The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

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 any measure, never had to alter anything about myself to be welcomed or feel safe or find success. I’ve never needed to read a room, be aware of my surroundings, or watch my tone.And among the legion of things this privilege has bestowed upon me, perhaps the most instructive has been unlimited access to others like me; those whose pigmentation, gender, orientation, and birthplace have also made them the greatest beneficiaries of this nation’s vast, unearned riches.I know what White people say when cloistered in whiteness; when they no longer feel bound by decorum or social mores, when they imagine themselves free to reveal the ugliness they harbor in their hearts without accountability; in locker rooms, church meetings, neighborhood picnics, and holiday tables.And as someone who served as a pastor for nearly three decades in largely white churches in the South, I know what far too many White Evangelicals truly see as the objective of their collective presence here. It has very little to do with the non-white, non-American, compassionate Jesus at the heart of their faith tradition. (Honestly, most of them despise Jesus, whether they can admit it or not.)All this to say, I know firsthand what the majority of white Conservatives in America want: an America made of only white Conservatives.This may not seem at all revelatory to you, but what you may not understand is how committed they are to self-preservation. There is no law enforcement violation of people of color, no weaponizing of the Government against brown-skinned immigrants, and no legislative assault on trans people too alarming, grotesque, or illegal to detach them from this President and his collaborators.They passionately worship a 34-count felon and court-adjudicated rapist who has never had a noble impulse in his life, because he is a vulgar, ignorant means to an end, one which results in their continued dominance over a place they perceive as their birthright.Brainwashed for years, sometimes decades, in the dehumanizing rhetoric of Sunday sermons, partisan talk show monologues, political stump speeches, and their granddaddy’s racist kitchen table diatribes, they have lost the value of human lives whose pigmentation, gender, orientation, and birthplace do not match their own.They lament the supposed rampant crime across American cities, warn of dangers lurking at the border and in public bathrooms, condemn the moral decay of wokeness, and decry the existential threat of socialism—and it’s all gaslighting and dog whistles to signal other fear-addled straight white Christians that they must eradicate difference here at any cost.I refuse to allow this to happen.I’m a White person who doesn’t want to live in a nation made up of nothing but White people.I have no interest in seeing us become a gated community of inbred, entitled supremacy that cuts itself off from an expansive world it believes itself superior to.I have no desire to spend the rest of my days in a nation that is devoid of diversity, absent of empathy, and culturally whitewashed.I don’t want to perpetuate Christian nationalism, systemic racism, and toxic masculinity; I want to see them dismantled—and I want to be an active participant in the demolition.Trump’s America (which is Stephen Miller’s America, which is Franklin Graham’s America, which is the Proud Boys’ America) is something I will oppose with every word, dollar, and moment that I have at my disposal.I hope enough White people here are willing to make the same declaration in the face of this vile, corrupt Administration and its monstrous designs on America, that we will not allow it to be purged of the variety and plurality that have made it a flawed but still radiant beacon for the world.We need to leverage our privilege and disrupt our circles of influence and do all we can to partner with the rest of the diverse humanity here, to ensure that this nation does not become a White Evangelical fever dream.That is the last thing this world needs.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

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 to them ever tells them while they’re still humble and amenable enough to listen. The power they accrue begins to gradually silence dissent or to remove it from their orbits altogether.These men end up spending their entire lives breathing solely in the intoxicating air of sycophants’ praises; never protected from their own hubris, never cautioned against their recklessness, never alerted to the ways they’ve lost the plot or begun leasing off large sections of their credibility for worldly rewards.Surrounded by genuflecting yes-men and women lacking the intestinal fortitude to push back against the toxic sludge pouring from their lips, they begin to feel increasingly comfortable and even emboldened in it. As they do, the teachings and the words of Jesus become less and less helpful because they begin to testify loudly against them, voicing their opposition—and so they begin to discard them, too.They learn instead to bask in the easy applause of the salivating multitude, who gladly amen their every bitter word, no matter how reckless or incendiary. As the hateful choir cheers their ramblings, they grow more and more delusional, more and more comfortable bowing before the golden idols of their ego and ambition. With each day they slide further down the slope that leads to whatever Hell is, distracted by the buzzing noise of the crowds and unaware of the flames licking their heels.And then one day, these professed men of God find themselves campaigning for a predator, defending ethic cleansing, celebrating the expulsion of refugees, and vilifying an entire religious tradition.They end up justifying the separation of families, going to battle for the NRA, and passionately defending an endless parade of lies from a pedophile President—all the while still imagining themselves righteous and still cosplaying