The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

Brown-Skinned Screams and White-Skinned Silences

America is dying.I’m not referring to the systemic collapse of our Republic or the slow suffocation of Democracy here, though these are certainly not unlikely outcomes at this point.This is far deeper than the seats of power or a congressional alignment, more than the structural implosion of this nation.The greatest, most grievous failure of America in this moment isn’t legislative but moral.The soul of this place is dying in screams and silences.The brown-skinned screams rise from our collective home:The anguished cries of a young mother being violently torn from her children on their front lawn.The frantic pleas of a father of four dragged from his worksite by lawless masked mercenaries.The inconsolable sobs of a woman whose husband will never see his daughter grow up.The weary moans of devoted fathers, loving spouses, beloved uncles, and cherished nieces shackled in a stifling death camp.The screams rise from half a world away:The desperate, terrified wails of a Palestinian toddler left buried in the rubble of what seconds ago was the only home she’s ever known.The guttural howl of an Iranian father, holding the unrecognizable body of his teenage daughter.The unheeded shrieks of a young couple assassinated in front of their children. The tortured shouts of a Gazan family slowly being starved to death.This horrific noise is the soundtrack of waking nightmares; the raw-throated echoing of the vilest of history repeating. They are sounds that shake decent human beings to their core.But those screams are only half of this tragedy.Equally devastating is the white-skinned silence; the contagious moral laryngitis afflicting people of profound privilege who avert their eyes and cover their ears.It is the breathtaking quiet of human beings who have retreated into the cloistered places of temporary comfort and imagined safety; those who quickly scroll away from the videos because they do not want to hear the screams, because that would leave them culpable for their inaction and their stilled voices.White America, we need to lean into the screams of brown-skinned people, to invite them inside, to let them break our hearts and boil our blood, until the fury within us rises and erupts in a fierce and sustained roar that violently disrupts the inhumanity that will not stop unless we make it stop.White friends, what exactly are you waiting for?How much suffering do you need to see?What terrible sounds will finally awaken your voices?What line still needs to be crossed for you to declare it unacceptable?What good is it if you claim morality or conscience, if these result in you saying nothing while our neighbors are brutalized?How real is your professed faith if it yields no measurable opposition to the greatest violations of human life?How much is your patriotism worth if the disregard for the elemental liberties of this nation leaves you speechless?If ethnic cleansing and genocide do not stir your fury and your vocal cords, what is the point of you being here?Your silence won’t save you, anyway; it will only postpone your suffering as you abdicate the elemental parts of your humanity during the interim. That is a coward’s path and one I refuse to take.The only way we can endure as a nation is if we all find the courage to speak with clarity, if we allow ourselves to be heard here and now.White friends, the cost of using your voice is nothing compared to the price of your silence.Let your life say something before it’s too late.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

Transcribe →

If MAGA Christians Really Love Jesus, This Sunday in Church, They Should Repent.

