How to believe in God even when the world sucks (w/ Nadia Bolz-Weber) (Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy: Thanks for listening to How to Be a Better Human. Listen on Amazon music or just ask Alexa, play How to Be a Better Human on Amazon Music. You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today on the show we're talking about faith and religion with Nadia Bolz-Weber. She's a New York Times bestselling author of the books, Shameless, Accidental Saints, and Pastrix.

She's also the host of “The Confessional” podcast and the very popular newsletter, “the Corners.” But more than any of the accolades or the accomplishments, Nadia is a person who has been remarkably open and vulnerable about the ways that she has struggled and failed and found ways to continue in her life.

Now, whatever your opinion on religion is, I think that you're gonna find that Nadia has a refreshingly different and much needed perspective on what it means to have faith in the world today. And just as an example of how Nadia is really different from what you might expect, you'd be hearing from a pastor.

Here's a quote that's featured prominently on her website, and which Nadia says is as common a prayer as she has ever prayed in her life. And that prayer is, “God, please help me to not be an asshole.” I love that. And here's a clip of Nadia talking about why that prayer in particular resonates with her.

[00:01:18] Nadia Bolz-Weber: I guess, I think spiritual leaders, a lot of times, even just that term feels weird to apply to myself, but a lot of times it, it feels like there are people who have such an abundance of some kind of virtue that they have extra that they can share with people who don't have that virtue, you know, whether it's like forgiveness or patience or gratitude.

Right. And that's never what I have to offer ever. I think the only thing I have to offer is the fact that I still struggle with, like hating most people. I'm not like naturally the most grateful person. I, I can hold resentment longer than I should. You know, all of these things that I would like to be able to somehow work on in like in 1% increments.

Uh, I don't mind admitting that and then sort of reporting back to people when I have something that worked. Or more often than not, what will happen is I will think that there's some sort of plan for working on gratitude or something, and then I do that, and then something entirely else happens.

That's entirely unrelated, and then suddenly I get it. You know, a lot of times my insights come when I'm distracted by thinking I know how to get the insights.

[00:02:37] Chris Duffy: We are gonna be back with much more from Nadia after this quick break, so don't go anywhere and don't get distracted.

Today we're talking about religion and faith with Nadia Bolz-Weber.

[00:02:58] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Hi, I am Nadia Nadia Bolz-Weber, and strangely enough, I'm a Lutheran pastor.

[00:03:03] Chris Duffy: For people who aren't already super familiar with your work, can you give us just like a brief history of the house for all sinners and saints and of the church that you started and the type of theological work that you believe in and that you do?

[00:03:15] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Basically, I was raised really like Christian fundamentalist and like women weren't even allowed to pray out loud in front of men, and the people in the Church of Christ were the only real Christians. We were the only people going to heaven. You know, it was very sectarian, and I left that for reasons of self-preservation when I was a teenager.

But it's a very recent idea in human history that you can just choose your symbol system. The symbol system that you are surrounded by when your brain is forming, will always sort of affect the way you see the world. That doesn't mean you'll agree with the theological propositions, but it's still in there.

And so for me, I had to leave the church and I had to leave Christianity for self-preservation. And I did for 10 years. And I explored women's spirituality and goddess stuff and I'm so glad I did and it was the healthy, good thing to do for me. But there was a part of me that I left behind because I was so formed by it, and so to have only an absolutely negative view of something that formed me, created an alienation inside myself that got to be resolved when I came back to Christianity, but like on my own terms in a completely different scene.

I kind of discovered Lutheran theology and really loved it because it talks about paradox and it's the center point of Lutheran theology is grace. It's not being a good person. It's not striving to make yourself holy. You know, it's none of these things.

It's just this beautiful concept that all of the most beautiful and unearnable things in your life. Like we get to breathe delicious air. We get to be on this planet, and yet we get to be alive and you can't earn the right to have it, like most of the stuff in your life is a gift. So for that to be the central idea of the theology, I thought was so beautiful.