as Christians.These are such days for men like Franklin Graham and the ministers who emulate them. This is how far they have drifted, and it’s going to be almost impossible for them to make their way back, because to do that, they would have to do something they have proven unwilling or unable to do: own their mistakes, admit their failings, cop to their poor alliances, and confess their present sins in the ascension of this malignant narcissist President.Franklin Graham and the White Evangelical Church need Jesus.They need repentance.They need to have the scales fall from their eyes, and to accurately see the horrors they’ve manufactured against so many people made in the image of God.They need to own and confess the ways they’ve denied Jesus, the millions of millstones they’ve tied around the necks of their followers.They need to lament becoming beholden to Donald Trump and the Republican Party and Fox News, and to the supremacists and bigots who now compromise the lion’s share of their ever-shrinking but increasingly militant white racist base.They need to deeply grieve over the LGBTQ men and women whose bullying they’ve defended and blessed, the xenophobic social media rants against Muslims they’ve birthed, and the trauma to the sick and the poor regularly assaulted by a serial predator they have proudly hoisted upon their shoulders as good and Godly.They need to see the irreparable damage they’ve done to the Christian Church and to the name of Jesus.But it’s likely that none of this will happen, because practically speaking, the God they fall prostrate before is the person they see in the mirror.In many ways, it’s little surprise that Franklin Graham found affinity with Donald Trump, as they are frighteningly similar animals; men cradled from birth in wealth, position, and privilege; buffeted heavily by the deep coffers of others, and handed riches and influence most people will never possess, rarely, if ever, considering that they may not be worthy of it.Though Trump hasn’t read the Bible, let alone studied it enough to politically weaponize it the way Graham has, in many ways the reverend is a man cut from the same cloth as this President. Though benefiting from every conceivable blessing and advantage this planet has to offer, they are fueled by a narrative of their unceasing persecution, believing that they are being continually assailed by the very people whose backs they’ve been standing on the whole time: the marginalized, the oppressed, the underserved—the least of these,” Jesus speaks of incarnating him.Franklin Graham speaks with a convincing religiosity; a shiny veneer of down-home, America First religion that makes him impervious to accountability in the eyes of the suggestible multitudes who buy the ever angrier, ever more alarmist, ever more exclusionary gospel they now sell.And it’s up to the rest of us to condemn and to oppose them; the Christians and the non-Christians, who know that human beings who pervert religion and leverage God in order to marginalize already marginalized people or stockpile power are the very thing that most turned the stomach of Jesus. They are the salivating wolves in lily-white sheepskins preying upon the most vulnerable. They are the descendants of the religious zealots of Jesus’ day, who too betrayed their greatest calling because the enticing aroma of limitless power was too strong to withstand.History is recording the Evangelical Right’s abomination of a marriage with this godless President, and though there were what surely felt like short-term wins, the lasting damage to the Church will be irreparable. People outside Christianity suspecting that religious people are all hypocritical frauds are being given plenty of evidence for it.Franklin Graham and the multitude of lesser-known spiritually compromised leaders need the barrier-breaking, wall-obliterating Jesus whose name they invoke, even as they praise a President who is completely antithetical to him.They need the knees-in-the-dirt penitence they so demand of the world, so that they can admit culpability in the violence of these days and push back against the walls and the bans and the barriers.They need to embrace the coming of a Jesus who said that among men like them, there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and to break the tethers between themselves and Donald Trump.Sadly, I don’t see that happening.They have too much of this world to gain, even if it costs them their souls.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

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 presidents and political leaders lacking a working moral compass and complete perversions of our systems of justice.I used to believe that most people were basically decent, and that this decency would win the day because our shared humanity was something we were all equally interested in protecting.I no longer fully believe those things.I no longer believe that our leaders will choose country over party, because over and over, I’ve watched them pollute the system and disregard the rules to hold power, steal elections, and gain Federal judges and Supreme Court Seats.I no longer believe that the truth matters to everyone, because I’ve witnessed too many powerful people ransom it off to the highest bidder—and too many people I know and love grow violently allergic to facts, data, and objective reality.I no longer believe that the American Church is a source of moral leadership, because I’ve witnessed far too many Evangelical leaders sink deeper and deeper into the putrid moral cesspool of their political bed-making.And I have zero confidence in those presently leading us to do anything to defend the common good:They are not going to protect the air we breathe or the waterways that sustain us or the diverse ecosystems that hold life together, when there’s so much money to be made off them.They are not interested in stopping gun violence or mass shootings, because they profit from both the guns that create the carnage—and the