6d ago00:04:25Tap to summarize

All over America, MAGA Republicans will stream into churches this Sunday.They will do so joyously.They will do so confidently.They will do so believing they are righteous.It will be another hollow procession of fervent disciples of a felon-predator who have again spent the past week applauding the abuse and degradation of the poorest and most vulnerable among us. They will proudly carry their Bibles, while evangelizing for a man, a party, and a movement that are antithetical to its contents regarding what it means to love people as God does.Without a hint of self-awareness, they will take their seats in front of a cross symbolizing sacrifice, after another seven days amplifying a greed that will drive millions of people further into illness, food scarcity, and despair. They will feign love for their neighbors, while breathlessly supporting a regime doing all it can to make sure those neighbors will experience poverty, have reduced access to education, and lives that will be far more painful and far shorter than they needed to be.They will try and pretend they give a damn about Jesus, while celebrating the relentless violent persecution of immigrants, refugees, and anyone with brown skin who their repugnant cult leader’s goon squad decides to round up from worksites, graduation ceremonies, and church services.They will have the God-mocking audacity to sing songs about a Creator who sets the captives free, even as they pump their chests and post social media taunts about concentration camps that will be a blazing, miserable final destination for human beings whose lives and stories they will never care to know.They will imagine themselves faithful soldiers in the Army of the Lord, while rejoicing in the protection of human traffickers and rapists, among whom is likely the man they claim is anointed by God to lead them.These are the hypocrites and pretenders Jesus warned about. They are the fraudulent, performative predators he spent his entire life and ministry rejecting.The only reason they should be entering a church at all is to fall to their knees in repentance, asking for forgiveness for so perverting Jesus’ love your neighbor message into something that dehumanizes the human beings in their path, something that only wounds and expels, something that is the very embodiment of evil.As a former pastor, I wish I could be in these buildings this Sunday, so I could look these people in the eyes and hold the compassionate, gentle, generous words of Jesus up to them like a mirror in a way their spiritual leaders won’t, because they, too, are morally compromised.I’d love to shove Jesus’ commands to love the least, to care for the most vulnerable, to welcome the stranger in their faces and watch them squirm and rationalize and desperately engage in theological gymnastics to try and avoid accountability for urinating on the loving, healing, helping, immigrant Christ.I wish I could confront them with the truth, that if Jesus were to show up in the flesh in their midst, they’d have him cast out for his woke theology, removed from their gatherings for daring to preach an empathy they now find detestable, and capriciously tossed into some prison for no other reason than the color of his skin or his nation of origin.Every decent human being, whether they claim faith or not, sees what a gross and empty Sunday parade these self-identified Christians are making into buildings where they will surround themselves with the trappings of goodness and faithfulness, all the while making life for so many outside the building a living hell.I don’t expect a single one of these MAGA acolytes to step into their churches and actually hear the words of Jesus in a way that softens their hearts, moves them to repentance, and sends them out into a nation they have done such irreparable harm to in order to bring any kind of healing or equity or restoration. This is mostly because they no longer have any need for Jesus.In fact, I’m really hoping Jesus doesn’t show up in their gatherings.He wouldn’t be safe.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

Transcribe →

I'm Furious With People Who Aren't Furious Right Now.

1w ago00:04:21Tap to summarize

I’m just gonna come right out and say it: I’ve had it with people right now.OK, it’s probably not particularly healthy to have a grievance with an entire species, so let me narrow that down a bit…I’m angry with everyone who isn’t angry.I’m having a really hard time with the unbothered people, the “everything is gonna be fine” people, the people who are acting as though they are above those of us who are blowing gaskets, breaking down, and freaking out.You know who I’m talking about: those friends, family members, coworkers, classmates, and social media acquaintances who tone-police us for surveying the monumental destruction being inflicted upon our fragile Republic and its people and being livid. Those people.I’ve arrived at my breaking point with human beings around me who are still averting their eyes, avoiding the news, and anesthetizing themselves on a mind-numbing cocktail of wishful thinking, retail therapy, self-preservation, and American exceptionalism.I’ve reached the limit of my tolerance for people who have seemingly spent the past year poo-pooing hundreds of atrocities and illegalities, any one of which would be an alarm-tripping red flag for a nation sliding swiftly into fascism.And I’ve really had it with people who are still criticizing the emotionality of those of us who’ve been told for a decade that we’re overreacting, while we’ve watched every single supposedly impossible prediction come to pass.I don’t think laissez-faire wait-and-seers who are banking on a simple November midterm resurrection are particularly helpful right now.Look, I believe in being rational and level-headed whenever possible, in offering a measured response to most kinds of adversity, to being strategic and sober of mind in the face of many struggles.But right now, circumstances are such that we could use a lot more furious human beings. We need people who have seen, heard, and have had enough: enough injustice, enough lawlessness, enough dehumanization, and who aren’t afraid to be labeled too loud, too pissed off, and too passionate.There is a time and place for self-control, for tolerance, for listening and bearing with people, for breathing and being still. But there is also a time and place when the gravity of the moment calls for something fierce and unwieldy; a wildness of heart that isn’t interested in decorum or social norms. I suggest that now is such a time, and here is precisely the place.Authoritarianism has overtaken America.Our president is a sociopath.His Cabinet is sycophantic.His party is complicit.They are at war with the world.They are ignoring law and morality.They are building concentration camps.They are murdering protestors.They are silencing journalists.The media are bending the knee.This Congress is neutered.The Supreme Court is compromised.The checks and balances are disappearing.The systems are failing.People are being arrested for existing.People are being targeted for who they love.These are not hyperbolic rantings of overly emotional crepe-hangers; they are the clear-headed conclusions of those of us who are paying attention, who’ve read the files, who’ve waded into the minutiae of the legislation, and who don’t scroll away from things that turn our stomachs and break our hearts.I’m not advocating for an aimless, reckless assembly of panicked people running around like headless chickens, but some urgency and a little ferocity from a lot more people would be a good start. Ignorance is bliss until it’s deadly.If you’re already furious, fed up, and losing your filters and your f***s, celebrate that. We need a lot more fire and a lot less chill.Right now, it’s a sign of your humanity, of your sanity, and of your soul, to look around at it all and say, “I’ve had it… I’m furious.”Note: If you’ve had it and want to know how to productively and strategically wield your exasperation with other similarly pissed-off people, start by contacting your local Indivisible group, connecting with the ACLU, and partnering with Remove Coalition or Red, Wine, & Blue. You can also research progressive faith communities, nonprofits, and candidates, and ask them where they can use your help.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

