The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

The steady stream of vitriol that progressive Christians receive from MAGA Evangelicals is completely understandable.As they fire off threatening texts, furiously tap out expletive-laden emails, and break into violent, performative histrionics on social media, I genuinely feel for them. They often receive some really bad second-hand news from us that blows up the story they’ve spent a long time telling themselves and depend on to validate and to justify them.They’re coming face-to-face with the sobering reality that they are antithetical to Jesus.Worse than that, they aren’t hearing that news from us; they’re hearing it from Jesus.Few things confound and infuriate Conservative Christians quite like the simple, clear, unadorned words of Jesus as documented in the Bible that they so loudly and frequently claim to love, believe in, and live by. It’s almost miraculous.Over and over, Jesus confronts them:Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Matthew 5:9When you’re part of an antagonistic, aggressive movement built almost exclusively on a self-righteous battle posture: a theology and politics that require an enemy to be driven out, an adversary to expel, an encroaching danger to destroy, a culture war foe to be defeated, the idea of being a peacemaker really pisses you off. MAGAs don’t like peace. They refuse to coexist with it. They cannot abide it. Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. Matthew 25:45The poor, the outcast, the hurting, the hungry, the homeless, the lonely. Jesus said he literally inhabits the most vulnerable among us, and that the way we treat them is the way we treat Jesus himself. That’s a really disturbing reality, when you spend so much of your time denying people healthcare and cutting social programs and assaulting voting rights and legislatively attacking people for their sexuality or their nation of origin or their pigmentation. The news that, according to Jesus, you devote a great deal of your life to treating him like garbage, tends not to be received too well.For God so loved the world... John 3:16The world. God loves the world. That includes the planet, the climate around it, the resources within it, the disparate humanity, and expansive life upon it. No America First. No “Go back where you came from” nationalistic bluster. No, “Don’t Tread on Me” middle-finger defiance. If you so love the world as God does, you fight for diversity, you welcome immigrants and foreigners, you demand environmental responsibility, you want more people to have voices, not fewer. When America becomes your world, you’re opposing God.“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Matthew 26:52That’s the part of the oft-quoted story that gun-loving Christians never want to read: the part where Jesus reprimands his disciple who uses a weapon to defend him, reminding him and those listening, that his people will not be a people of retributive violence, that they will be those who shun force and turn the other cheek and resist harming others and de-escalate conflict. That is a really hard truth for the NRA, God and Guns, Come and Take It crowd, who really want Jesus to be cool with their instigating, posturing bloodlust—and who have to hear straight from Jesus that he isn’t.‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:37-39Loving your neighbor. Jesus says unequivocally that this is the priority and the point, and the way we show our love for God: the way we treat other human beings. When Conservative Christians realize that this includes their Muslim neighbor, their transgender neighbor, their Jewish neighbor, their Liberal neighbor, their uninsured neighbor, their undocumented neighbor, their black neighbor, they usually don’t react very well. When you aren’t able or willing to practically or tangibly extend love to such a vast portion of your neighbors in any meaningful way, that is a difficult theological pill to swallow.Honestly, I feel sorry for people who want to be both Christian and MAGA, who think they can be devoted to Jesus and to Donald Trump simultaneously, who labor under the false assumption that their bastardized, territorial, self-centered white nationalist GOP version of Christianity is remotely of God.And I know that the actual words of Jesus are the most triggering of any they could be faced with, and so the venom these generate isn’t surprising, and neither is their scalding rage toward those of us who regularly share those words with them.MAGA friends, I’m not saying this white Republican theocracy built on power, exclusion, and subjugation that you’re tethered to is anti-Jesus.Jesus is saying that.I know you really want to shoot the messenger.That’s been going on for two thousand years.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 Friend,There’s a good chance you won’t see this, as at some point over the past year or so you either unfriended, unfollowed, or physically disconnected from me, or I from you. There may have been a decisive severing or a slow drifting apart, but the resulting space between us is the same. Still, I’m hopeful that somehow these words will reach you, because there are some things that you need to know; things that I need to say, if for nothing other than my own sanity.The first thing I want you to know is that I don’t celebrate this separation. The distance has come with a great deal of grieving. It’s come with heartbreak at the realization of the moral impasse we reached and the resulting fractures. This is not something I take lightly or rejoice at all in; in fact, it is a profound loss and defeat, and certainly not what I’d have planned or preferred.Having said that, I also want you to know that I can’t fully regret the present distance between us either, because in many ways, it is simply what has to be. There are truths we have learned about each other in recent months that are too elemental to dismiss or overcome right now; core values that feel incompatible, and as much as I regret the volume that precipitated the fractures between us, I’d regret my silence even more.You see, it has been in the finding and raising of my voice about the things that matter the most to me that these fault lines between us formed, and for that reason, I’m grateful. As I stepped more fully into the most authentic version of myself, there were compromises I used to make that I am no longer willing to, and unfortunately, we are the collateral damage of that. I suppose I stopped apologizing to anyone for my truth, including you.That isn’t to say that I don’t hope for some kind of restoration between us, or the rebuilding of some of what’s been broken, I truly do. Whether the distance between us is geographic or emotional, I’d like to believe it can be bridged one day. But there are non-negotiables that I must insist on for those who have relational proximity to me:A working belief in the inherent value of all human beings.Agreement on the common dignity everyone deserves to be treated with, regardless of their religion, pigmentation, orientation, or nation of origin.A baseline of empathy for other people’s pain.A commitment to facts that transcends ideology and emotion.These are hills worth dying on for me, even if our relationship is one of the casualties. There is always a price to pay for speaking and a price for remaining silent, and I have chosen the former because that is how deeply these convictions run.I know you may believe this disconnection is about politics or about a person, but I want you to know that this simply isn’t true. It’s nothing that small or inconsequential, or this space between us wouldn’t be necessary. This is about fundamental differences in the ways in which we view the world and believe other people should be treated. It’s not political stuff, it’s human being stuff, which is why finding compromise and seeing a way forward is so difficult.There may be a day somewhere in the future when we will be able to navigate some of the minefields separating us, and that would be a joy. But if not, it will be because I will not allow the work of equality, diversity, and justice to be derailed, simply to broker an uneasy peace that allows me a small bit of comfort. That would be a disservice to so many who have been made profoundly uncomfortable by the events of the past year.So, friend, while I may miss you, respect you, and even love you—I may have to be okay doing it from a distance for now.Farewell, for now.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