fear it generates among their voting base.They have no intention of protecting marginalized and vulnerable communities from discrimination, when they can use those very communities as props to terrify the privileged into bans and walls and wars and rally cries of “send them back” and “America first.”They have no interest in stewarding the full diversity of America, only leveraging and weaponizing some fairy tale nationalistic nostalgia to keep uneducated white people more focused on anthems and flags than on the disparate humanity they’re supposed to be providing refuge for.And I know that because there is no integrity or nobility left in the people currently leading us, that things are not going to be okay as long as good people are bullied into silence and numbed into inaction and content to merely feel bad and do nothing else.No, the only way things are going to be okay is if good people make them okay:If Christians and Atheists and Muslims and Jews and Agnostics and Sikhs and Hindus and Buddhists and Pagans and Humanists who are all committed to the common good realize that their strength is in their combined power and their unified voice.If political progressives, moderates, and reasonable Conservatives realize that hashtag campaigns and one-day marches aren’t substitutes for sustained engagement in the political process and showing up en masse and in unison.If compassionate people of faith stop ceding the conversation about religion to the bigots, grow louder about their religious convictions, and push back hard against the supremacy and misogyny and nationalism of the Evangelical Right.If straight, white people decide that the rights of migrant families and gay teenagers and Muslim communities are worth them pissing off their friends and neighbors and pastors and families to defend.These are unprecedented days in our nation and in the world.Simply believing that our leaders will do what is right is irresponsible now.Trusting that everything will work out simply because it always tended to work out in the past is a fool’s delusion.Having blind faith in the system when the system is so badly broken is willfully consenting to our demise. We’re going to need to leverage our economic resources, our relational capital, and our collective influence to renovate the system so that it serves the people.No, positivity alone is not enough anymore; only positivity and moving with clarity and force are.I want to come out of retirement and be fully optimistic again, but it will be a whole lot easier if a whole lot more people will discard the naive hope that the arc of the moral universe will invariably bend toward justice—and decide to be the courageous arc-benders themselves.I hope people of faith and morality and conscience all decide that they won’t leave the future to chance, that they will not be found waiting for someone else to rescue them.No, America, things will not be okay unless we wake up and work and vote and fight like hell—and make them okay.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

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 shared disdain for a wannabe dictator.Local parks exploded in a kaleidoscopic display of disparate humanity, converging to declare their solidarity and their collective rejection of authoritarianism.Republican lawmakers’ offices were surrounded by a spirited show of resistance from pissed-off, fed-up constituents demanding accountability.The vibes were positive.The chants were spirited.The dance lines were jubilant.The sign game was strong.And it was all, well… really nice.We gathered together. We made some noise. We gave speeches. We raised our fists. We encouraged one another. We put the Republican Party on notice.And when it was over, we all felt the emotional intoxication that events like these usually yield.But if we’re honest with ourselves, was it all the equivalent of a strongly-worded letter to powerful, corrupt people who threw it directly in the trash the moment it arrived?Here we are after the fourth of these gatherings.The Constitutional crises are still piling up.We’re still immersed in an unnecessary, unwinnable war halfway across the world.This Administration’s disregard for legality and morality is still escalating.The complete Epstein files are still concealed, the monsters within them still evading their reckoning.ICE is still ravaging our communities with impunity and with taxpayer funding.Our traitorous, cognitively-decimated, sociopathic Predator-In-Chief is still unstable and violent.We’re still a hair’s breadth from full-on fascism.And in the aftermath of Saturday’s protests, the United States is less than three weeks away from a nation-altering election that the current Administration is clearly doing everything to rig and disrupt, and one it has no intention of honoring, should the votes of the people not be in their favor.Regardless of the results at the polls, we are almost certainly going to be thrust into chaos by this sitting president; one that we have never experienced in our 250-year-history. I wonder if we have it in us to do what we might be required to do to ensure the will of the voters is honored, and the directives of the Constitution are followed.Though I want more than anything to be wrong, as I look at the fierce, fiery protests that have shut down France and those we’ve seen in Spain and Italy and elsewhere, I’m terribly worried that Americans may be too soft and too polite to meet the moment that is likely coming.The last three No Kings Day protests didn’t stave off the chaos that is now here, and it won’t prevent what this regime has planned. We’re going to need a mass display of sustained civil disobedience that we haven’t seen since the 1960s, and that isn’t something we seem capable of.The painful truth is that fascist dictators are rarely voted out, and monstrous authoritarian regimes don’t leave simply because they’re politely asked to.Practically speaking, as meaningful and uplifting as our collective efforts on Saturday were to