Transcribe →

You're Right To Grieve What's Happening to America.

1w ago00:05:03Tap to summarize

Hey.I may not know you but I know what you’re thinking.I know you feel something breaking inside lately; an invisible fracture that only you’re fully aware of.I know the way you walk away from conversations with people you once relied on for wisdom and clarity and compassion, doubting your own sanity because you no longer recognize those things in them and worry you may be overreacting.I know the way you feel internally estranged from the friends, coworkers, family members, and neighbors you used to find affinity with, and you wonder if you’re losing your mind.I understand how you stare at the perpetual parade of horrible scrolling past you, from the second you wake up prematurely in the early morning until the stretched out nighttime moments you try unsuccessfully to fall asleep, and how you question the grip you have on reality.I know the disbelief you feel in the presence of loved ones and ministers and leaders who now seem to be speaking some strange foreign tongue that you can’t make any sense of anymore.I hear the nagging question you ask inside your head a few hundred times a day: “Is it me, or has a huge portion of this country lost its mind?”It isn’t you.You’re quite fine, and this is of course both good and terrible news—because of what it says about you and about the place you find yourself.The fact that you see how wrong this all is, means your faculties are intact, your mind is fully right, and your heart is working properly. It’s all confirmation that you still have a soul doing what souls are supposed to do: keep you deeply human in profoundly inhumane times.This is why you need to hold tightly to that soul, because it is more rare and valuable than ever.It’s why you need to embrace this holy unrest in the center of your belly; because it is the greatest weapon against the present epidemic of apathy.It’s why you can’t allow your right mind to make peace with such abject madness.If enough time passes, an otherwise healthy person can start to get used to sickness. They can slowly begin to convince themselves that almost any horrifying, toxic, painful, twisted reality is acceptable.Little by little they can gradually allow themselves to acclimate to the nightmare, to come to see it as normal.Either that, or they determine that they’re actually out of their minds and they collapse inside.This is a reminder that what is happening in America right now is not at all normal and that you are right to feel this disorientation.I need you to hear this, friend:You’re okay.You’re not crazy.You’re also in good company.Right now, there is a massive army of similarly walking wounded sharing this place with you; fellow exhausted souls who realize that none of this makes any sense—people concluding that for their health, they will need to create distance from people they once allowed proximity.There are millions of good people out here still looking to be the kind of people the world needs; those committed to doing no harm, burdened to bring something decent where it is missing.Many of us who see what you see:We can see that this movement in our nation is a bastardization of humanity, a rebellion against goodness, a mutiny against sanity.We can see that those sanctioning and defending and co-signing it are similarly unwell, equally disconnected from anything benevolent, similarly propelled by fear and greed and bitterness.And that’s why we need to keep resisting it.You need to push back against the surrounding insanity that tries to convince you that you’ve gone mad.You need to refuse to be gaslit by people when they try to diminish your worries, mock your anxiety, or tell you you’re being overly emotional—even when that person is the one staring back at you in the mirror.You need to press on, because in days when evil is normalized, goodness matters most.Right now, work to find your people, those who are as heartbroken and furious as you are, and begin find ways to care for human beings in duress, to organize against the legislative assaults, and to be strengthened by loving community.In times when truth and news are pliable, truth-tellers are worth more than gold.You’re not crazy, but these days surely are.You’re not upside down right now, friend—a good portion of this place is.Loving resistance is a world-turner.People of faith, morality, and conscience together, from every corner of this nation, will right-side it.Be encouraged.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

