Being John Pavlovitz

No, the title isn’t a mistake. I know that the familiar title is, Being John Malkovich , a 1999 American fantasy comedy film directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman, both making their feature film debut. The film stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, and Catherine Keener, with John Malkovich and Charlie Sheen as themselves.

In case you have not seen it, the film is about the ability of a pathetic Craig Schwartz to enter the mind of movie star John Malkvoich for brief periods of time. Then comes the abrupt return to reality. As Schwartz explains, “ You see the world through John Malkovich’s eyes. Then after about 15 minutes, you’re spit out into a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike!”

John Pavlovitz is a minister at North Raleigh Community Church, and father of two young kids. He’s also the writer behind Stuff that Needs to be Said, a blog that calls out hypocrisy in plain language, with the president and his ardent followers within the religious right earning particular scorn. He had been a youth minister at a mega-church, a position he love in a community he loved.

But it was also, he learned, stifling. The pressure to conform, to agree with derisive comments about Democrats or the “gay agenda,” to prioritize boosting attendance over addressing genuine laspes in faith, was intense, he says. Instead of being a balm for congregants’ dark nights of the soul, church felt like an event where participants presented highly edited versions of themselves. And that old sense of in-groups and out-groups was still there, an invisble line between a certain kind of Christian and everyone else. He was fired “from my church for being outspoken in matters of inclusion, equality, and diversity. “

I read John’s blog Stuff That Need to Be Said and follow him on Twitter. Like the portal that allows Craig Swartz to escape the mundane reality of his own life, reading Pavlovitz’s entries allow me to escape to a place where Christian means a follower of Christ’s teachings and not a person who follows a doctrine that is finely hone to promote nationalism, capitalism, prejudice, and inclusion. Like Swartz, I find the return to reality a bit like being dumped on the NJ Turnpike.

I recently spent a day with John at a workshop on being an authentic Christian in today’s environment. Here are some take-aways:

• Ask, “How can I be compassionate to people that I resent?”
• What is the motivation behind my speech
• Balance my conviction with humility
• Don’t ascribe motive to another
• How can we fight differently?
• Hope has two daughters, anger and courage.
• Anger not cultivated becomes toxic
• Don’t be gratitude impaired
• Hope is focused on the aspirational; gratitude an the present

My natural response to “the other” is not a Christian attitude. Turning the other cheek, not returning evil with evil, loving even THAT neighbor……… these are all foreign to my nature. This is why I appreciate the frame of mind that I receive from “Being John Pavolvitz” for even a few minutes a day.