that a transgender man is a life, that an Iranian toddler is a life, that a starving senior is a life? These lives were all declared sacred in the womb but are deemed worthless here now by the politicians they have allowed to wield power with such cruelty and disregard. If Christians really comprehended that all of this beautiful, diverse humanity is being assailed, eradicated, and made to suffer as a direct result of their intended “pro-life” vote, would they be moved by their faith to choose another path? As a longtime pastor and near-lifelong Christian, I’ve spent the last ten years waiting for professed followers of Jesus to actually follow him: not to opulent churches for an hour on Sunday, not to social media to adorn their profiles with scripture passages, not to Pride events with bullhorns, and not to school board meetings where they fight to remove books from libraries. I’ve been waiting for these people to follow Jesus to the polls and to choose leaders who model compassion, care for the sick, feed the poor, welcome the stranger, and reflect the imperative to love their neighbors; all their neighbors. By every measurement we can use, Donald Trump and this Republican Party are antithetical to disparate human life. Truly pro-life Christians should reject them… for the love of God. . The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Sep 15

    Hey, Ed Sheeran, Palestine Is Dying In White Silence Like Yours.

    Hey Ed Sheeran, Well, you’ve had quite a busy week. You’ve caved to your billionaire buddy Robert Kraft, you’ve deferred to the pearl-clutching Pink, you’ve fallen in line behind your promoters, and you’ve kowtowed to a handful of football stadium owners and allowed rapper Macklemore to be booted from your tour for saying the words “Free Palestine.” I can imagine how traumatic that must have been for your audience, the emotional scars they must be carrying right now by being asked to see the Palestinian people as deserving of dignity and self-determination…. the horror. My newsfeed is absolutely littered with news stories, think pieces, and video critiques lambasting you for what people are saying is your cowardice, your selfishness, your obvious racism, your thinly veiled Zionism. And with the fierce media firestorm raging all around you right now, I wonder if anyone’s considered your feelings, what it’s like to walk a mile in your custom Air Jordans. I mean, this couldn’t have been an easy decision for you. In this economy, a guy with a net worth of 400 million has to stay on the road to keep the lights on, right? We can’t have you missing any meals out here, can we? Oh, sure, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been brutally murdered, once vibrant cities leveled to dust, and an ancient culture violently erased. Yes, generations of human beings have been assassinated, starved, tortured, and burned alive. And yeah, children are being raped and shot and ripped from their mutilated parents in these very moments, but the show must go on, right? Can’t let a little gen*cide stop the party. So what if a few thousand miles away an entire country is being wiped off the map with the taxes of your fanbase, you got a gig to do, merch to move, a few more homes to add to the mere three dozen or so you’re being forced to make do with. You’ve dismissed Macklemore for having the audacity to choose integrity over the paycheck, for giving a damn about thousands of brown-skinned people who can’t buy concert tickets or boost your streaming numbers, and you’re going to bravely carry on with business as usual, playing the part of the happy, humble white savior of soccer moms and suburban preteens everywhere. You’ll continue packing out stadiums, basking in the breathless adoration of a mix of the uninformed, the lazy, and the heartless; people who either don’t know what’s going on in Palestine or who simply don’t care enough to be inconvenienced enough to opt out (though you could inform and inspire them). And you’ll get up there awash in spotlights and the intoxicating roar of an army of the most privileged people on the planet. You’ll wear that grinning everyman facade you’ve perfected. You’ll joyfully churn out your loops and whirl around in the middle of a massive sea of humanity (the largely white kind, the kind whose worth and safety might actually matter enough to you for you to get “political,” as you did with Ukraine, btw). I’m sure it’ll be a blast… but not the kid-killing IDF kind. But I wonder if the crowds at the shows will sing loud enough to cover the screams erupting from the rubble of Palestine. I wonder if the stratospheric tour revenue will be worth the suffering you’ve ignored to get it. Maybe I’m being too hard on you. Maybe you’re really struggling with this. Maybe you’re going to have a change of heart and show some courage and something resembling a spine, and allow your humanity to take the lead. Maybe I’ll end up apologizing to you for underestimating you. I would welcome that, because it would mean you decided to leverage your privilege to save the lives of people who are being treated like animals. But right now, Ed, for a guy who’s made a fortune with words, it’s your silence that is most telling. You are choosing to say nothing, and there is a cost to that, too. Unfortunately, you won’t be the one paying the highest price. Maybe you are what your critics say you are. Maybe you’re a coward, or worse. Maybe the people of Palestine aren’t worth the show guarantees you’d have to part with to stand up to the bullies and Zionists. Maybe it isn’t that you’re not willing to take sides (because you have been), but that the Palestinian people don’t fall within the borders of your empathy or the comfort of your courage. I suppose no matter how successful and powerful someone gets, every person has their price, and yours was a 10-city tour. The Palestinian people deserve our discomfort, Ed. They deserve to be on our breath because the voices of white people can carry their cries to people in the world who need to hear them, despite how uneasy it makes them—or us. That turbulence is where our humanity gets to prove itself. It’s just really sad that with the size of the stage and the reach of the microphone you’ve been handed, and with the voice you’ve been given that could resonate so loudly on behalf of imperiled human beings, you have such moral laryngitis now. Enjoy the rest of the tour, Ed… knock ‘em dead out there. Free Palestine. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Sep 14