Transcribe →

This President Exposed My White Christian Friends, and I'm Grateful

1w ago00:05:10Tap to summarize

This President has been many things since descending an escalator a decade ago: a national embarrassment, a global punchline, an environmental disaster, a divider of people, a prolific murderer of the English language, not to mention countless human beings.But he’s also been a floodlight.He’s fully exposed millions of people who’d kept themselves carefully concealed, many of whom I thought I knew. I can see them now in ways I never could previously. It’s all out in the open.Intellectually, I always knew that racism was deeply embedded into the fabric of our nation. Still, I’d convinced myself that it had slowly but certainly begun to unravel, that we weren’t as hopelessly bound by it as our ancestors had been. As a pastor in largely white churches in the South over the past two decades, I told myself the story that the Church, like this nation, was changing. It may have been a combination of privilege, ignorance, and wishful thinking, but I truly thought that we were getting better, that the arc of the moral universe was again bending toward justiceI surely never imagined that so many people I loved, lived with, worshipped alongside, or worked next to were as afflicted with supremacy as they have revealed themselves to be. I never fathomed that so many people claiming to love Jesus would so resent foreigners, so worship America, and so abhor diverse humanity. The people around me were either really good at pretending, or, in my naivety, I was just willing to believe the lie.I saw the cracks in their facades begin to show when Barack Obama was elected; their carefully coded hate speech, their ever more antagonistic social media posts from fringe sources, their incessant, desperate search for something to be outraged about, their inability to give him any credit or acknowledge his goodness. They grew more entrenched in their positions, more tribal in their tone.But even then, they kept their prejudices and phobias close to the vest, never really tipping their hand, always dancing around the words without really saying them. The mask was splitting and sliding off, but they would not fully show themselves because it was socially unacceptable (they would call it “politically correct.”)Then he arrived a decade ago: someone who gave them what they needed to abandon the performance completely: permission to be horrible; someone who erased any semblance of decorum, any expectation of decency, any level of accountability. After so many years of pretending, they finally received white Presidential consent to be outwardly racist—and now, in his second coming, the dam of their suppressed bigotry has burst, and they are letting the toxic hatred flow freely.White pastors now lob it through incendiary sermons into their congregations, white politicians plaster it upon campaign billboards, white police officers send it out in group emails, white teachers wave it in front of their students, white civilians spit it out in viral videos at coffee shops and public parks, white terrorists parade it unmasked through city streets.And my white friends, family members, and neighbors are rejoicing in this Renaissance of open ugliness—and I never saw it coming, even if I should have.And this has been the most disorienting, stomach-turning, sickening part of this terrible season in America: the realization that I have lived near, worked alongside, and ministered around people who claimed to believe in Jesus while harboring such corrosive hearts—and that I was oblivious to it all. I am both angry at them and disappointed in myself.But now, their open contempt for immigrants, their apathy in the face of his corruption, and their callousness toward suffering people all testify to their hearts.And I suppose that is the small bit of gratitude I have for this malignancy of a movement here; the way it has fully revealed people—and this is an unwelcome but invaluable gift.I know what I didn’t know before.I can’t excuse the truth away.I no longer give them the benefit of a doubt that they have fully removed.My eyes are clear and open widely, and now I’m responsible for what I do and say in response to who they are.We all are.Regardless of what happens in the future or how the political landscape may change or who we have helming our nation, what has been revealed about us as is going to remain, and we’re going to have to deal with the unmasked, unearthed, illuminated hatred that we are this violently afflicted with.That might be this President’s only worthy legacy.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., not 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

Transcribe →

I Don't Wish For His Death... Yet.