us, they didn’t matter even a little bit to Trump and his sycophantic gaggle of ghouls. Like so many times before, they allowed us to have an afternoon where we all felt a false sense of power, blew off steam, and then largely returned to our lives currently in progress, while they continued to dismantle our Republic largely unabated.Yes, we rallied people to vote, we equipped them with the tools to make their voices heard, and we implored them to show up in numbers too big to manipulate, at least in theory—and those are all important things.But what happens if we wake up on November 4th and we find ourselves with a presidential administration that refuses to release the stranglehold on this nation that it has?I’m not advocating for violence or inciting wide-scale property damage, but I sure as hell know that if the American people are the only thing standing between our Republic and a cadre of lawless, violent, deranged traitors who show every sign that they’re not leaving voluntarily, signs and chants aren’t gonna cut it.We need to remember that transformative activism is found in sustained and forceful movements, not in soothing moments, and unless we actually strike fear into the oppressors and oligarchs, we may get the very king we claimed for four times in two years that we’d never tolerate.I really want your honest thoughts on all of this. Do you share the same concerns that I have about our willingness to make a more sustained and disruptive response should this Administration do what has been unthinkable?Do you worry that we are too passive and polite a people to push back the way that people in Europe and Central and South America have?Is a post-election No King’s Day going to need to be different, and are we capable of it?Let me know in the comments.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

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, hundreds of adults—presumably teachers, parents, police officers, and business owners film the assault on their phones, laugh to one another, shout slurs at her, move away from the melee, or join the salivating crowd's chants of “USA! USA!” A legion of self-identified patriots, alleged protectors of women, and professed followers of Jesus do everything but move in to protect one woman from the brutality of several men, a woman truly advocating for vulnerable women and children. To a person, they refuse to stop the vicious attack of a mindless mob, mainly because they are part of it.Meanwhile, from the platform, their beloved spray-painted, barely literate predator cult leader, a sitting U.S. President no less, ridicules the woman as “fat”, “very fat,” and “low class”.Police finally intervene, not to protect the woman from being beaten by a group of men, but to escort her out. No charges against them. No accountability for their thuggery.No justice for the laws they broke.This should sound familiar. It’s what created him and this putrid national mess in the first place.This rally isn’t an aberration; it’s a microcosm.This is what MAGA is. This is the depravity this movement foments.This is what these people are.Every single person in that arena, just like every single person who still supports him, is morally broken, all of them.The people at his rallies, the people who voted for him, the people who are preparing to step into a voting booth in a few weeks and put a legislative hedge of protection around him, the people we know who align with him—are defective human beings.His supporters are men and women who lack the same kind of decency the rest of us feel obligated to; otherwise, they would have long ago jettisoned him.They have had to make so many ethical and theological exceptions to remain tethered to him that they are no longer capable of empathy or courage or elemental kindness when it is needed. Once you make the initial deal with this kind of devil, the soul transaction is complete and binding.You cannot be partially associated with a career criminal. You cannot marginally approve of a rapist.You cannot conditionally cheer on a vile, belligerent serial liar.Donald Trump is a pass-fail test of one’s capacity for basic human goodness—and over and over again, these people have failed miserably, completely, and joyfully.I am a person of compassion.I believe in seeing the complexities in people, in realizing they are not two-dimensional caricatures or shorthand stereotypes, in believing that they cannot usually be easily summed up in broad strokes.Like many people, I’ve spent the better part of a decade giving people the benefit of the doubt, trying to separate their political affiliations from their humanity, and dismissing every screaming red flag as something else.I’ve labored through ten years dismissing their reprehensible actions as a byproduct of theological programming, family indoctrination, and political brainwashing.I’ve tried to convince myself that they were basically good people, duped by charlatans and led astray by professional liars.But it’s become impossible to rationalize away or make excuses for anyone who, at this point, would attend his rallies, sing his praises, boost his propaganda, vote for his enablers, or stay silent in the face of his prolific, barbaric violence.With every human rights atrocity they shrug off, with every violent diatribe they dismiss as humorous, with every Constitutional crisis they justify, they sink deeper into a cavern of inhumanity that can never truly crawl out of.The people throughout this country who stand with this toxic human filth are no different than the violent mob in that arena.Just like this seething, jeering crowd applauding the assault of one woman whose worth and safety they had no regard for, they too are participating in, silently watching, or cheering it all on. We all need to stop trying to convince ourselves they have been fooled or manipulated by him, and admit that in far too many ways, they are him.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