    A Tuesday in November. What If It All Goes Wrong?

    We’re all worried about a Tuesday in November, 50 days from now. It’s the place our minds and hearts are solely fixed on. Right now, our energies are understandably marshaled and our hopes pinned to this singular day ahead, as if at the end of it we will have some resolution, some sense of closure, as if healing and rest will finally come. But what if things don’t go that way? At a recent tour stop, a visibly exasperated woman asked me, through a breaking voice, “What if everything goes wrong on Election Day? What do we do then? If we lose, where will the hope be?” You may be asking yourself that, too. I’m not sure, but I imagine hope then will be wherever it is for you now. Regardless of what happens on that Tuesday in November, whatever propels you into the voting booth needs to push you to your feet when the sun comes up the next morning. Because no matter the outcome and whether you feel vindicated or devastated, whether there is calm or chaos, many things will still be the same: You’ll still be surrounded by systemic ills, relational fractures, and national discord. You’ll still have seen every grotesque reality that’s been uncovered over the past ten years.You’ll still be walking shoulder to shoulder with weary, wounded human beings who will be looking for compassionate people to see their suffering and to move toward them.You’ll still have a specific front row seat to a place filled with terrors and traumas, and you’ll be the only one with your unprecedented ability to be what that world needs. So where will hope be if it all hits the fan on that Tuesday in November? It will be you and me, finding whatever it is that pulls us out of the crippling funk of grief and sadness and disbelief we’ll want to stay in, and back into the fray of living.It will be found in our faith convictions and our personal burdens; in our activism and our advocacy, and in the stuff we’ll still believe in.It will be found in us deciding what matters most in this life, and whether or not it still matters enough to defend and protect it even if the threats seem greater than they are even now. Hope will be in the sunrise on Wednesday and how you decide to meet it. In that way, the day after that Tuesday in November is actually pretty important, too. On that day, there will still be hungry people needing to be fed, strangers seeking refuge, outsiders needing welcome, hurting people looking for the healers. No matter what happens, win or lose, you and I will need to place our energies and fix our gaze on the ways that we can choose gentleness, peace, and generosity, far away from the ballot box. Soon, we’ll experience one of the most pivotal, consequential moments in our lifetime.We’ll have a chance to allow our voices to be heard and to transform the very planet we’re standing on, as well as the one we leave to people who will follow us.We’ll get to leave an inheritance to those we love, and a legacy for those we’ll never know. That particular Tuesday, we’ll get to let our lives impact the lives of countless human beings with one simple, yet profound act that we participate in. It will be our sacred opportunity to speak precisely from our deepest convictions, to let our hearts clearly resound into the world, and to know that we can be the difference in the day. In the face of a deafening fear that would gladly overwhelm us, we’ll get the chance to let love have the last, loudest word. This is beautiful news. But the even better news is that we have that opportunity well before Tuesday, and we’ll have it long after it as well. As you read these very words, you have it. Every single moment we’re here, you and I get to be agents of equity and justice. We don’t have to wait for an event to choose such things, and we can’t be fooled into believing they have an expiration date either. As you move through these days, don’t miss the countless opportunities you have, with every seemingly infinitesimal decision to elect hope, well before you ever step into a voting booth, and long after you walk out into the day. So, yes, please canvass and organize and work and volunteer and protest and vote, and give everything you have to give. But regardless of the results of the election, remember that you always have that choice. Yes, that Tuesday 50 days from now is vitally important in ways that are difficult to comprehend and impossible to overstate. Wednesday is, too. Today is just as critical. This day is the most important day of your life. It always is. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Sep 13

    Christians Could Stop Trump’s Violent, Hateful Chaos At The Polls—And All They’d Need Is Jesus.

