How Do You Stay Hopeful and Fight for What Matters When the World Feels Toxic? Pastor John Pavlovitz Has the Roadmap

In his new book Worth Fighting For: Finding Courage and Compassion When Cruelty Is Trending, John Pavlovitz writes, "Pretty soon you're not going to be here—but you are here now." This straight-to-the-point statement is very Pavlovitz. The author and pastor is known for his forthrightness. Even more so, he's known to back up tough statements with the hope and fuel we need.

That's precisely what Pavlovitz offers in Worth Fighting For. An encouraging call to action that sheds light on the direness of our current issues, from hate-filled politics to dehumanization to accumulated grief, the book is a roadmap for finding the light in the here and now. Pavlovitz assures us that no actions are too small to help humanity, just as hope and motivation to act can be discovered in the most unexpected of places. 

Still, What do we do when the world feels toxic? Thankfully, Pavlovitz offers the way.

A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN PAVLOVITZ

You write, "I imagine you feel the urgency of these days and the terrifying velocity at which they're all flying by." So, let's start there, John. What is trending in our lives that urgently called you to write this book? 

I say now that I don't consider myself primarily an author or pastor but more a collector of stories. I get the privilege of being in the trenches of life with people, whether in person or when they share their stories with me online. I sit with those stories and ask what people are trying to say but cannot quite verbalize. I put those collected stories into patterns that make sense for people so that they can recognize them. The theme has been exhaustion, because people have been immersed in a state of elevated urgency for so long. This is because of the tribal politics we've been thrust into and the pandemic. Our systems are not built to withstand this much trauma and this accumulated grief, which is what this story is about. This has really been the work I've been doing for the past few years: trying to bring some sense of awareness of what we're all experiencing so that we can do a little bit of healing as we're trying to save so many things that are so important to all of us.

The word "accumulation" is essential, as we may not realize how much of this consistent loss and trauma has been building in us, even in micro ways. 

The way normal grief works is you might lose someone during an event, something that happens one time, and we spend our lives processing that one event. But because this has been a collection of losses, we never really get to properly grieve anything. We're dealing with the trauma of COVID, the gun violence in America, what's happening with immigration and women's rights. Every day, there's a new emergency to attend to and as a result, none of us are really reckoning with the personal toll of all this. So, in the book, and really in my work, it's about two wounds: the wounds of the world and the wounds we sustain by attending to those wounds. Both of these things need to be addressed.

When you say you're a collector of stories, it brings to mind the story of Elsa, a woman you mention in your book. Elsa once said to you "Being human is hard."

It would be enough if we didn't have to deal with any of the things I just mentioned; if we didn't have to deal with the political situation, the social fractures, and all the trauma of a pandemic. If we just had the normal struggles, sorrows, and difficulties of this life. We need to make sure of we're living full human lives in the middle of being advocates and activists. We're having to do two things at one time, and that's a challenge. Most people just simply aren't aware of those pressures on them. One of the hearts of this book is, among the things worth fighting for is your wholeness and health. I have realized that no one will prioritize your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational health but you. We each need to take care of the greatest resource that we have in making the world more compassionate.

Another passion of mine has been working with compassion fatigue workshops around the country. The number of healthcare providers, caregivers, therapists, ministers, and parents who are just beyond capacity… I have been sitting with people and helping them assess the damage so that they can move forward and have what I would call sustainable compassion. There is a price tag to having empathy in days when cruelty is trending. 

In our world, when cruelty is trending, hopelessness, sadness, and despair can feel crushing. As you write, it's "a tall order lately to try and fend off the discouragement." But you argue there's an upside to despair. Walk us through that.

It's always difficult to hear at the time, but we know that times of suffering, struggle, and adversity transform us in ways that times of comfort don't normally. In the last few years, what we've seen is a clarifying of what matters to us. When we have something like the 2016 election, which becomes a pivot point, it also becomes a time when we look at what we value. Are we living lives that embody our morality, our spirituality, or just our convictions? So, for the places of despair, I often invite people to lean into them, to press into the specific burdens they're feeling—What keeps them up at night? What is it that breaks their hearts?— because that is the soil for the beautiful redemptive work we're all capable of doing. 

We always have two things: proximity and agency. We are always somewhere, and we can always do something. So, despair is an alarm that allows us to see what we care deeply about so that we can move toward it and bring healing and wholeness.

You're a person of faith, a pastor, and you're forthright in saying that God alone is not going to make schools safer for LGBTQ kids, and love alone is not going to take away assault weapons from the streets. Where can we start to make the world better?