On Monday night, 24-year-old Marshawn Kneeland ran a blocked punt into the end zone, scoring a touchdown for his Dallas Cowboys, amid the deafening roar of 80,000 home crowd fans and before the eyes of millions of people watching around the country.On Thursday morning, he was gone by his own hands.He was a young man living his childhood dream, someone at the pinnacle of his profession, less than two years removed from signing a contract of nearly seven million dollars for the most popular franchise in the NFL. He had the respect of teammates and coaches, the adoration of a rapid fan base, and the love of his family, girlfriend, and friends.As the time-worn saying goes, Marshawn Kneeland had everything to live for.But his death reminds us that for so many who wage a relentless battle with mental illness and depression, everything sometimes isn’t enough. For some of us pressed up against the thick darkness in our own heads, there is no amount of money in the bank, no level of career success, no depth of love around us that can let enough light in.As someone who has dealt with his own lingering sadness for the past four decades, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit near the place where the desire to keep going had gone; days when I had exhausted the options; when I’d read all the books, taken all the meds, done all the therapy, touched all the grass, prayed all the prayers, sat through all the pep talks—and was still staring into the abyss.And in every one of those lightless moments, it didn’t matter that all the objective evidence of my life testified that I should be happy, that I was fortunate, that I had so much to be grateful for, so much to want to live for—none of that registered in the moment, none of that tipped the scales toward hope. The dire story I told myself didn’t require data. It never does.That’s what people don’t understand about those of us who live with the inner monsters: intellectually, we realize that this makes no sense, which is often part of the problem. We have chronic pain with no discernible source, and so we hurt and we feel stupid for hurting. Telling us how much we have to live for and how good our lives are sometimes makes us feel worse.For many people unencumbered by mental illness, life can be a daily battle to stay positive.For people with severe depression, life can be a daily battle simply to stay. Having walked with so many survivors of a loved one’s suicide, I know that right now Marshawn’s teammates, family members, friends, and girlfriend are likely rewinding through their stories with him, wondering where and how they could have done something differently. They’re likely beating themselves up trying to figure out how they could have listened more carefully, offered better words, somehow found a way to reach into his heart and love him alive a little longer.But I hope they’re not doing that. I hope they know that mental illness doesn’t play fair. It doesn’t respect status or treasure accolades, and sadly, it is not healed by love, no matter how true and clear and relentless that love is.For those walking alongside someone who fights the battle in their own heads, yes, do all you can to speak kindness and share resources and secure treatments. Fight like hell for them, try to help them see the beauty and goodness you see in them, and never give up trying to find a way to send light into the dark places.But realize that no one can go all the way into the sadness with us.Marshawn Kneeland had everything to live for. Most of the people who leave this life prematurely have everything to live for, too.But with mental illness, sometimes everything just isn’t enough.(If you are struggling to stay, please reach out to someone. You are worth fighting for.)The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

Dear Zohran Mamdani and Muslims in America,Witnessing the simply staggering hatred directed at you during the New York City Mayoral campaign, and one hundredfold now in the wake of the Mayor-Elect’s victory, as an American Christian, I wanted to apologize.I’m sorry that the loudest voices representing my faith tradition right now seem to be the most hateful ones, the ones least like Jesus.I’m sorry that these voices are making you feel unwelcome and unloved in this country, that they are magnifying fear, that they are causing you to experience unmerited discrimination and undeserved animosity in the places you worship and raise your families and make your livings.I’m sorry that you are being unfairly penalized and unceasingly demonized for a handful of twisted, violent people who share little more than simply the name of your faith. (I understand a small fraction of what that is like.)I need you to know that those angry bullies spreading ignorance and fear and bigotry and claiming to speak for Christians do not represent me, no matter how high a platform they have or how recognizable their names are or how much money they have.They certainly don’t represent Jesus, and they don’t represent most of the Christians I know, either. You see, we fully realize that these professed religious people are extremists as dangerous as any they point to. They are terrorists, too, only their weapons are pulpits and podcasts and Senate seats and presidential power. It’s all the same vile stuff in a different package, and it is all the enemy of Life.There is little difference between them and those they so vehemently condemn, and we know this. We recognize contempt and malice and bitterness, even when it is camouflaged in faith and wrapped in religion, and we are having none of it, either in our name or in Jesus’.We understand well that hatred is not the sole property of any faith tradition, and we reject the broad and damaging brush they paint you with because you deserve to be fully seen and fully heard, and fully known. We all do.We know that so many of you, like so many of us, choose goodness and default to gentleness. We know that you, too, believe in the inherent value of all people and genuinely seek peace with those who live alongside you. We believe that you agree with us that love and compassion and kindness and mercy are universal values, and that in so many fundamental ways we are the same.We are together in this, living shoulder to shoulder in the kindhearted middle of true Humanity, stuck wedged between warring factions who don’t realize they are so very much alike. We are all their collateral damage.I apologize for those who are misrepresenting our Christian faith tradition and the way they have caused you such pain. I am sorry that they are perpetuating violence with every comment, every sermon, every stump speech, every social media post—and that they show little remorse and great cruelty as they do so.But more than that, I am