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 derision with defiance.It was glorious, cathartic, and it reminded me that we’re going to make it through this nightmare—if we remember who we are.“Why won’t someone do something?!”That’s the question we ask when we look at the world around us, when we see how much suffering and injustice there is, when we inventory the brokenness in our path. We wonder why someone isn’t taking up that cause, or fighting for those people, or doing that urgent work, or standing up to that corrupt power.And when we wonder when someone is going to do something, we usually expect that someone to be somebody else; someone with more experience, someone younger, someone more talented, someone more charismatic or socially connected, someone more popular. We discount our abilities, minimize what we’re capable of, forget the impact our lives have—or maybe we’re trying to sidestep discomfort, but the result is that we deny our own humanity by forgetting who we are.But if we step back from lamenting that someone needs to do something and remember that we are someone —that we’re here, that we’re alive, that we can be the kind of person the world needs—that might change the way we move through the present turbulence. It might make us feel differently about the darkness around us that seems to be winning.People often ask me how we can stay hopeful right now, and the way we do that is by staying human in the space of our agency, by deciding over and over again who we will choose to be. We stay hopeful by making decisions that center compassion, that override selfishness, that show courage, that reflect whoever it is we aspire to be. We ask ourselves what kind of person the world needs right now, and do our best to be that kind of person by showing up, speaking, creating.Some of us understand that we have gifts and talents and resources; we know that we’re someone, but attach caveats and conditions and qualifiers to the realization: I am someone, but I am not going to be that someone.So we think to ourselves, someone needs to be in the streets protesting ICE… but I am not going to be that someone.Someone needs to stand up in a school board meeting and make sure books stay in libraries… but I am not going to be that someone.Someone needs to be running for office… but I am not going to be that someone.Someone needs to challenge my wacky neighbor on his anti-immigrant tirades… but I am not going to be that someone.Someone needs to start a support group for queer teens… but I am not going to be that someone.But what if you are that someone? What if you stop waiting for anybody else to show up?What if every single one of us fully embraced our someone-ness? We might just transform our neighborhoods, our towns, our state, and our nation.These days are made for courageous, loving, generous someones like us.The next time you find yourself thinking, “Why won’t someone do something?” remind yourself that you’re someone.When you see a family broken down on the side of the road and you think, “I hope someone stops to help them.” Remember you are someone.When you’re in your school hallways or your workplace, and another human is being bullied or excluded or dehumanized and you think, “someone should stand with them,” remember you are someone.When you read a friend’s homophobic social media rant and think, “I wish someone would set them straight.” Remember that you’re someone.When you think about the poor in our community and think, “I wish someone would help make sure they have food and shelter.” Remember that you’re someone.As you move through your day and into tomorrow and the rest of your life, let your moral values, ethical principles, and religious convictions make themselves known in whatever way you feel moved to.This week we really needed someone to enter the rally for a monstrous president and call him a rapist to his face, someone to invade the space of the mindless rabble still worshipping him, someone to stand as our defiant middle-finger-flying proxy.Thank God a woman in a Primus t-shirt and yellow jacket remembered that she’s someone. But we need more someones than her.We need someone to ensure that our schools are safe for LGBTQ children. We need someone to make assault weapons less available in our streets. We need someone to secure our elections and ensure everyone has a vote and a voice.We need someone to legislate protections for the planet and the poor and the marginalized. We need someone to dismantle the systemic racism still afflicting our nation. We need someone to loudly push back against anti-immigrant bigotry when it shows up in our neighborhoods, newsfeeds, and holiday gatherings.Right now America needs someone strong… It needs someone kind.It needs someone compassionate.It needs someone courageous.It needs someone fiercely loving.America needs someone to drive back this fascist, pseudo-Christian MAGA pestilence and save this nation.And here’s the great news: we are someone.Your move…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

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 calling for those who follow him, is to love God and to love their neighbor as themselves. That is job one.And here’s the problem, from where I’m standing: you have LGBTQ neighbors who you most certainly aren’t loving by any measure, rather just the opposite.I see how angry and consumed with hatred you are; how bitter you’ve become toward people who have done you no harm.I see the way your theology has left you addled with fears and phobias that have no basis in reality or in the Gospel.I see the effortless venom you hurl at strangers for unchangeable parts of their humanity, and it tells me you’ve really lost the plot of the religion we both were raised in.Your incessant attacks on queer human beings are the putrid fruit of a toxic faith that needs an enemy to feel valid; a defective religion that cannot exist unless it has an imminent danger to wipe out—even if that danger is imaginary, even if the threat you rail against is completely fabricated.I’m