And so I kind of dipped my toe back into Christianity. But then a friend of mine who was also a standup comic and also recovering alcoholic, he ended up losing his battle with mental illness and he took his own life and when PJ died, all my friends looked at me and they're like, well, you can do the funeral, right?

I hadn't been to seminary. I was the only religious person in my whole friend group. And so they're like, obviously you'll do it. And it was at the Comedy Works downtown. It was packed and it was all these comics and alcoholics and academics and it, it was so clear that nobody had a container for this. I was doing his eulogy and I looked out at the crowd and I was like, these people need a priest.

Like they need a pastor, that's somebody that's for them, you know? And then I was like, “Oh wow. Okay.” So I, I really felt this call to be a pastor to my people, you know, because I'd go to these Lutheran churches. No one looked like me. No one talked like me. They were friendly enough if I happened to show up, but I my people and my friends in my scene, they weren't accessing this beautiful theology and these sacraments and the liturgy and the music and all this stuff I thought was so great.

So I basically had to start a church that I'd feel comfortable showing up to. That's what House for All Centers and Saints ended up being, and it was like anti-excellence, pro-participation.

Nobody cared what you believed. That wasn't the basis of belonging at all, and it was acapella and it was like this four-part harmony, and we sat in the round and it was, it was very democratized and, and weird and funny and wild and holy. It was beautiful and I miss it. I have not been the pastor there for six and a half years, so I left quite a long time ago, but I served it for 11 years and it was a lot of fun.

We'd do like beer and hymns in the basement of a bar. We'd do like blessing of the bicycles and we'd bless the bicycles. Aspersion is like that holy water thing that you sprinkle holy water, but do it with like the ta--, those little tasselly things on the ends of girls' handlebars. You know, we’d do aspersion on the bikes, and it, we had a thurible, which is that swingy incense thing.

You see, you know, the smoking incense, but it was made outta parts from a vintage Schwinn . I mean, we just had so much fun with this tradition and because we didn't think it was sacrilegious, we thought it, it made sense. This is how it makes sense for us. You know?

[00:07:48] Chris Duffy: It wasn't like you just invented things completely.

You were also going back to say like, well, what happens if we take the liturgy and rethink how we experience it or how we interpret it, but, but we are still working from the same text and from the same week to week idea.

[00:08:07] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah. That was really important to me 'cause I, I thought you have to be deeply rooted in tradition in order to innovate with integrity.

And so that's what we kept trying to do and that was important to me because I don't have enough wisdom just on my own to make shit up. You know, like I would get it wrong or it would be somehow self-centered, or it would be a quarter inch deep. I really love the humility it takes to say, oh, actually generations that came before us, this is a weird thought.

Have something to teach us. You know, we're so arrogant to think, you know, well that's old fashioned. Or, you know, well, they didn't have the same opinion on women as we do now. Therefore, anything they say is not worthwhile.

[00:08:53] Chris Duffy: Something that you talk about in Pastrix and that I've heard you talk about a number of times is that before you started doing this work, before you were a pastor and were writing about religion, you were a standup comedian.

And I think that's really interesting because I also am a standup comedian, so I, I'm curious to hear the connections that you see between the work of performing to get people to laugh and the work of standing in front of people and trying to get them to feel or to identify with something bigger than themselves.

[00:09:26] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Well, first of all, I don't know how anybody manages to ever be a preacher without having been a standup comic. First , because I, I know it's not the most common path, but I can't imagine being a preacher if I hadn't have been a comic first. But, but there are reasons for that, and I think one is economy of language.

That's what you learn when you're writing standup. A lot of people don't realize that about standup. It's all about writing truly. It's about sort of how can you arrange these words… in this really succinct way that has the impact that you want it to have. There'll be bits, you probably have bits where if you added one extra word, it wouldn't be as funny, right?

[00:10:06] Chris Duffy: Mm, definitely.