sorry that so many of us have been so silent in the face of it all. Most people don’t have the power or the reach or the influence that they have, but that can no longer be an excuse. We will work to do better than we have by finding the moral courage to stand against Christians who traffic in hatred.Right now, please accept these words as a beginning; as confirmation that we are fully disgusted with our misguided brothers and sisters, that we condemn their continuing, narrow-minded, unprovoked attacks on you and your faith tradition, and that we are fully committed to finding a better response to violence than more violence.We will not meet fear with fear.We will not respond to bigotry with more of the same.We will not be drafted into their manufactured holy war.So until we can wrestle the microphone from those warmongers in the Church who have commandeered it, and until we can make sure that the voice of Jesus is the one most loudly representing us, please know that we are sorry.We are called by our tradition to be forgivers, to be cheek turners, to be healers, to be peacemakers.Many of us remember this.Many of us desire this.May this peace be in us.And may this peace be with you.P.S. And as someone on the Left, I’d also like to apologize for the vicious attacks that have come from supposed progressives. It’s equally sickening.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

Did you feel that, America?The steady, throbbing kick-drum rhythm thundering throughout this land on election night?Boom boom…boom boom… boom boom…boom boom…You could feel it in Michigan…and in Detroit,and New York,and California,and Virginia.and New Jersey.Boom boom…boom boom… boom boom…boom boom…In historic gubernatorial races, in flipped Congressional seats, and in shifted city councils…Boom boom…boom boom… boom boom…boom boom…It coursed through Mikie Sherrill,and Zohran Mamdani,and Mary Sheffield,and Ghazala Hashmi,and Abigail Spanberger.Boom boom…boom boom… boom boom…boom boom…This incessant pounding reverberated throughout this beautiful though beleaguered land: It was the pulse of Democracy returning.You see, this wasn’t just an election; it was proof of life.This was irrefutable evidence that the beautiful collective heart of our nation is still functioning.It was much-needed confirmation that our two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Republic, though terribly wounded, is not dead.And it couldn’t have come at a better time.We who have labored for the last excruciating, heartbreaking, infuriating months in the cause of stewarding America’s promise have had good reason to believe her a lost cause.We’ve had to witness unthinkable human rights rollbacks, staggering Constitutional disregard, and unfettered brutality at the hands of our leaders.We’ve watched human beings ripped from carpool lines and thrown into stifling human kennels. We’ve seen history bulldozed for a billionaire’s ballroom as he intentionally starves tens of millions of us. We’ve endured the rising vitriol of bullies and bigots who feel emboldened by having a kindred spirit in the White House.And this has left us all dangerously low on resolve, sitting somber vigil over something beloved that was surely in its last days.Though we’ve continued to do our best to go about the work of living, many of us have silently or quite vocally declared our cause as fruitless.And now, we know better. This election has offered a strong dissenting opinion to the narrative in our heads that we are beyond saving, that hope is lost, that expiration is imminent.We aren’t dead yet.And friends, now that you and I have conclusive evidence that we’re still alive, it’s time to get up and live; to breathe deeply from our second winds, to newly clarify what matters to us, to pull from the deepest reservoirs of our resources, and to make certain that this is not merely a short reprieve from the grave.This day cannot be a landing pad; it must be a launching pad.Those with contempt for life here, those who’ve been working tirelessly to eradicate diversity, will react more violently than ever to the news of Democracy’s survival, and we must be there to defend it at any cost.The coming days will surely be difficult, but at least we’re here for them.So, as you prepare to walk into this new dawn, press your fingers gently into the side of your neck and feel that:Boom boom…boom boom… boom boom…boom boom…It’s good to be alive. 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 Phobic Christians,I’m not sure how we got here.I don’t know how you ended up deciding that anyone else’s body, their gender identity, or their sexual orientation was any of your business.I don’t know who told you that you had any right to tell another human being who they could be attracted to or find contentment with, or what pronouns they should use for themselves, or how they should dress, or who they could marry, or what restroom they had to use, or if they deserved to adopt children or not.It certainly wasn’t Jesus.He didn’t give you the authority to judge a queer person’s moral worth, or permission to trespass into their bedrooms, or authorization to police their physicality.On matters of sexuality, Jesus was largely silent, and so how you found yourself being so loud about it is probably something you should pray on. That may be a you problem.What I do know about Jesus is that he told you to love people as yourself, with that kind of regard and respect and gentleness.I know he told you not to cast stones or insults or condemnation at anyone until you’re fully sinless yourself.And I also know that he never once criticized or condemned anyone for their identity or orientation—and he never said you should or could.In fact, in his most popular sermon, Jesus was quoted as saying:“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s or sister’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?How can you say to your brother or sister, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s or sister’s eye.”Dear Christian friend, what Jesus is saying to his followers (including you), is that you could spend every waking moment you have left here in this life, expend every ounce of energy, use up every last breath of your life, just working on the putrid mess of your own house—and still be way behind.That means that if you have sermons to preach or fingers to point or damnation to dispense or sin to call out, you should do it in the mirror or shut your mouth.Because even if the Bible did say that being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender was a sin (which it flatly doesn’t), that would still be between an LGBTQ person and God—not you. You don’t get to meddle with people’s bedrooms and bathrooms and body parts. That’s way above your pay grade and outside your jurisdiction, and there’s simply no Biblical way around it.Jesus commanded you to love people as you desire to be loved.As you desire to be loved.I imagine you desire to be loved by being seen as a complex human being with dignity and worth.I imagine you desire to be loved by being allowed to be the most qualified person to tell your story and share what it’s like to be inside your skin.I imagine you desire to be loved by having your journey respected as yours alone.I imagine you desire to be loved by being able to choose the person you spend your life loving, and how you show affection and find companionship.I imagine you desire to be loved by being allowed to live.In light of this, you need to leave queer people alone.They are trying to live, work, raise families, worship, and love in peace, and for some reason, you have decided that you get to prevent them from that.They, like you, are doing their best to make their way through this painful, difficult, exhausting life, and you are making it all much more painful, difficult, and exhausting.You are wasting your fleeting daylight here on wars Jesus didn’t ask you to wage, you’re squandering relationships you could be nurturing, and you’re irreparably injuring people made in the image of God.This is reckless, it’s irresponsible, and yes, it’s sinful.You need to start emulating Jesus, start treating people as you’d like to be treated, and stop being horrible in the name of God.As a person who loves LGBTQ people dearly, and as a longtime caregiver who’s heard them tell horror stories of your everyday cruelty, and as a veteran pastor who’s had a front row seat to the unnecessary pain you’re causing and the wedge you’re driving between them and God—I can only plead with you:If you’re really trying to be faithful and obedient to Jesus, then love LGBTQ people… or leave them the hell alone.