2w ago00:04:12Tap to summarize

It feels like a good portion of this nation is on death watch right now.My social media feed is filled with photos and videos gleefully documenting the markers of his physical deterioration, with rising hope as his public appearances grow more sporadic, with almost giddy prognostications of his departure date from this place. People are posting their plans as if preparing for New Year’s Eve or a World Series Championship.I am not exactly one of those people.Yes, he has been an odious blight upon this planet and a cancerous presence to this nation. He is, without question, one of the single most objectively horrible human beings our species has produced.Setting aside the reality that his passing would elevate a successor who is smarter, shrewder, less impulsive, and potentially far more effective in accelerating this country’s slide into theocracy, authoritarianism, and economic devastation for everyone but the billionaire cadre of amoral tech bro vampires who elevated him to the platform to begin with.But I don’t wish for his death.I wish he’d never been born.If he departs this mortal sphere as I type this, it will do nothing to undo all the evil that his now bruised hands have wrought, to erase every vile thing his presence has exposed as he ascended politically.It will not rewind the years of those who lived in squalor and poverty in New York City, on whose backs he built his jittery, hollow empire.His death will not bring financial restitution to the thousands of workers and contractors left abandoned by the many bankruptcies that emancipated him from responsibility.It won’t give back wholeness and healing to the girls and women he violated in secret or maligned in public.It will not reverse the irreparable damage he has done to a political party whose members individually and collectively abandoned every legal and moral expectation to fall prostrate before him.It will not elicit repentance in a white Evangelical Church that parted ways with the compassionate, loving namesake of its faith tradition and fashioned a vicious, sneering, profane, God-mocking idol out of his antithesis and bowed down before it.His passing now could not allow us to unsee the repugnant grievance cult he unleashed here; the historically hateful movement of miserable people who’ve spent the last decade reveling in an unrepentant ugliness because he gave them consent.It will not remove the legion of incompetent, predatory, corrupt sycophants he poisoned our government with; people who have and will continue to dismantle and pervert our systems of care and legal oversight.And his death, as much as it would feel like an initial reprieve from the chaos he has engineered and the unfathomable suffering he has spearheaded, would do nothing to conceal the vile sickness he exposed within the people around us: the long-simmering racism, the scalding contempt for foreigners, the phobic hatred of human beings for their gender identity or sexual orientation.Long after he is gone, we will be left with what we now know about our family members and friends and neighbors; about the people in our churches, about the parents of our children’s friends; about the pillars of our communities, about those we trust to govern us, protect, and serve us.These atrocities, sadly, will all long outlive him.He lived, and his life has done its brutal, irreversible damage.And with that being true, I do not wish for his death; not yet.I hope and pray that he lives long enough to face legal accountability for his crimes; that he will not depart this place before escaping consequences for the willful disregard he has spent 80 years showing for the laws of our land, for the disparate humanity that has called this place home, and for the sacred and powerful platform he never deserved to begin with.I want him to be humiliated, to be broken, to see his vile empire crumbled, to see his name erased from the places he disfigured with it.I want him to live long enough to face a cell before he faces his maker; to rot in prison before he rots in the ground.And I want to live long enough to see it.That will be cause for true celebration.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

Transcribe →

Republicans Are Telling Us They Can't Win in November, But Aren't Going To Lose. We Need To Believe Them.

2w ago00:05:48Tap to summarize

Republicans are telling us something right now, America:They know they can’t win in November.They’re shouting with absolute clarity that they know they can’t.They’re declaring it through their unceasing attempts to gerrymander millions of people’s voices out of the political process.They’re confessing as much through nonsensical word salad press conferences, condemning mythical past election fraud with invisible proof and non-existent evidence.They’re telling us through unrelenting Fox News fictions about thousands of supposed illegal immigrants somehow voting Democrat.They are preemptively admitting defeat in the Fall as they eliminate voting sites, oppose absentee ballots, weaponize the Postal Service, and conjure up ever more restrictive voter ID requirements.Most of all, they’ve admitted they cannot win a free and fair election by making no attempts to construct a political platform of any kind to address the economic and social sicknesses of this nation (most of which they have authored), because they have no interest in governing, only in holding power.Trump and his GOP acolytes have never run on substantive ideas or concrete solutions. In ten years, they have produced no healthcare plan, launched no programs to improve wages, and crafted no legislation to help working-class people. They have made no attempts to give more people access to education, financial security, home ownership, or opportunity.They have been a violent, greedy, parasitic movement of systemic destruction: a toxic sludge of fear porn, billionaire sodomy, racist dog whistles, and human rights and environmental protection rollbacks.Republicans are evil, and they’re treasonous, but they’re not stupid. They have the data. They’ve seen their grim poll numbers. They’re aware that Donald Trump’s approval rating is in the lowest depths of the toilet of history.They know they are hopelessly underwater on astronomical grocery and gas prices, on multiple wars we have no business participating in, on partnership in multiple genocides, on the Epstein Files, on ICE’s unrelenting barbarism, on an America where no one outside of the tiniest fraction of the wealthiest people feels good about their prospects for the future.For all of these reasons, we need to stop pretending that November will bring some magical emancipation from these Christo-fascists and tech bro oligarchs. We need to prepare our collective response to their inevitable refusal to relinquish their stranglehold on our barely-breathing Republic.There is no time to waste in believing we only need to show up at the polls and wait for Election Night. Yes, we must continue to canvass and support candidates and drive people to the polls in numbers that theoretically are too great to manipulate—but we also need to understand that this isn’t going to be a clean transfer of power, because Republicans are going to fight it by any means necessary. January 6th will seem benign compared to what they have prepared.Back in June, Speaker (and soulless bootlicking coward) Mike Johnson declared: “If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, these Democrats, y’all impeachment’s not even the big concern.”Johnson continued: “They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the cabinet, his donors and friends; half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I’ll take care of you. We’re going to win the midterms.”There it is. There are only two ways November plays out: Republicans conjure a “win” at the polls through every kind of technological malfeasance at their disposal, or, they are victims of a political bloodbath at the hands of the people and then flatly refuse to abide by the results. The worst thing any of us can do right now is to operate under any delusions that we are going to experience anything resembling a normal midterm election. The time to decide how we’re going to respond to Republicans’ current and promised lawlessness isn’t the day after the election; it’s right now. Find ways to support election security in your local community.Connect with organizations who are already actively pushing back against Trump’s corrupt regime, like Indivisible, Common Cause, Flare USA, Democracy Forward, Democracy Docket, and Removal Coalition.Educate people around you who are still sedated on a cocktail of wishful thinking, ignorance, and American exceptionalism, so that they understand what is coming in November.Build partnerships across lines of ideology, race, theology, and preference, knowing that we will only survive this coming assault on our Constitution by leveraging our collective power, in both bodies and dollars.Talk to your families and friends about how you will specifically respond when Trump and his Congressional sycophants follow through with what they are forecasting.Republicans are telling us they can’t win in November, but that they must and will win.The rest of us, the people who truly love this nation and the people who call it home or wish to, need to believe them.How are you specifically preparing for November? What organizations have you connected to? What work, voices, strategies are you finding helpful? 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