not sure how you ended up believing this is what faith looks like, what actual good you believe you’re accomplishing, or exactly what your endgame is, but I hope you hear me because I am telling you, without malice or ill intent: you’re getting it horribly wrong.This life is fragile and fleeting, and you’re wasting daylight; squandering precious time and breath, fighting a battle you can’t possibly win and weren’t asked to wage to begin with. God is not in this holy war with you, no matter how much your pastors or politicians or favorite news show host wants you to believe.Jesus never told you to do any of this. I know, because as a pastor, I’ve read and studied every word he ever uttered in the Scriptures. Despite what you’ve been indoctrinated into believing, someone else’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or body are not your business. They’re out of your jurisdiction, above your pay grade, and beyond your control. And yet Evangelical friends, because there is so much that is within your control, here is some unsolicited but hopefully useful advice for you with whatever time you have left on this planet: stop working so hard to erase queer people, to make them disappear. It isn’t going to happen. They exist. They are here. They have always been here. They deserve to be here. God made them as much as God made you.If your faith really matters to you, it would be a beautiful thing if you channeled that tireless passion to making hungry people less hungry, physically sick people well,lonely people feel welcome, invisible people feel seen, bullied people feel protected,and grieving people feel comforted.Those things you can accomplish, and Jesus did explicitly call you to them.He states that this healing, restorative work is his business, and so it should be yours.Love is the only worthwhile expression of our theology, and frankly, right now yours is devoid of it. This love is how Jesus said he would determine your love for him: not by the culture wars you wage, the signs you hold, the insults you hurl, the coldness you deliver, the relationships you sever, the protests you mount, or the havoc you wreak.Because while you’ve been so busy bothering LGBTQ people, a waiting and weary multitude has passed by you looking for the hope and help and healing you’re supposed to offer them, and you have missed it all. In fact, worse than that, you have become a source of wounding. Because of your unrelenting cruelty and your unprovoked attacks on queer human beings, you are now a barrier to people’s belief that God is defined by love.If you could abandon this breathless outrage for one moment and just look around, you’d see that the possibility for goodness is everywhere. It’s right in front of you.You’ve been given this time and space and your presence all as priceless gifts from God, and it would be a tragedy to miss the chance to use them.There are hopeless situations you can remedy, blessings you can provide, people you can care for, paths you can beautifully alter, healing you can accomplish, prayers you can answer, wounds you can mend, kindnesses you can extend.The question is: do you really want any of that, or are you married to this ultimately fruitless cause that is doing nothing real but damaging already vulnerable people?Friends, LGBTQ human beings’ existence isn’t harming you in the least, and if you were able to step back and be honest enough to admit that, you might have to ask yourself what the hell you’re so angry about. You might find yourself seeing what the rest of us see: that you are the danger here. Maybe that’s your goal, but I really hope not.In over a half-century on this planet, I’ve never seen or heard a single queer person show up at your churches calling your perverts, or demanding that your right to your own bodies be taken away, or trying to legislate you out of existence, or shouting through bullhorns at your gatherings.All I’ve ever seen is a group of people simply trying to live and asking to be allowed the same personal liberties and opportunity to exist you have. That’s pretty much what loving your neighbors and doing onto others is about. In fact, you could take a lesson from them. You’ve always said God works in mysterious ways.Evangelicals, the clock is ticking on our time here.The sun is fading.Time is wasting.People are waiting.Your life and others’ lives are flying by.Do something worthy of it all:Repent of this sinful crusade and start loving your queer neighbors the way Jesus told you to.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

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 justice, she is being assaulted a second time by a similarly grotesque mob:A sitting president, himself an adjudicated rapist, is expressing sympathy for the accused, with no such regard for their accuser.Men all over the country are flooding social media with their crude Neanderthal hot takes on her supposed culpability. Conservative male content creators like Matt Walsh and Michael Tracey are assassinating her character in tweets, YouTube videos, and reckless think pieces, championing countersuits and calling for her doxxing.And women like Megyn Kelly are leveraging hours of programming on their massive platforms to perpetuate a narrative that is right out of the misogynist’s playbook: blame the victim.Kelly has spent the past two weeks running extensive hit pieces on Jane Doe, criticizing her drinking habits, doing drive-by psychotherapy, and questioning the two-week delay in Doe’s reporting of the incident, despite Kelly herself seemingly taking a full decade to disclose alleged sexual harassment by then Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.Rather than educate her audience on the pressures women face at every turn; the sexism saturating media, the Evangelical Church, and the GOP ecosystem; and the widespread sexual violence permeating our culture, Megyn Kelly would rather throw raw meat to the snarling, unevolved rabble.Kelly, like all perpetually performative Conservatives