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 may not know you, but I think I know something about you.I know you’ve felt something break 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.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 how much worse it might get.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.And 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 rarer and more valuable than ever.It’s why you need to embrace this holy unrest in the center of your belly, because it is the antidote to this 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 get used to being sick. 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 this 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 alone, and 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 not harming, burdened to bring something decent where it is missing.And this sprawling, disparate assembly sees what you see, and they know what you know: this brutality is not normal, even if it is prevalent.And that’s why we need to keep resisting it.We need to push back against the madness that tries to convince us that it’s we who have gone mad.We need to press on because in days when evil is normalized, the perseverance of goodness matters most.In times when truth and news are pliable, courageous truth-tellers are worth more than gold.Your heart is the greatest weapon in the war for the soul of the place you call home.Yes, friend, inhumanity is commonplace at this moment, so be ruthless in staying human.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

Well, we’re in the “Jesus didn’t say we should feed people” portion of the fall of American Evangelicalism. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, as the Conservative Church has had one foot in Hell and one on a banana peel since it rubber-stamped a sexual predator to our highest office a decade ago. Still, it’s heartbreaking watching millions of supposed Christians reach a new collective moral bottom and freshly grieving the collateral damage to humanity it is causing.In the face of 41 million people already living with food scarcity being pushed further toward the precipice edge by the loss of SNAP, my social media feed and inbox are both crammed with an unsettling jumble of performative sermonizing, snarling outrage, and insult-to-injury mockery from people who want to declare themselves Jesus followers, while fiercely, unrelentingly opposing the entirety of his life and work.“No", they will say with arrogant condescension, “you’re taking Jesus out of context,” when the context is Jesus feeding people and telling his followers to do the same. They will assassinate the character of millions of supposedly lazy strangers whom they claim are “abusing the system.” They’ll engage in all manner of theological gymnastics, wildly contorting lines of Scripture to abdicate responsibility for the suffering around them. They will do whatever they can to avoid loving their neighbor. It’s time we all called b******t on the empty religion of these gaslighting, self-appointed saints and refused to allow them to practice such prolific hypocrisy unopposed.In their defense of discarding Government-subsidized care programs, many of these closed-fisted blessing hoarders argue the Church, not the Government, should care for people, but this is all deflection; a clever bit of goalpost moving by people who really just don’t want to be decent. Ironically, these are the same people relentlessly asserting that America is a “Christian Nation.” (Funny how that only seems to be true when it results in people losing body autonomy, marriage equality, and refuge from tyranny, but I digress.)The problem is that they (the very people who voted in the politicians currently dismantling healthcare, de-funding public schools, and eliminating meal programs) are the same people filling the estimated 350,000 Evangelical churches in this country (which apparently were already supposed to be doing this caring for humanity, but are not.)The truth is, if these same people who call the Evangelical Church home had been following Jesus’ example all along, we wouldn’t be having these conversations. If these professed men and women of God were truly burdened to love their brothers and sisters as they would Jesus, the hunger of tens of millions here would be a non-issue.But we do have this epidemic of poverty and pain and hunger, and the disheartening truth is that these Christians are the very people always loudly telling the least to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” neglecting the fact that they have no boots to begin with. These people don’t see the ironic tension of a supposedly “Christian nation” that can’t or won’t care for its most vulnerable, brimming with followers of Jesus in leadership who somehow can rationalize that not feeding people is the compassionate response. The unavoidable truth is that Conservative Evangelicals don’t want their Government or the Church to lift people who are in need. They’d prefer to live with the fictional narrative that poor people are poor because they don’t want to work, or that those living with food scarcity are doing so because of some moral failing or bad decision. This story allows them to keep the stuff they have, to ignore the call to love their neighbor as themselves, and to feel morally superior in the process.Look, MAGA religious people can post all the Scriptures they want, they can plaster their feeds with Charlie Kirk memes, and they can proselytize till the cows come home or until Jesus comes back. Still, they can’t escape the reality that the elemental, compassionate heart of Christ’s work was the tangible love of the people in his path. Anything that works to disobey that is straight-up heresy and spiritual rebellion.Conservatives are welcome to slander strangers and protest the sharing of resources and celebrate the suffering around them and assert their right not to give a damn about anyone but themselves—but we can’t allow them to pass the buck to God while they do.Christians who refuse to feed people aren’t Christians. That’s the Gospel truth.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

