Our guest this week is John Pavlovitz. John is a pastor, writer, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. He’s spent nearly three decades teaching, studying, dissecting, deconstructing, and reconstructing the Christian faith. His new book If God Is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk invites us to re-examine the modern faith community and ask if it is as loving as it should be.

Imagine for a moment what the world might look like if we as people of faith, morality, and conscience actually aspired to this mantra.

What if we were fully burdened to create a world that was more loving and equitable than when we arrived?

What if we invited one another to share in wide-open, fearless, spiritual communities truly marked by compassion and interdependence?

What if we daily challenged ourselves to live a faith that simply made us better humans?

John Pavlovitz explores how we can embody this kinder kind of spirituality where we humbly examine our belief system to understand how it might compel us to act in less-than-loving ways toward others.

This simple phrase, "Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible," could help us practice what we preach by creating a world where:

In If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk, John Pavlovitz examines the bedrock ideas of our religion: the existence of hell, the utility of prayer, the way we treat LGBTQ people, the value of anger, and other doctrines to help all of us take a good, honest look at how the beliefs we hold can shape our relationships with God and our fellow humans—and to make sure that love has the last, loudest word.