who continually sermonize about “protecting women” in college sports, doesn’t seem at all interested in defending them when they step off the field and onto their campuses. Once they have exhausted their use as pawns in a Right-Wing culture war, they’re thrown to the wolves.As thousands of women take to social media to declare solidarity with Jane Doe (#iamjanedoe), counting themselves among the 81 percent of women in the US who testify to having been sexually assaulted or harassed in their lifetimes, they too are being met with ridicule, insults, and vulgarity. This is why more survivors of sexual assault don’t come forward; because they know that in doing so, they will find themselves facing violence and indignities from strangers that compound their wounds and amplify the shame of their initial trauma.They understand that they will face a microscopic scrutiny of their dating histories, clothing choices, and public conduct that places the burden of the violence visited upon them squarely on their shoulders and never on those who authored it.The United States has a long-gestating r*pe culture that ensures that the Jane Does will always be hounded and that the Cornell 7s will always be sheltered. This not only makes survivors more reticent to report their trauma, but it emboldens unwell men who are more apt to act out on the monstrous things in their minds, believing accountability will never come.Until this nation stops electing predators and politically rewarding abusers, they will continue to be prolific in their atrocities.Until men of conscience police the men around them, no rapist will ever feel as unsafe as those he harms.Until law enforcement and university boards decide to root toxic masculinity from their ranks, survivors will continue to remain silent. Until internalized misogynists like Megyn Kelly stop partnering in their own subjugation, young women will continue to question their worth and carry unnecessary shame.Until Conservative parents stop coddling their sons and diminishing their daughters, campuses and workplaces will be where young men believe they can embrace the darkest evils harbored in their hearts.And unless we abolish a pervasive rape culture that extends all the way up to the Supreme Court and the White House, every Jane Doe in America will know that if they do choose to expose the unspeakable violence committed against them, they will be further assaulted by a sprawling crowd who would rather practice or excuse violence against women than confront it.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

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 people in my path as best I can. Thankfully, I have Conservative, self-identified alpha males to remind me otherwise.Like self-appointed testosterone police, they fly into my mentions to make sure I know just how deficient in being a dude I actually am.They relentlessly ridicule me for protesting a pedophile president, for calling out Evangelical misogyny, and for condemning frat boy college rape culture; these things all supposedly revealing my shortcomings as a card-carrying man. They deride me for being afflicted with toxic empathy as I advocate for survivors of sexual assault, openly grieve children being blown apart by bombs my taxes paid for, and call out the monstrous violence of masked thugs brutalizing my neighborsI try to explain that I can’t help it, that I was raised this way, that I am a product of my upbringing.Looking back, I can see that my parents and mentors apparently all failed to make me into a “real man.”I grew up believing that a woman’s consent trumped anything; that I should yield to her will regarding her body, no matter what the circumstances.I was taught that I was solely responsible for my choices, that it wasn’t a woman’s job to dress or act in a way that ensured that she would be safe in my presence; that my presence should guarantee her safety.I was raised to believe that real men have the courage to stand alone and speak out when every other man around them is devolving into the worst of themselves.I was indoctrinated by leftist propaganda into thinking that the true measure of a man is whether he can hold on to his convictions when no one else shares them.By his example, my father told me that a man wasn’t ashamed to show emotion around his children, was easy with his affection, and made sure no one around him felt alone or unloved.And it seems in all of these cases, I was duped and lied to, led astray down the path to becoming the sad, sorry, unmanly wuss I apparently now am. Maybe there’s still time for me. Perhaps if I were stronger and worked harder, I could be like the alpha men who mock me. Maybe like them, I could completely subjugate my identity and my voice to a lift-wearing, makeup-caked serial predator.Like them, I could also stay silent while thousands of rapists and pedophiles are being protected from accountability by the leaders I chose. Maybe I too could blame the survivors of sexual assault, instead of the monsters who desecrated them.If I were as rightly manly as my conservative critics, perhaps I could be as comfortable as they are with the government taking away a woman’s autonomy or disregarding her elemental freedoms.Given a proper manosphere deprogramming, perhaps I could join the sprawling ranks of perpetually insecure man-children who’ve never been able to find a fully formed understanding of what it means to be a gentle man and a loving human being. Immerse myself in the Evangelical ecosystem long enough, and I might evolve into a knuckle-dragging amber-trapped caveman who is terrified of strong women and intimidated by any expression of sexuality that doesn’t fit my brittle Old Testament sensibilities.Spend enough time in Republican politics and I too may one day be tough enough to fall prostrate before a man who has verbally, emotionally, or physically violated nearly every woman in his path, and to still pretend I’m strong.I’m pretty sure too late for me, though.At this age, I might be resigned to my soft, swishy sissified state: just another weak, soy boy, leftist cuck of a man striving to live with decency, self-control, and compassion; to be someone a woman doesn’t need to fear being around when alone or vulnerable.I might just have to settle for being a father whose son would never be silent when anyone else was in danger.I might be doomed to be a dad whose daughter feels respected and loved by him because she’s watched him respect and love her mom as an equal.I may be resigned to being a husband whose partner in life has never felt the pressure to be any other kind of woman than the woman she is.Yeah, I’d like to fight it, but I confess that the overcompensating alphas are right; I’m a beta male.Guess I’ll just have to live with that.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