A previously undiscovered version of the Christian scriptures was recently unearthed during renovations of a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.This new ‘MAGA Translation’ contains the ‘Gospel According to Don,’ ‘Book of 2 Republicans, and of course, ‘Insurrections.’The text’s genesis is said to be around the time of the 2016 Presidential Campaign, just after Donald Trump secured the GOP nomination. They now comprise the sacred text of millions of white Evangelicals, tired of the restrictive demands of a compassionate, generous, loving Savior and looking for a Jesus-free Christianity.Below are excerpts from this Trump-autographed, MAGA, Proud to Be an American, “new-and-improved” testament, which is available on the White House website, as well as in NRA meetings, Southern Baptist churches, straight pride parades, and your local homophobic bakery:2 Republicans, Chapter 10, verse 2:“Alt-Right Jesus stood in a Chick-fil-A dining room and said: ‘The only devil is compassion. Caring for people who are suffering or hungry or hurting or sick or alone or poor is a sign of weakness. To hell with the least of these. Tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That they have no boots is not your concern.’ “2 Republicans, Chapter 1, verse 1:In the Beginning, Don created fake news. On the first day, he manufactured emergencies, demonized Muslims, denied pandemics, attacked the Free Press, praised Putin, ranted about Obama, spewed racist epithets, and screamed at windmills. The other six days, he played golf and rage-posted abject nonsense from the toilet, in incoherent missives littered with factual errors, grammatical abominations, and spelling atrocities.Insurrections, Chapter 1, Verses 11-13:“White Jesus declared, ‘MAGA, you will call yourself ‘pro-life.’ In doing so, you will be able to ignore wide-scale death to migrants, Muslims, people of color, LGBTQ people, the poor and sick, mass shooting victims, entire foreign nations, sentient beings, and the planet itself. Life beyond embryos that you force women to carry to term is not actually life.”2 Republicans, Chapter 5, verse 6:“Faith is the evidence of things unseen… like Donald Trump’s Christianity. My wonderfully terrified Fox News flock, despite him never uttering a word or doing a thing resembling the compassionate and loving Jesus of Nazareth, your simple and steadfast declaration of his faith in Christ will be enough to convince easily suggestible believers (of which there are many, thank the GOP God). Repeat the lie until it becomes the truth.”Insurrections, Chapter 7, verse 10:“In Gun You Trust: God is small and impotent and cannot protect you. You need to be packin’ heat at the grocery store, the little league game, and at church services because the almighty and omnipotent maker of all things might need backup from a perpetually-petrified “good guy with a gun, heavily armed with supremacist delusions and a jittery disposition.The Gospel According to Don, Chapter 9, verse 3:“And white Jesus said, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself—providing, of course, your neighbor is white, was born in America, and votes Republican. Otherwise, screw your neighbor, pad your 401K, get yours, and make America great. Thus sayeth the straight, white, Republican LORD.”2 Republicans, Chapter 9, verse 10:“And MAGA Jesus said, ‘Men, if your right eye causes you to stumble—it’s the woman’s fault. Reprimand her for her clothing choices and for the curves of her body, and for her desire to walk around wearing what feels comfortable to her. Never allow your lack of decency, self-control, or toxic misogyny to cost you an ogling eye, when you can simply blame the victim. As a matter of fact, just legislate away their autonomy altogether.’ “Ivermectin, Chapter 13, verse 1:“And the straight, white republican LORD said, ‘I am the LORD your God. You shall have no other Gods before me—well, other than America, the flag, the Anthem, guns, Trump, Supreme Court Seats, the Stock Market, Nazis, Proud Boys, and the GOP... but no other Gods, OK?”The Gospel According to Don, Chapter 14: verses 1-10:‘And well after midnight, the sweaty, sociopathic prophet of bullies, predators, and bigots rage-posted:Hear the MAGA Commandments: You shall declare undocumented human beings rapists and drug dealers. You shall declare Muslim politicians terrorist sympathizers.You shall engage in whataboutism and misdirection, never claiming accountability for lawlessness and immorality. You shall call real news fake, and Fox News real.You shall ignore every white Conservative male mass shooter (which is almost all of them). You shall not see women as equals—even if you are a woman. You shall dehumanize immigrants coming from the South (not the good European or Asian kind). You shall ignore Science and instead use Donald Trump’s all-caps social media rants to guide your medical opinions. You shall bow down, not to a golden calf but to an orange jackass.Insurrections, Chapter 23, verse 2:“For Caucasian God did not so love the world, He so loved America—so much so, that he sent White Jesus to build walls, take away health insurance, ignore climate change, protect sexual predators, and make the one percent richer.In His name… Amen——or rather, “Ah, White Men.”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

Miserable.Every time I see them, this is the word that prevails.Whenever I encounter a supporter of Donald Trump on social media now, or scan the crowds at his propaganda rallies, or see his surrogates bloviating on talk shows or pounding upon pulpits, I am left with the same conclusion: they are a people bereft of joy.There is so little happiness, so little benevolence, so little kindness.The emotional deficit is continually on display:In their contorted, sneering countenance; in their so readily brandished middle finger; in their steady spit shower of verbal filth. With each angry gesture and with every slandering epithet, they reveal in high-definition detail what it looks like when someone loses the light inside them.War does this to the human heart. These people are at war with the world.They’re against the gays.They’re against immigrants.They’re against Muslims.They’re against foreigners.They’re against scientists.They’re against atheists.They’re against Liberals.They’re against the Democrats.They’re against the Media.They’re against the poor and hungry.They’re against athletes and entertainers.The world in their heads is composed almost entirely of enemies and adversaries—and as a result, they are perpetually disgusted. If I had that many threats to fight, I’d be unendingly pissed off too. I’d probably pity these people a lot more if I didn’t have to endure them.It’s wildly ironic that MAGAs now have control of the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, and yet they still manage to feel themselves oppressed, still picture the world as unfair, still rage against a machine they’ve made and are part of. So many of them claim faith in Jesus, and yet live in almost polar opposition to his example.The only time they do show anything resembling joy is to reflect the arrogant, self-satisfied sneer of their leader; almost always in the face of someone else’s heartache or misfortune, almost always when someone else loses something. The only happiness they seem capable of manufacturing is in response to pain.I try to imagine what it feels like to be so afflicted with contempt for the planet: to be so viscerally sickened by the breadth of diversity around me, to be relentlessly in a fear-birthed battle posture—but I can’t, thank God. If you can’t imagine it either, consider yourself fortunate.This has become the difference now, the dividing line in this version of America. It is between joyful people and miserable people; those who live open-handed toward the world and those whose fists are balled tightly; people who are driven by compassion and those fueled by anger; people who want a bigger table—and those who feel it belongs solely to them.As disheartening as it is to witness people this internally toxic, it’s a cautionary reminder of who we do not want to become, of what we can’t let the fight do to us.We have to work to keep goodness inside us, despite the outside badness; to never be defined by how many things we hate.May we who oppose this national malignancy never become so devoid of lightness that we resemble those who celebrate it.May we never applaud someone’s suffering, never weaponize our religion to harm, never grow comfortable with hearts that are only capable of anger.May we never lose our laughter, our softness, our lightness in this life.May we never become as miserable as those who support this President.That is when we know we’ve really lost.Trump supporters breed misery. Let’s not give them company.How are you keeping yourself from allowing anger and vitriol to define or overtake you? 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