Years ago, I was in Missouri doing a Q-and-A after an event. A gentleman said, 'John, I have two news feeds in my life. One news feed is the big and distant,' which is the news and social media. He said, 'That will always give me the terrible, the dire, and the violent. But there's another news feed that's closer to the ground. It's the neighborhood where I live and the community I'm a part of. When I'm in that place where I know the names and faces, I begin to be more hopeful.' 

For me, that's always been the answer. We live in stories and systems. The systems are these big and distant things that feel beyond our control. The reality of systemic racism and the reality of misogyny and nationalism are huge things. But we can take those wider subjects, shrink them down, and step out into our communities and say, 'How can I do something to address this thing that breaks my heart?' And there's always a place. There's always a way in your community or on social media that you can leverage your circle of influence and your resources to do something life-giving. So, that's where people start. And a lot of it is about knowing that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are organizations and entities that are just doing fantastic work; it's about coming alongside them.

We do want to pay attention to both. We want to make sure we're informed, and we're not just shutting out the bad news. We want to be accurately aware of the problems, but with social media and a constant influx of information, we can artificially enlarge the bad news sometimes so that the story in our heads becomes hopeless. So, with the book and my work, it's about saying that's part of this, but there is another story. We all get to be co-editors of the story in our heads, and we choose the things we are going to press into. That's a part of this, too, that agency.

In heated moments, it's "tempting to meet vitriol with vitriol," as you say. How can we practice compassion and empathy and rise above intense situations where we may want to lash out to defend something we're passionate about?

The challenge is the anger that we feel. These are not theological issues. They're not political issues, necessarily. These are human issues that settle into our lives and become the relational fractures we're feeling. This is a very human story, as much as we might talk about politics or what's happening with organized religion. So there is something about realizing that the anger is natural, but I need to do something to transform that anger into something else, or it's going to grow toxic within me. This is difficult because of the speed at which we interact with people. It can be difficult to take a pause, even a couple of seconds, to consider: What are my motives here? That's the key question that I often ask: 

What are my motives? 

What am I trying to get across? 

Am I trying to show someone something they haven't seen? 

Am I trying to give someone better information or a better story? Or am I trying to put them on blast? 

Am I trying to humiliate them? 

Again, that can be difficult to even assess at the moment. So, I constantly personally have to center the people and the causes that matter to me. And to realize the reason I grieve so much is because so many people are being dehumanized, whether it's transgender human beings or people of color or immigrants. So, the worst thing I can do is dehumanize someone else while I'm lamenting them. And so, I want to see someone's humanity across from me. And if I can manage to do that, to see their humanity, that will make me better able to share what I want to share.

Let's talk about happiness. You remind us to put joy on our agendas. This may seem obvious, but why is that so important?

Activism requires a certain energy, and it requires a battle posture. I try to pay attention to what I would call my energy allotment. For example, let's say I abhor racism. I may be spending time in that posture, offensively confronting pieces of legislation or movements in the country. I want to do that work. But I also want to make sure that I'm spending time in diverse communities doing beautiful work in the world because they both result in fighting racism, but they require a very different energy from me. I want to make sure that I'm in that place of spending life with people and loving them. That can be the challenge that we continually feel in this battle posture, and we aren't simply able to let our humanity come to bear.

Your book contains immense hope. As you write, "As long as you are here, hope lives." You also encourage us to play angel's advocate instead of devil's advocate. Talk about this.

Part of what I try to do is not necessarily tell people something they don't know but to remind them of something they may have forgotten. One thing that is easy to forget is that I have a vibrant and valid presence here in the world. I have gifts. I have a story. And I'm once in history, a never-to-be-repeated creation. That means I'm here at this place in time, and someone will inherit the world that I helped create. So, I get up every day reminding people of that. Anything that we're losing now, or fear that we are losing regarding human rights or civil rights, is because someone fought for those things to begin with, someone we've never met. So, we want to be part of that lineage of what I call "the damn-givers," people who really have a heart for community, for humanity, and doing something. 

The angel's advocate says there are enough sources of bad news in the world, and you can be a dissenting opinion. It's not ignoring how bad things are. It's not some sort of Pollyanna utopian existence. It's saying we are not passive participants in this world. We are active, and we get to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice. Even when it seems like the work we do doesn't matter, it is those incremental, small, and close moments that transform. So, if we're all doing that work, we'll turn around in a couple of years and realize we made some things right. And that's all we can ask for.

John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, activist, and storyteller. His blog, 'Stuff That Needs to Be Said,' has reached a diverse worldwide audience with over one hundred million views. A twenty-five-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, Pavlovitz is committed to equality, diversity, and justice. Learn more at johnpavlovitz.com.