Transcribe →

Christian Nationalists Are Mocking Jesus, Making Atheists, And Creating An Exodus From The Church

2w ago00:04:50Tap to summarize

Growing up in the Church, I was taught that the worst thing one could be was a non-believer; that nothing was as tragic as a damned soul that condemned itself by rejecting God.The religion of my childhood drew a sharp, clear line between the saved and the damned. All that mattered was making sure someone found themselves on the better side of this line, and the Atheists, Humanists, and Democrats didn’t have a shot.In light of this supposed truth, the heart of the faith (I was told) was to live in a way that reflected the character and love of Jesus so vividly, so beautifully, that others were compelled to follow after him; that a Christian’s living testimony might be the catalyst for someone’s conversion. The Bible called it “making disciples,” and it was the heart of our tradition. As the venerable hymn declared, people were supposed to know we are Christians by our love.What a difference a couple of decades make.Just ask around, now.People outside the Church will tell you: love is no longer our calling card here in America. It is now condemnation, bigotry, judgment, and hypocrisy. In fact, the Christianity prevalent in so much of America right now isn’t just failing to draw others to Christ; it is actively repelling them from him. By operating in a way that is in full opposition to the life and ministry of Jesus, that counterfeit religion is understandably producing people fully opposed to the faith that bears his name.In record numbers, the Conservative American Church is consistently and surely making Atheists—or at the very least, it is making former Christians—people who no longer consider organized religion an option because the Jesus they recognize is absent. With its sky-is-falling hand-wringing, its political bed-making, and its constant venom toward diversity, it is giving people no alternative but to conclude that, based on the evidence of people professing to be Godly, God is of little use. This God may, in fact, be terribly toxic.And that’s the greatest irony of it all: that the very Evangelicals who’ve spent the last 60 years in this country demonizing those who reject Jesus are now the single most compelling reason for them to do so. They are giving people who suspect that all Christians are self-righteous, hateful hypocrites all the evidence they need. The Church is confirming the outside world’s most dire suspicions about itself.People rejecting White Evangelical Christian nationalism aren’t stupid. They realize that bigotry, even when it is wrapped in religion or justified by the Bible or spoken from a pulpit, is still bigotry. They can smell the putrid stench of phony religion from a mile away—and this MAGA version of the Church, frankly, reeks of it. People are steering clear in droves, choosing to find meaning and community and something that resembles love outside its gatherings.With every persecution of the LGBTQ community, with every unprovoked attack on immigrants, with every planet-wrecking decision, with every defense of a serial predator, with every regressive civil rights assault, with every attempt at theocracy by these professed believers, the flight from Christianity rightly continues. Meanwhile, the celebrity preachers and professional Christians publicly feign disbelief about the multitudes walking away from God, oblivious to the fact that they are the impetus for the exodus.And one day soon, these same Conservative religious folks will look around, lamenting the empty buildings and the irrelevance of the Church and a world that has no use for it, and they’ll wonder how this happened. They’ll blame a corrupt culture, or the woke liberal media, or a wholesale rejection of Biblical values, or the devil himself—but it will be none of those things.No, the reason the Church soon will be teetering on the verge of extinction and irrelevance will be because those entrusted to perpetuate the love of Jesus in the world lost the plot so horribly, and gave the world no other option but to look elsewhere for goodness, purpose, and truth.Soon, these Evangelicals will ask why so much of America has rejected Jesus, and we will remind them of these days and assure these people haven’t rejected Jesus at all.They just found no evidence of Jesus in them.In the comments, share the ways the hatred and hypocrisy of professed Christians have shaken your faith, driven you from the Church, or reinforced your opposition to organized religion.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