[00:10:07] Nadia Bolz-Weber: So there's an, there's an issue of economy of language, which is why I can deliver a sermon that's 1500 words long, whereas a lot of people who just kind of ramble around points, they'll do it for 30, 40 minutes. So I think I learned that. But I think the other thing is the idea of having somebody who's set apart to speak from their own perspective to a group of people

And that group of people have allowed them to do it. But also, if you're not doing it well, or if you've gone off track or you start being mean, or you start being braggy or whatever it is, people would draw their laughter, right? Mm-hmm. They will sort of go, we don't trust you.

We aren't allowing you to have this anymore. And I think the same might be true of preaching too. You have to, in the act of doing it, you have to maintain the trust of the people that you are doing it in front of, you know, and so I think I wrote this in Pastrix that comics see the underside of life, you know?

Mm-hmm . That we have this really slant view and that's why the things we say are funny. Other people know they can recognize the truth in it. They would never articulate it that way because they're normal. You know, like they have a normal view, but comics have this they see everything slant, and so it allows you to see reality in a different way.

That's actually very funny or absurd. Usually more often than not, and a really good preacher can do the same where you're taking this text and you're taking the experience that you have and the experience other humans beings have, and you're looking at it slant and in, in a spiritual way, and then people are like, oh, and they have a certain aha moment as well.

So I, I think they, they are related. I just, I don't tell as many dick jokes from the pulpit, you know.

[00:12:00] Chris Duffy: And yet it's not zero. Your books definitely have a few. So, there's a piece here that you do in writing about religion, which is a lot of non-religious people associate preachers and pastors with this like how I want to be this kind of perfect self and you write about it in the way you actually are.

[00:12:19] Nadia Bolz-Weber: There's nothing sort of aspirational about me. I. So a lot of people will give off this thing about themselves. It's the thing they aspire to be or like that's how they wanna be seen. Like, same with like a yoga teacher, right?

I like cannot, I cannot deal with yoga teachers who have that unnaturally straight posture all the time, and they talk with that like passive aggressive half whisperer and it just feels fake as shit, right? I'm like, I don't believe you. I don't believe that's how you really are. I believe that's what you're pretending to be.

And so what I do is I immediately assume they're a monster. I'm sorry if you're pawning yourself off as this like spiritual giant who's just never struggles with all the shitty things about your personality that I struggle with on the daily. If you pawn yourself off as that, I, I don't trust you and I just assume there's something really dangerous about you.

And so I had a yoga teacher who came in once and he was a little late, which is unusual. And he was like, really apologetic. He goes, but honestly, I just had a fight with my teenager and I threw my yoga mat across the room on the way out. And I'm like, oh great. What do you have to teach us?

I'm ready, let's do it, right. Immediately trusted him. It's so weird how often people will think. I just wanna thank you for being real. And I'm like, what? It's so weird that you can be thanked for not pretending to be someone you're not. Like what kind of world do we live in? What is up with like spiritual leadership?

That that is remarkable.

[00:13:48] Chris Duffy: A thing that it makes me think about is like when I'm doing great. I'm happy to be around other people who are doing great, who've got it all figured out. There's something to learn from those people. But when I'm struggling, when I am in grief or I am hurting or something is just like my life is falling apart, I am not interested in figuring things out from the person who hasn't all figured out already.

Like I get that maybe it would be helpful if to learn from the person who's not grieving or in pain. Sure. But what you actually want is to spend time with someone else who is similarly broken or, or at least understands what it means to be broken in those ways.

[00:14:25] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Well, this is why Alcoholics Anonymous works, right?

This is why Alcoholics Anonymous isn't, let's get some trained counselors in here to help you, people who are broken. You know, it's like fucked up person to fucked up person. That's how it works, you know? And so in a way, I think whatever I've been able to do in my life professionally, I think it does just come down to the fact that I really try to stay in my lane and who I am. I don't, I try to never pretend to be more than I am or have it together more than I am, or less than I am.