“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 a reasonable and healthy idea back when we had parties and candidates who genuinely desired the common good; when we were debating methodology or financial approach to solving problems that we all agreed were problems. It made sense to preserve relationships when we imagined that our fathers, cousins, neighbors, and lifelong friends cared about diversity and justice and personal freedoms and helping people as much as we did.We are way past that.For a decade now, Donald Trump and his surrogates have offered an openly nihilistic, misogynistic, hate-poisoned vision of an intentionally divided nation without empathy for the poor or the sick. Their movement has been a naked declaration of white supremacy and intolerant nationalism; a movement completely devoid of policy and oriented solely around those it would exclude and punish and banish.And that is what so many of the people we once shared this life with have chosen, many for the third time now. That doesn’t just point to political fissure or ideological misalignment, but a complete moral incompatibility.Year after year, we have witnessed those we love repeatedly confirm their deviations regarding affordable healthcare, human rights, environmental protections, body autonomy, foreign genocide, sexual violence, and the legal and moral standards leaders should be held to.This is no longer about policy differences, not simple disagreements about the humane and responsible way to deal with collective national challenges. It isn’t a matter of agreeing to disagree on less-than-critical subjects where a stalemate is acceptable.The coming election (much like our political sides in this iteration of America) is about whether we will embrace or reject unapologetic racism, rabid nationalism, mindless homophobia, the dehumanization of immigrants, narcissistic greed, and the coddling of sexual predators.And these things are worth cutting people off, severing ties, and muting on social media. They have to be if our values matter to us.The lives of millions of flesh-and-blood human beings hang in the balance as we enter the voting booth: their freedom to make healthcare decisions for themselves, their access to fundamental liberties promised in the Constitution, their agency to govern their own destinies, their basic sense of safety from harassment and harm and violence. If there was ever something that justified a deleted contact number, an empty chair at the Thanksgiving table, an exodus from a church, or the termination of a friendship, it is this.If we aspire to being decent human beings, at some point, we need to choose whether we will lean into our deepest convictions or preserve relationships with people whose presence increasingly causes us to compromise, conceal, or deny those convictions.We need to decide whether we will keep a tenuous peace with those we share blood and tradition with, but little else, or whether we will step out into the raking light of full authenticity and fight for the things that break our hearts and boil our blood, for the human beings we know are and will be under great duress because of the choices our loved ones and friends have made.The choices we make in November are far more consequential than merely altering the balance of power in Congress, flipping key seats, or ousting incumbents committing malpractice. The tangible impact of our votes on people of color, on LGBTQ human beings, on the sick and the poor and the elderly, on our immigrant communities (let alone the rest of the world) is beyond what we can comprehend right now. The outcome in November will determine the opportunities people have to earn a living wage, to feed their children, to choose their homeland, to define their gender, to live free from violence at the hands of their government. This isn’t politics, it’s elemental humanity.I’m not saying we should disconnect from everyone we know who doesn’t perfectly align with us politically, as learning to bear with reasonable disagreement, hearing another’s perspective, and finding compromise are often necessary and helpful. But when the misalignments are philosophical, ethical, or moral, we all need to ask if that’s cause for distance or disconnection.If we haven’t gotten there yet, many of us may decide that we cannot forgive or abide those close to us who have repeatedly chosen leaders and policies that have caused so much unnecessary sorrow to so many human beings. We might decide that we no longer desire relational or physical proximity to people who have allowed our nation to be handed over to such a cancerous malevolence, and who did so with perverse joy and unrepentant cruelty.If that isn’t reason to end a relationship, nothing is.How about you? How do you approach the political divides you have with people you know and love? Are there dealbreakers, and what are they? When do you choose to fight for a relationship or to disconnect? Let me know in the comments.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

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

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 unearthHe 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