Transcribe →

America Isn't Politically Divided, It's Morally Fractured.

3w ago00:06:13Tap to summarize

This mess we’re in? It has nothing to do with politics.The current President is a court-adjudicated rapist who recently paid nearly 6 million dollars in damages for sexual assault and defamation. His name appears tens of thousands of times in the Epstein Files, and he has been credibly accused by dozens of women of sexual assault and harassment.He is a 34-count felon, indicted four separate times, with 88 charges, ranging from fraud to election interference.The only reason he is not in prison right now is that he has assumed the Presidency and marshalled the vast resources of the office to pervert our judicial and legal processes.Despite all of this, we still have family members, friends, former friends, and neighbors who would vote for him again right now.In what universe, in what iteration of this nation over the last 250 years, would a being this bereft of human decency have been tolerated in office, let alone passionately embraced?In what legitimate political movement would rape and treason not be dealbreakers?The answer is none.This isn’t a political fracture.I wish it were, though, as that would be relatively easy to navigate.We are not a nation, as we’ve often thought, simply positioned on either side of the aisle working to craft reasonable, good-faith compromise somewhere in the humane middle. Sadly, that ship left the port a long time ago. We aren’t even contending with a blind political tribalism that sees party over country, as the GOP of a decade ago has long since been rendered unrecognizable, abandoning its calls for a limited Government in exchange for unabashed authoritarianism.The prevailing narrative of the last decade is that America has been fractured by political ideologies, bunkered down in disagreement on what path will most serve the common good. This is a dangerous fiction we need to discard once and for all.The dividing lines in America have nothing to do with party affiliation anymore.Just open up your phone, eavesdrop at the checkout line, or talk to your neighbor, and you’ll see the lines along which we now find ourselves:One side celebrates innocent people being assassinated in front of their children, without due process.One side rejoices in strangers going without food or medical care or housing, without knowing a single one of their stories.One side applauds the bombing of foreign school children and the destruction of entire populations.One side blindly despises other people for their gender identity, despite it having no impact on their lives whatsoever.One side reduces an entire population to terrorists and drug dealers to justify their swift eradication.One side conflates whiteness with righteousness.One side defends the protection of pedophiles.One side steadfastly worships a felonious, treasonous rapist.And none of this is about politics; it’s about when faced with the suffering and injustice in our path, whether we will default to compassion or to cruelty.America’s present divide reveals the orientation of our hearts as we move through the world, the story we tell ourselves about other people, and what we want our lives to be marked by.Will we be bleeding-heart empaths who err on the side of love toward all our neighbors, or callous, f your feelings sociopaths who rejoice in the pain of others because we’ve dehumanized them to the point that their lives are worthless to us?Will we see empathy as our highest calling as human beings, or as a character flaw needing to be discarded?One of the greatest lies we’re asked to accept as gospel is that all opinions are valid, that every position is somehow equally worthy of merit and deserving of consideration. We’re often led to believe that in every situation where an impasse is reached, the most humane response is to “agree to disagree”.Of course, we can disagree on all sorts of issues without that disagreement being a relationship killer, but there are some things that, as people of faith, morality, and conscience, we simply will not allow—and these things transcend politics.The days ahead are going to require us to dig beneath the surface skirmishes and into the bedrock of what’s really happening here so that we don’t waste a second fighting fruitless battles that miss the point entirely.Refuse to be gaslit and guilted for allowing “politics” to get in the way of your relationships because that’s not what’s happening here. This is an effort by people around us to sidestep conversations that call them to accountability for their beliefs, choices, and alignments.It’s time we stopped pretending that our current national crisis is political, as that only serves to distract us from the far more worrisome truth that we need to reckon with:We’re not politically divided; we are morally fractured.We are not fighting legislative battles but a war to stay human or abandon our humanity altogether.No election result will change that.No power balance in Congress will remedy it.No dictator’s expulsion will heal the brokenness of the people around us.The question is, what will?Do you agree or disagree that the divides here are beyond politics? What do you see as the path forward for our nation and for each of us who call it home? 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