You know, I mean, I, I, I'm not the same person I was, you know, I am, I'm in my mid-fifties and if I was still saying the things and talking like I was when I was 40, because that's when my audience started building, you know, and I have to be true to my brand still, that wouldn't work either.

[00:15:17] Chris Duffy: I wanna talk to you about some of the like actual religious parts of, of your work, you know, in, in real faith because I think that I find it personally. To be really hard to talk to other people who I'm not very, very, very close with. And certainly to talk about publicly about faith, partly because I just don't actually have all that much language for it.

And also partly because I think people often bring a lot of their own totally right, and and reasonable baggage and history and ideas about, um, judgment or politics, uh, to it. Something that you wrote about in, in Pastrix that really resonated with me is this idea of like, I don't necessarily want this.

It would be a lot easier if I didn't believe like it, it would be simpler. And yet, I'm, I'm paraphrasing you, but like I'm, I kind of can't deny the power that this has had in my own life that I've seen how it has helped me and changed me.

[00:16:10] Nadia Bolz-Weber: This is because I think faith and reason are not as related as people want them to be.

You know, I mean, it, it's very difficult, I think to be people who, who live with this elevation of human reason that we've had since the Enlightenment, where we're like, we have the scientific method. There are things that are provable as fact. You know, this is kind of superstitious, this faith stuff. But the reality is that humans, humans have always been religious.

Religion has fashioned itself in endless variety, and I don't just mean like religion as we think of it now. I mean, human beings are symbol making creatures and we are creatures who have, who mark the year in the seasons in really particular ways and have language that we pass down generations and practices around the divine and around, I think even what some people would call worship, you know, this sort of exaltation that we feel in in moments of awe.

Like those are all just really deeply human and I think really beautiful parts of being human. But what is also true is that humans aren't just beautiful. I have in Latin on my wrist tattooed simul justus et peccator, which means simultaneously sinner and saint.

So I really think we're a hundred percent of both all the time. And what that means is that, yes, humans are capable of like beauty and art and compassion and caretaking and love and all of those things, and that's lovely and that's part of us.

And we are capable of selfishness and vengefulness and violence and all of these things as well.

And so what would be a really great way to leverage the worst parts of ourselves, but using the systems we create to express the best part of ourselves, right? So religion has been used and manipulated to exert dominance over other people from the get go. So just like humans are not just one thing.

We're good and bad. Religion also, not just one thing. Also good and bad, right? So there's that factor that makes it hard to talk about faith. But you know, Charles Taylor wrote a book about this post-Enlightenment world that we live in, and he said the Enlightenment gave with one hand and took with the other.

And the thing that it took was enchantment. You know, human beings lived in a world that felt enchanted to them. And now we think it's so superstitious, but maybe there's something really innate within us that really. Can see enchantment still can actually feel it. It's more than intellectually assenting to theological propositions.

It's also this lived experience. So it's very tricky and it's woven into the most vulnerable parts of ourselves as well. And so of course it would be hard to talk about, you know.

[00:19:08] Chris Duffy: We're gonna take a quick break and then we will be right back.

And we are back. I'm wondering for people who are listening, do you have any advice for people whose families or friends differ in their religious views and ideology and who have religion as a real source of tension in their relationships? So just to, to read you something from Morgan, one of the producers on this show, has a, has a very good friend who's very close to her parents.

But her mom in particular is really intense about church, guilting both of her children into coming to church with her, especially on Easter each year. And her daughters have told her many times that they just don't align with the beliefs of the church and religion and they don't want to attend.

But that hurts the mom's feelings tremendously, and it often gets into these like tense and emotional conversations, especially around the holidays and special occasions. So. That's not an isolated experience.

[00:20:12] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:12] Chris Duffy: How would you counsel this person?

[00:20:15] Nadia Bolz-Weber: There's a few ways to see it, maybe a little differently because when we start telling the same story over and over about what's happening with us or our parents or whatever, we have to at some point investigate, is it still true?