A few days ago, I ran into a friend from my former church at the grocery store. We were quickly catching up on the last eighteen months of one another’s lives while the cashier logged and bagged her purchases.The conversation eventually drifted to the state of the world, and my friend casually interrupted with a revelation that nearly knocked me into the colorful tower of impulse items behind me.”Yeah, I’m barely on social media anymore, and I can’t stand the news.” She said, matter-of-factly. “I’m just trying to stay out of politics altogether.”I did my best to retain a pleasant poker face, but a volcano of outrage was erupting within my stomach just a few inches away. I outwardly held it together just long enough to send her off toward the parking lot with a hug and a smile—but I felt deflated.I know many people like my friend. They’re otherwise decent, responsible, good-hearted human beings who don’t realize how insulated they are from the kind of fear and threat that people of color, the queer community, Latinos, or Muslims experience as a working reality. This convenient ignorance makes inaction tempting, especially when moving invites such conflict and grief. That they feel a choice in these moments is even possible, shows the subtle and insidious ways privilege works. It allows people to have urgency as an option, where for others it is a necessity. Some people are fighting for their very lives, and the idea that they could or would opt out isn’t a consideration. It shouldn’t be an option for any of us if we claim to treasure humanity and democracy.Friends, neutrality and silence are literally deadly right now.We are in a time of unprecedented betrayal of the freedoms and systems we all hold dear; a wholesale soul-selling of Republican politicians and Conservative Christian leaders; a historic power grab the likes of which we’ve never seen in this country. This President (empowered by a morally neutered GOP and a fully politicized Evangelical Church) is doing irreparable and continual harm to our rule of law, our standards of decency, our environment, our personal liberties, our elections, our people, and our standing in the world.These days, being apolitical is being complicit in these atrocities.Because of the volume and the relentlessness of the danger, there must be a similarly loud and steadfast response.Because each morning a different attack comes: on migrants or women or meal vouchers or national parks or transgender soldiers or Jewish Americans or the disabled or journalists or shooting victims—then each morning there must be those of us who unequivocally oppose it all.This Administration is testing how much inhumanity the people will tolerate, and saying nothing only emboldens them to seek a deeper moral bottom.As long as this man and his cadre of sycophants continue to shun their responsibility, hoard wealth, preach fear, prey upon the vulnerable, serve no one but themselves, and weaponize religion, the voices of dissent must be unrelenting and explicit.There are days when I feel my own white comfort creeping in; when I find myself overwhelmed or disheartened by the steady stream of horrible news parading in front of me, when the collateral damage of the fight feels too great, and I’d rather turn it all off. It’s a reflex action that I’d have justified a couple of years ago, but now I know better. Now I know that this is my privilege on full display, providing a buffer that were I to indulge it, could keep me cloistered away in a cozy little cocoon where activism is an elective endeavor, saved for those moments when I’m okay being inconvenienced with it.Now I fight that instinct when it comes, because I know that many people don’t get to choose neutrality in matters of justice. They don’t get to decide to ignore the events of the day or sidestep the difficult conversations or avoid walking into the streets and braving taunts and threats. Some people do this as a matter of daily survival, and if I am to even come close to living in any kind of solidarity with them, I need to be as internally burdened as they are. I have to be willing to feel even some momentary, infinitesimal measure of the urgency they live every second with.And look, I get it: it’s terrifying to admit what’s happening right now. No one wants to believe their nation is falling into authoritarianism, that the norms they relied on in the past are no longer givens, that the can’t-happen-heres are actually happening here. It’s sickening to fully fix your gaze on the terror unfolding by the hour. But the slide into the abyss will not be slowed or stopped by wishing it away, hiding from the horrors, or clinging to the dead myth of American exceptionalism.There is no protection in a fascist regime: not silence or wealth or apathy or position. Eventually, they’ll come for all of us. We are tethered together.Remaining quiet in turbulent times is a luxury that privilege and ignorance afford. That passivity is born out of the illusion of safety. (Trust me, none of us is safe.)Staying out of politics is an impossibility. The politicians are making sure of that.The war is on our doorsteps despite how much we’d like to avoid it.And the only way we’re gonna survive and save this place is by not looking away, by deciding what matters to us, and then heading straight into the fray.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

What a difference a couple of millennia make.There’s a story about Jesus that all four New Testament Gospel writers record in their accounts of his life.He’s been teaching a disparate gathering of humanity spread out in front of him. The location is remote, the hour is late, and the people are hungry.When his students suggest that he send the people away so that they can eat something, the writer Matthew records Jesus as saying: “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”The disciples report back the relatively meager collection of bread and fish that they’re able to cobble together, and the futility of the task before them. All the Gospel writers describe Jesus multiplying the resources exponentially and feeding thousands.MAGA Republican Christians would have hated this.In fact, they’d have despised nearly everything attributed to him in the Gospels.In the ninth chapter of his biography, Matthew writes that “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Trump Evangelicals mock the very empathy the namesake of their faith preached and practiced, and they’d have ridiculed him relentlessly.Four times in the Bible, the truth is laid out:Jesus feeds the multitudes in his path. That’s what he does. And as striking as that is, equally revelatory is what he doesn’t do. There’s no altar call, no spiritual gifts assessment, no moral screening, no litmus test to verify everyone’s theology, and no process to identify those worthy enough to earn this free meal.Their hunger and Jesus’ compassion