Transcribe →

To The People Who Raised Us To Be Decent Humans, And Then Became Trump Supporters.

3w ago00:04:35Tap to summarize

To Our Loved Ones,To Our Grandparents, Parents, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, and Older Siblings,We’re aware of what you think of us, either because you’ve told us during explosive, room-clearing conversations, over terse Cold War text exchanges, or in second-hand words passed through the people who now serve as the sole intermediaries between us.You believe that we’re lost.You believe we’ve changed.You think we’ve become radicalized.You think we’ve abandoned our faith, our families, and our nation, and you’re disappointed with us.And we need you to know that you’re largely responsible.Much of this is your fault.You say that we’ve changed, and we have: we’ve become the people you taught us to become when we were growing up.people who are deeply offended by inequity,people who look out for the underdog,people who grieve the suffering of others,people who find the beauty in the diversity around us,people who want others to have enough,people who are aware of how fortunate we are to live here,people trying to love our neighbors as ourselves,people who detest liars, predators, and con men,people who abhor bullies and bigots and braggarts,And the people that we’ve become, in large part because of the wisdom and compassion you poured into us as children, can’t fathom, as adults, how you’ve voted for Donald Trump three times and how you still support him now.It would have been unthinkable to those younger versions of us (and the younger version of you, for that matter), that you would have embraced this man: his cruelty, his depravity, his petty, vengeful, unloving heart.That’s not the way you raised us, and so whatever issues you have with us now, you need to understand:You made us this way.You have radicalized us into loving, compassionate human beings, and we can’t fathom how that can be a problem for you.We’re really proud of the people we are today, and grateful for the time you spent with us; the lessons you taught us about seeing all people as inherently valuable,about being a person of your word,about telling the truth even when it’s costly,about admitting your mistakes,about taking responsibility for your actions,about valuing people over money,about how we treat people, being what defines us,We were paying attention in history class.We were paying attention in Sunday School.We were paying attention around the dinner table.We were listening.We believed you.We did what you told us to do and became who you told us to become—and so now we care about the world, and we despise evil, and we live open-hearted and open-handed.And that’s why we’ve found ourselves standing here wondering how you’ve become people we no longer recognize, how you’ve embraced the embodiment of the ugliness you warned us to avoid, how you stopped taking your own advice somewhere along the way.You say that you only support the party or the policies and not the man—but we remember you telling us that we are known by the company we keep, that the ends don’t always justify the means, and that we can’t gain the world (or a Supreme Court seat) and lose our souls. Back then, you wouldn’t have tolerated those flimsy excuses for aligning with someone horrible, and we won’t tolerate them from you now.As children, we looked up to you, and that part of us will continue to love you dearly and be grateful to you.But as adults, we now see you eye to eye, and we grieve the loss of the people we imagined you were when you were teaching us how to be good human beings.By continuing to support this man, you have gone against everything you told us was important growing up: decency, honesty, fairness, maturity, and empathy.Either you were lying then, or you’re wrong now.Which one is it?The children we were and the adults we’ve become both want to know.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

Transcribe →

The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

All episodes

Brown-Skinned Screams and White-Skinned Silences

If MAGA Christians Really Love Jesus, This Sunday in Church, They Should Repent.

I'm Furious With People Who Aren't Furious Right Now.

You're Right To Grieve What's Happening to America.

This President Exposed My White Christian Friends, and I'm Grateful

I Don't Wish For His Death... Yet.

Republicans Are Telling Us They Can't Win in November, But Aren't Going To Lose. We Need To Believe Them.

Christian Nationalists Are Mocking Jesus, Making Atheists, And Creating An Exodus From The Church

America Isn't Politically Divided, It's Morally Fractured.

To The People Who Raised Us To Be Decent Humans, And Then Became Trump Supporters.