Can I tell the story from another perspective that's equally true, that makes me less miserable. That's what I try to do. Sometimes it's probably worn smooth. This story about her mom, religion them, what they believe. So one might be if your mom believes, like fervently that, that she is doing something that is good, right?

What is good is to go to church. What is good to is to have your children at church. Then human beings will do a lot of things and sacrifice a lot of things in order to preserve our self-regard. So the need that we have to see ourselves as good can really go sideways in our lives. So it might be that what their her mom really is doing is has an uninvestigated drive to see herself as good.

And so you can have compassion for that in a different way than just this. She wants us to do something we don't believe. Right?

So that might be one entry point, but another is is for them to investigate for themselves. How important is believing it to participate in it. Is there another good, like meaning you don't intellectually ascent to the theological propositions in this church, but you do probably ascent to the idea of our mom's not gonna live forever, and this is maybe three hours out of our entire lives, hour and a half, twice a year, that maybe it's worth it and I don't have to believe these things.

And it's not even about that. It's just about the fact that this would be a pretty easy way to make our mom happy and, uh, we don't have to believe the things. There's just different ways of sort of looking at our unexamined beliefs around stuff that I feel like can be really helpful with this sort of thing.

[00:22:16] Chris Duffy: It's also interesting to think about that answer, which I think is a really good answer in the context of what you said earlier of like at 50, you are not the same person you were when you were 40 or 30 or or 20. I wonder what would like 30-year-old Nadia have said to that person who's like, “I don't want to go to church.”

[00:22:34] Nadia Bolz-Weber: 30-year-old Nadia would be like, fuck you. I'm not going to your church. Yeah, for sure. No question. No question.

[00:22:40] Chris Duffy: It's interesting to think like that, you know, as you get older and you have some, you change perspective and you have kids of your own, how that changes the way that you think about these things too.

[00:22:48] Nadia Bolz-Weber: That's right. And just growing in wisdom because what I mean by that is the basic building blocks of my personality have not changed. Hmm. They're fixed. The only thing that's changed is I've done enough personal work that, um, they don't kick me in the ass as much as they did 20 years ago. Hmm. But they're still there.

My first reaction to almost everything is: fuck you. I almost never stay there, but I almost always start there. Always. That hasn't changed. And so I think there was a point in my life where I was like doing therapy and working the steps and doing all the things, and yet I would still have these very angry, aggressive sort of innate reactions to things that happened in my life and I really got down on myself.

And I had to realize, like my daughter had this t-shirt. It was this kind of cartoony image of a rhinoceros with the horn on a treadmill, sweating its ass off. Right? And looking. Wistfully over at a poster on its wall of a unicorn.

Meaning if I spend enough time on this treadmill, they also have a horn. I can look like that unicorn and I would not be a rhino anymore. And I'm here to tell you I'm still a rhino. I am still a rhino.

[00:24:10] Chris Duffy: Yeah. I love that.

[00:24:12] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah. So I think that Americans are so into like, there's my goal I'm gonna make, I'm gonna take steps to beat the goal.

And it's like, well that's great, but there's some things that aren't gonna change about you. And so how do you have compassion for that?

[00:24:27] Chris Duffy: I love that. And you know, the one thing that I think I disagree with in what you just said or I was gonna disagree with, but then maybe the 1% thing is the same thing, is this idea that like you may never be the unicorn, right?

And I think it's silly to like run on the treadmill trying to do it, but I think that there's also a lot of people throw their hands up at problems in the world or themselves.

[00:24:47] Nadia Bolz-Weber: For sure. That’s right.

[00:24:48] Chris Duffy: Because they're like, I can't get to a hundred. And I'm like, fine, just do something.

Right. And so, exactly. To me, I the reason I like doing this show is because I get to talk to really smart, really passionate people who have these big ideas and then say like, okay, but what would a regular person actually do? And I would say like the guiding philosophy is that like, we should be able to do something right, if not.