make them worthy.And in the two thousand years since then, a good portion of his American followers haven’t just lost the plot, they’ve purposefully flushed it down the toilet.Donald Trump has supplanted Jesus in the hearts of MAGA Christians, and they now practice a cruel, punitive, exclusionary sickness wrapped in religion but devoid of love for its neighbor.Watching self-identified Christian politicians gleefully hold the SNAP program hostage while their media mouthpieces, social media surrogates, and church-going rank-and-file assassinate the collective character of the 41 million people who receive those benefits nationwide, I can’t help but believe that Jesus would be sickened by them.I imagine them violently disrupting the crowd gathered, seizing the bread and the fish, castigating the hungry throng for their laziness, expelling Jesus, and then publicly congratulating themselves for their righteousness. The sick irony here is that the people continually claiming America is a Christian nation don’t want anything to do with Christ.These performative charlatans want to establish a theocracy of compulsion that legislates morality, name-drops God, but has open contempt for the vulnerable human beings Jesus cared for—and for Jesus himself.And the faithful people who call this place home and are genuinely seeking to emulate the Jesus of the New Testament need to be clear in condemning this heresy MAGA Republicans are preaching; this hateful, ugly disdain for those in need that offers no good news for the hungry or the poor or the sick or the vulnerable.The open-hearted, open-handed Christians here cannot stand by while so many people made in the image of God are slandered and starved by bloated hypocrites wielding privilege and power—because those were exactly the tables Jesus overturned when his feet first touched the planet, and they’re the ones he would be upending right now.Over and over, Jesus made it clear: food is not something people need to prove themselves worthy of. This is not about humanity deserving to be fed but about the inhumanity of those withholding the meal.No one went hungry in the presence of Jesus, and no one should live with food scarcity in a land filled with supposed Christians.SNAP is an expression of compassion for the multitudes here, for the harassed and helpless crowds whose families call this place home.And that’s exactly why Conservative Evangelicals want to destroy 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

Do you hear that?These Republicans are telling you something right now, America.If you listen carefully, the message they’re sending is unmistakable.With every panicked, quivering, desperate move, they are speaking with absolute clarity.They are confirming how frightened they are right now.There is no other logical conclusion to be reached.There is only one reason they continually gerrymander themselves a more favorable playing field.It’s the same reason they eliminate voting sites.The same reason they condemn voting by mail, after having repeatedly voted by mail.The same reason they oppose paper ballots and absentee votes.The same reason they remove active voters from the rolls.The same reason they continue to attempt sleight-of-hand legislation to sneak in more restrictive voter ID laws:The reason they do all of these things is that they are mortally terrified of American voters.We are their greatest threat.We are their only outstanding obstacle to unabated rule.We are the single remaining line of defense Democracy has left here.We, the People, are the last-gasp breath of a dying Republic being slowly suffocated beneath the weight of institutionalized racism and disdain for the poor and contempt for diversity.These leaders do not want Americans to speak.They know that if the voices of the people are heard, they will, in one glorious, sprawling, clarion choir, declare them fraudulent and malignant and unequivocally undeserving of stewarding this nation a single day longer.And they know that if they lose their current, tenuous stranglehold on this nation, they will likely never get it back, as the swift current of changing demographics will soon swallow them up, taking with them the unearned spoils of privilege that once seemed permanent.They know that this could well be their last moment of unmolested barbarism, and so, like cornered, wounded animals, they are frantic and flailing and unpredictably violent in saving themselves.Which is why we need to show up now: in numbers that cannot be manipulated, in a show of strength and resolve that is simply unalterable, in a moment so immune from pollution that it will be undeniable.We need to throw aside our petty semantic squabbles and our minor skirmishes of preference and our lesser battle purity politics and our litmus test deal breakers, because these things only dilute the full potency of our collective presence—and that is what the fearful people want. They want us to not only have to overcome their malfeasance, but also our fatigue and ego, and apathy as well.Because that is the great truth of these days and they know it: that despite their every jittery, panicked attempt to stack the deck and tip the odds, despite every clandestine legislative maneuver, despite this President’s unapologetic efforts at perverting the system—we still have the numbers and we can still save this flawed but promising experiment in liberty, and find out what it might be capable of if the full expanse of humanity was welcomed at the table for the first time.We can see if the old parchment promises can still yield a new promised land of equity for everyone, without caveat or condition; if it still has enough life and liberty and happiness for all of us to have a full helping.I think that would be something beautiful to behold. I think it might alter the history of this planet, and I think it’s worth whatever is required between now and next November to see it.Friends, this is not about defeating people who have voted and normally would vote Republican. They are not the enemy. This is about defeating this President and these Republicans, who have no love for America or Conservatism or Jesus, who are historically corrupt and uniquely parasitic, and who threaten good people of every distinction.I firmly believe that decent and disparate people of every political leaning, religious tradition, and value system can navigate those real and profound differences if we create a space where that is the sincere desire and honest objective. I also believe that this cannot happen with this President and with these particular leaders in power, and it’s as simple as that.Yes, these Republicans are fully terrified of us, America.Let’s make them right to be afraid.Let’s make the coming Midterms their worst nightmare.Then, together, we can recover the American Dream.