    I’ve been a pastor for nearly three decades. I’ve been a Christian for most of my life. Throughout that journey, I took the words of Jesus seriously: his calls to love my neighbor, to care for the most vulnerable among me, to welcome the stranger and the alone, to give my overflow to ensure everyone had enough. I aspired to his compassionate heart that fed disparate multitudes, that healed the wounds of the suffering in his path, that shunned retributive violence, that declared solidarity with the hungry, the overlooked, and the forgotten. In the words and stories of the Gospels, I found a generosity that compelled me to live with an open hand, an empathy that moved me to learn the stories of people around me, and a gratitude to see prosperity, opportunity, and geography not as birthrights to be hoarded, but as blessings meant to be shared. The Jesus I know from those pages and those stories was moved with compassion, not contempt, when he saw the crowds in front of him. The Jesus I know warned of the ways wealth and power could poison and harden the heart, distorting the lenses someone viewed the world with. The Jesus I know didn’t blame the poor and the sick for their condition, but the broken systems and power structures that kept them there. The Jesus I know said that his followers would be known, not by their showy professions of faith, by worship service attendance, the volume of their virtue signaling, or by the titles they affixed to themselves—but simply by their ability and willingness to love the people in their path. The Jesus I know from the New Testament would violently upend the table of Christian Nationalism, as it was far smaller than his love of the world. He would be furious with the weaponizing of religion so many of his alleged disciples traffic in. His heart would be broken by their refusal to see their disparate neighbors as deserving of safety, care, and dignity. He would be sickened by the perversion of his teachings into a gated community of white supremacy. And a lifetime of scriptural study, prayer, and reflection tells me that the Jesus I know would challenge his disciples to drive MAGA’s hateful movement back into the hell it sprang from—and Christians who care about the teachings of Jesus need to. When 81 percent of White Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, they enabled this violent circus of unrelenting chaos, and on a Tuesday in November, they could end it once and for all. With their votes, White Christians could reject the nonsensical conspiracies, the immigrant dehumanization, the masked thug armies, the capricious wars of choice, the tax-funded genocides, the wall-building taunts, and the abject lies. They could condemn the persecution of the poor, the pillaging of the planet, the mockery of the suffering, the protecting of the predators. With their voices and votes, they could stop the bleeding of a nation besieged by leaders who show complete loathing for the very people they are entrusted with protecting. In a single day, people of faith in the Jesus in the Gospels could step into the polls throughout this nation and end the reign of the most loveless, heartless, hate-addled regime in our nation’s history—and all they’d need is Jesus. I’m not talking about the heretical marriage of Church and State that seeks to mandate theology and legislate a religion of coercion for everyone else; I’m talking about choosing morality over party, virtue over muscle memory. I’m talking about followers of Jesus wielding a faith that does no harm: that refuses to exclude, that will not co-sign ethnic cleansing, that will not consent to concentration camps, that will not allow the poor and the sick and the disabled to be cast aside, that will not let the foreign and the different be preyed upon. I’m talking about professed Christians actually embodying the loving, inclusive, generous namesake of their faith, and declaring with absolute clarity that they will not allow this place to be home for racism, safe harbor for bigotry, or a soft place for phobic violence. The unrelenting mayhem that Trump and this regime have thrown this nation into isn’t just an existential threat; it’s a collective sin that flies in the face of everything Jesus’s life and ministry stood for. Christians could stop this madness at the polls, and they don’t need approval of a church or their pastor or their grandfather; they don’t need some blind allegiance to a political party they were taught they need to align with; and they certainly don’t need to empower a hate-addled, failing serial predator whose corroded heart is among the blackest on the planet. No, to end this national nightmare and make a collective stand for actual table-setting, wound-mending, belly-filling, stranger-welcoming love, all they need is Jesus. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

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Authentic words for everyone trying to figure out the best way to be human. johnpavlovitz.substack.com

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