[00:25:10] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Sure sure sure.

[00:25:10] Chris Duffy: I don’t wanna just throw my hands up and say like, it is the way it is. And I know you don't either.

[00:25:13] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Right, right. Well, it's interesting because there's, I think it's always interesting to investigate what your basic view of human beings and what they're capable of, right? Hmm. So you can have a very high estimation of that, or a low estimation of that, and having a low estimation of that doesn’t preclude improvement.

It doesn't preclude the fact that we can grow in, for instance, in wisdom, right? But what having a really lofty, high estimation of human beings does is it, I think, creates situations where we're unnecessarily critical and disappointed in ourselves and other people all the time, uh, instead of compassionate about it, right?

And hey, I like low expectations. I find low expectations really relaxing, right? Cause then you get to be surprised. You get to be sort of thrilled and wowed in a way that really, really high expectations all the time. When do you get to be wowed and thrilled? Nearly impossible, you know? Hmm. So with ourselves just going, having, having low expectations sounds so depressing, and yet…

I love the idea of doing what's actually possible and included in doing what's possible is what you said, which is actually you do have some agency, right? You do have agency. I think you're right. Some people give up and so while like in Christianity, there's a whole sector of Christians who believe in a thing called “Progressive Sanctification.”

Right. It was, I think this Wesleyan idea. So Methodists believe in progressive Christian perfection. And sometimes if I'm talking to a group of Methodists, I'm like, oh yeah, by the way, how's that Christian perfection thing working out for you guys? Pretty good—you almost there? 'Cause if you find that it's a failed project, there's so much room for you in the Lutheran church, we would never, never buy into that shit.

You know, but what's another way of saying that? Like achieving “enlightenment.” Do you know what I mean? I'm like, I just feel so suspicious of it when people go, oh, not only is this possible, it's our goal. I'm like, I don't know, like 2-3% less shitty is like so great for me. So I don't believe in progressive sanctification or enlightenment.

I do think we grow in wisdom and that's different.

[00:27:27] Chris Duffy: In Accidental Saints, finding God in all the wrong people. You write about this a lot of like that we can learn from people who we really don't want to learn from. One of the favorite chapters of this book, because it was something that I hadn't really heard someone write about before, is how, um, you leading a church trying to, you know, bring people closer to to God.

There are also people in the church who you really just find annoying. Like, not 'cause they're bad, but just 'cause you're like, that is, you're an annoying person and I don't want to spend my time with you, and yet that can bring you closer to some idea of what you should be without guilting yourself, right?

Like what can you learn from a person who is annoying to you?

[00:28:08] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Basically, as soon as I start disliking someone or being really annoyed by them, it feels as if God then goes, okay, now we know who's gonna be the naughtiest teacher. Right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Or they'll do something incredibly gracious towards me.

Or towards someone else. I'll watch them be this extraordinarily kind person that I could never pull off and I'll watch them do it and I'm like, who's the asshole? You know ? Mm-hmm . So it, my teachers often, it's often been like that. A few years ago, I walked the Camino de Santiago, which is this thousand-year-old pilgrimage across Spain.

You walk 500 miles across Spain and I had read stuff online where people are like, you get this like Camino family where you, you're with people from all over the world and you end up kind of each town wanting to stay in the same places and you eat dinner together and you stay in touch afterwards. And it's like this beautiful thing.

And I thought, oh, that looks so amazing. And, and I went and, and the funny, very hilarious thing is I thought I'll be a different person on the Camino. Like I won't be like me. I won't find people annoying on the Camino. And the very first person I met on the train, I quickly dubbed the Canadian Mansplainer

He was an expert in everything, including the thing I have two degrees in. It was maybe a 40-minute train ride and by the end I had put my earbuds back in. And it didn't get better. And there was this point where even the people I really liked on the Camino, who I buddied around with, I wanted to get away from a couple weeks in.