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 White Hateful White Christians,For a long time, I misunderstood my feelings toward you.You would pop up on my social media feed, show up in my neighborhood, say something over Thanksgiving dinner, or I’d overhear you at a restaurant, and what seemed like rage would rise quickly within me. I thought it was abject hatred.Recently, I realized that I don’t hate you; I feel sorry for you.I grieve over whatever in your story made you this way; for the painful path you must have walked to arrive here so fully wounded, that you now feel so compelled to wound others.My heart breaks for a journey so filled with injury that it has yielded someone that addled by fear, vulnerable to vitriol, and that manipulated into contempt for another human being whose pigmentation or nation of origin or image of God or primary language may not match your own.I wonder how someone with so many advantages and so much privilege and such a comfortable seat at the table, still manages to feel themselves oppressed, still imagines they are marginalized, still feels perpetually under siege by the world around them—a world that has always favored them.And I’m sorry.I’m sorry you are this afflicted with toxic anger.I’m sorry you are so burdened with this crippling addiction to cruelty.I’m sorry you simply don’t care about the people around you.I’m sorry you have embraced a man and a movement that are predatory toward you.I wish you felt compassion for the humanity around you: not just those you love,not just those who look, sound, worship, vote, and think like you. I wish you could find empathy beyond those you believe are your people: your family, your tribe, your party, your country.I want these things for you, certainly because that would surely help whoever you see as those people; the billions of human beings sharing this planet with you whose journeys could be lightened by your presence: for the multitudes you keep at a distance or settle for false stories about; for the mothers and best friends and children and good neighbors and young couples you are segregating yourself from; for the beautiful and complex people you have made into caricatures, enemies, and monsters, by a religion or a political worldview or a learned narrative that demands it.But as much as for these people, I am sorry for how hateful you are because of what it is doing to you.I can see the toll it takes on you. It is difficult, taxing work, hating people, and I wish something better for you.If you could reach into those hidden recesses of your humanity, if you could tap into the reservoir of kindness that lies deep beneath all this manufactured anger, if you could rediscover the goodness in other people, you would be released. Life would get bigger. The world would open up for you. It would reach beyond your whiteness and prove bigger than your image of God and extend further than America.You’d realize that someone else’s gain is not automatically your loss.You’d realize that everyone is working as hard as you are to get through this life.You’d realize how fortunate you are, not to know the kind of heartache that some people live with as their default daily existence.If you cared about people this way, you would not live with such a closed fist, not be so quick to lock them out or wall them off or send them back or damn them to hell.And the fact that you are still there, trapped in this kind of unnecessary enmity, means you are never going to know the lightness that comes with love as your default setting. While you have such bitterness toward other human beings, actual joy will always evade you.And the saddest thing is that I can’t change you. I can’t convince you how much better it is to live with empathy. I can’t force you to give a damn.But I refuse to hate you because I don’t want to become you, I don’t want to perpetuate the illness that afflicts you, one that seems to be spreading quickly.Which is why I feel sorry for the world and the people around you, because of how your hatred is hurting them.And as much as anything, I’m sorry for how hateful you are—because it is wasting your time here, it is squandering your gifts, and it is limiting the good you could do with your life.May you find something better to move you and to live for than hatred.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: May be triggering for those with severe depression, suicidal ideation, or thoughts of self-harmDepression is a real b*****d.If it’s ever visited you, you understand.I’ve spent three decades co-existing with my lingering sadness.Such a clever and persuasive liar, it doesn’t require facts to rob you of your hope. You can have all the evidence in the world in front of you that life is beautiful and that you’re doing fine and that there is good reason to be grateful—and it can convince you otherwise.Depression can mount a case for your despair so seemingly iron-clad, so apparently reasonable, that you find yourself unable to see accurately anymore: your family, your abilities, your marriage, your friendships, your achievements—even the simple joys found in an ordinary day all become invisible.And when you are in that place of thick blindness, when you are so completely certain that everything has gone to hell, it can be almost impossible to find a reason to keep going.Little by little, you eventually lose your impetus to stay.The energy to continue gradually leaves.Your perseverance departs.Momentum ceases.That’s the thing that people who don’t live with a mental illness don’t understand. You often aren’t some caricature of a “suicidal person” continually wallowing in sadness and contemplating ending your life, as much as you are an exhausted person who has been so drained of hope that you now believe the lie that your mind tells you that things will never be better. You believe this terrible second is permanent. You think that the way you feel in the moment is the way you will always feel, and this seems (and if true, would be) unsustainable.There have been many times when I have been close to that place, nearly fooled into fully surrendering to the misery of the moment. I know that there are millions of you out there right now who know this place well, who are standing in the hopelessness as you read these words.And friend, the only advice I can give you is this:Find one reason to keep living—right now.It needn’t be something at all grand or profound or consequential, just the smallest thing to stoke the fires of your heart here in this second.Think of a song that never fails to move you and play it—on repeat if you have to.Watch a movie that always makes you laugh. It will probably make you laugh again.Go to that place with the fish tacos that knock you out and order a mess of them.Visit the woods or the beach, or whatever spot in nature allows you to breathe deeply and slowly—and do that.Snuggle a dog, paint a picture, go for a drive, call an old friend, take a bath.Look at the lines upon your fingertips and realize they have never been repeated in the history of the planet.Lie back in the grass, watch the clouds pass in and out of your peripheral vision, feel the earth turning, and realize it is time moving and propelling you forward.This is not simply busy work to distract you from your sadness or some feel-good toxic positivity; it is an invitation to hear a dissenting opinion from the Universe.Allow Life to come and argue on behalf of itself. Be reminded of the staggering beauty that you are surrounded by, even with the pain it comes with. This won’t erase your sorrow or change your reality or magically fix the things within you that got you here, but it may download just enough lightness into your mind to get you to the most important moment of your life—the next one.That is the greatest battle with depression: pulling yourself through the present despair to a place just slightly in the future where you may be surprised by joy or feel less tired or see something differently.You deserve to experience that place.Don’t allow that lying b*****d to write your story for you.Right now, in this difficult, unsteady, desperate moment, find one nearly microscopic reason to keep living—and live. Then look for the next one and the next one, until you find yourself slightly in the future, and you can look back and realize you’re not where you used to be, and it’s good to be here.You are loved and worth fighting for.So is life.So, stay.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