And so I took a cab and I skipped an entire stage of the Camino to get away from my Camino family. Then the next day, I started in this little village and started walking, and I, I laughed out loud, like I was totally alone. I laughed so hard. I grabbed my knees. If somebody had seen me, they'd be like, this woman has lost her mind.

[00:30:10] Chris Duffy: Uh huh. 

[00:30:11] Nadia Bolz-Weber: What I was laughing at was how I fell for it. Again, this thing that I'm gonna be a different person, you know? Mm-hmm. I'm gonna, and it's never worked. And then I had this beautiful moment of compassion for myself. I did. I had this moment of incredible appreciation for myself and I, I, I said, Nadia, you are a very astute observer of human beings, including yourself.

[00:30:40] Chris Duffy: Hmm.

[00:30:41] Nadia Bolz-Weber: And it's kind of the thing that allows you to be the writer you are and to be the preacher you are. But it also might preclude you from ever happily being part of a group of people, and would you trade it? And I'm like, I wouldn't trade it.

So having compassion for yourself can be, it's not a fluffy idea to me.

[00:31:04] Chris Duffy: Yeah.

[00:31:04] Nadia Bolz-Weber: I just came home from this two weeklong training in Victoria at BC I took. It was an intensive, so many hours a day for two weeks, and it was on song leading, like how to teach an audience a song and have them sing it or a group of people, 'cause I want to use it in the women's prison.

And I wanna use it with my audiences when I'm doing a lecture. It's a very particular skill and I was really committed to learning it, but I had to be with the same like 10-12 people for two weeks. Hmm. And I prayed for weeks that I be given an open heart and an open mind because I know how I am. It could be all over day one when I see somebody as being ridiculous, right.

It worked like 80% worked. Because I really, I wanted something more than I wanted to just be living in my personality in an unrepentant way, you know? Hmm. And so, knowing myself, I did, I really prayed that I could have an open heart and open mind, and I reminded myself of that the whole time.

And. It got bad. You know, there were a couple days where I was like, I can't stand these people and here are all the things that, that are wrong with them. And then we sang together and there's this beautiful oxytocin that you get from singing with people that creates this bond between you and this sense of wellbeing and connection.

And even my personality couldn't tear that thing down that that our brains were doing when we're singing together.

[00:32:33] Chris Duffy: You know, my personal experience with religion started with my parents are an interfaith couple. So my dad is Christian, he's United Methodist, and my mom is Jewish and I. I've since learned that this is maybe not the most common, where they both still believe and, and go to their own spiritual practice.

And so I, I kind of grew up thinking like it's natural to think that there are different ways of finding God and that one isn't necessarily wrong, it's just there's different ways of getting to a similar place. And you wrote about that in, in Pastrix as well, that, that that's something that you believe in, even as you have your own strongly held foundational beliefs about your own faith.

I'm curious 'cause I think that's not represented very well in popular culture as an idea that you can believe something really, really deeply and allow for other people to possibly be right or at least have their own way too. Um. How do you talk about that or how do you think about that when, when people struggle with it?

[00:33:31] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah. I mean, my husband is not Christian. He's a heathen. He has his own spiritual community that he is practiced with for 30 years, and so we, we live that out all the time. So I guess it's like I. What's the difference between somebody's beliefs and their values? And I think if your values are aligned, you can believe other things and celebrate that in each other, and it's not threatening, it's not a deal breaker at all.

We're both in recovery, right? We both are, have been sober over 30 years, and so we both believe in relying on God and praying for help and asking for aid from people and God not being totally self-sufficient. We believe in being of service that anything any good we have is meant to be shared. There are things that, like our values are so similar that the fact that they're lived out in two different symbol systems matters.

Not at all. Not at all. Having humility and curiosity goes a long way spiritually to me. You know, I can hold this story of Jesus very close and and say, this is the most true thing I've ever heard in my life. I can't escape it. I think it's so beautiful. It has continued to offer gifts to me throughout my whole life.

And it doesn't mean that it's the only truth or the only way to understand God. You know, I think people think well, because Christianity has been pawned off as this is the only one true thing, and if you don't believe this, you're going to hell and all of that kind of thinking. Then they're like, then I don't believe in Christianity.

It's like. I consider myself a Christocentric Universalist. So this is my thing, and like it, it's all about Jesus for me. And I believe that God is of course too powerful, too mysterious for any one symbol system to contain the totality of who God is. God will reveal God's self through every simple system, every effort that humans make to reach for it, there will be something that they will grab that might be different than other people.

And yet it's feels like hubris to think that human beings can understand God through their particular thing and it's exclusive to them. I, I just have never heard anything more arrogant. But that doesn't mean that your symbol system and your text and your practices and your prayers are the same as a Muslim or a Jew or whatever, it's not the same, but that it can be yours and you can go, this is my thing, and I have to allow for the possibility that God reveals who God is elsewhere as well. Have that humility, you know.

[00:36:17] Chris Duffy: Hmm. The two prayers that I find the most powerful, and the ones that I come back to all the time in my own life, maybe not every single day, but close to daily, are the line from the Lord's Prayer.

Like, “Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespass against me.” And a Jewish prayer, a Hebrew prayer of healing “el na ref ana la.” The way that I've been taught to say it is heal her, heal him, heal them, heal me. Yeah. And then heal me in body and heal me in spirit.

[00:36:44] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Chris, I think that's so beautiful that those are the two prayers and that they kinda came out of this lineage of both your parents, both these traditions and they've embedded in you in a way.

To me, that's having faith. A lot of people think they don't have faith because they don't think, oh, I don't think Jesus was really alive after he was dead. Right? Therefore, I don't have faith, and I'm like, oh my God. You definitely have faith in a million ways, and it doesn't have to do with, do you think that this story is medically true?

Medically factual. Is there resurrection in your life? Had you have stories of feeling like something was dead and now it's alive? That's a form of faith and we have this huge symbol for that. That we go, this is the thing we believe in the most, that the divine still is sort of seeps in. When we think there's no hope for something.

The divine has this energy that it infuses into us and we breathe the next breath when we think we can't. You know, and it like that's, we have this symbol that we constantly are saying, this is what we believe in. And so to to say to people, well, the only way to have faith is to say that medically, you know, Jesus was dead and then three days later he was alive.

You know, it's like way to drain all of the meaning and mystery and power out of what faith really is. Is to say that's what it's.

[00:38:13] Chris Duffy: Nadia is in such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for making the time to be here and, and for being on the show.

[00:38:18] Nadia Bolz-Weber: No, it was super fun. Thanks, Chris.

[00:38:22] Chris Duffy: That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human.

Thank you so much to today's guest, Nadia Bolz-Weber. Her podcast is called “The Confessional.” She's got a substack called “The Corners,” and her books are Shameless, Accidental Saints and Pastrix. You can find more info about all of her work on her website, nadiabolzweber.com. And if you don't know how to spell that, just look at the title of this episode.

I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more for me, including my weekly newsletter and all of my projects at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team of angels. On the TED side, we've got the celestial coworkers, Daniella Balarezo, Banban Cheng, Cloe Shasha Brooks, Lanie Lott, Antonio Le, and Joseph DeBrine.

This episode was talmudically checked by Julia Dickerson and Matheus Salles. On the PRX side, we've got the gospel of Pro Tools and the liturgy of audio plugins being practiced by Morgan Flannery. Noor Gill, Patrick Grant and Jocelyn Gonzalez, and of course, thanks to you for allowing this show into your ears and into your brain.

Thank you for listening. Without you, this show does not exist at all. Thank you for listening to How to Be a Better Human. You can listen on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa, play How to Be a Better Human On Amazon Music. Wherever you are listening, please share this episode with a friend or a family member who you think would enjoy it.

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