Pod Insights How to Be a Better Human How to believe in God even when the world sucks (w/ Nadia Bolz-Weber) About this episode Nadia Bolz-Weber believes the good and bad in all of us is what makes us human. Nadia has built a career talking about personal failings, recovery, grace, faith, and really whatever the hell else she wants to. She’s a bestselling author, a former stand-up comic, and now an ordained Lutheran Pastor. Nadia joins Chris to discuss her journey with religion, leadership, and community. They explore questions around the definition of faith, whether spirituality is innate to us, and the beauty of low expectations.
For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts http://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts
For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 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.
0:10 Chris Duffy? You're 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 is a New York Times bestselling author of the books Shameless, Accidental Saints, and Pastriks. 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 going to find that Nadia has a refreshingly different and much-needed perspective on what it means to have faith
0:51 Chris Duffy? 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.
1:18 Speaker 01 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 feels like they're 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 can hold resentment as long as I should. You know, all of these things that I would like to be able to somehow work on, even
2:02 Speaker 01 it's just like, in 1% increments. I don't mind admitting that, and then sort of reporting back
2:10 Speaker 01 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.
2:37 Chris Duffy? We are going to be back with much more from Nadia after this quick break. So don't go anywhere and don't get distracted.
2:54 Chris Duffy? Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover things like the smartest way to book flights without planning your trip around the cheapest days to fly, or the quick math for knowing when to pay with points or just swipe your card. It's like having a travel savvy tour guide right in your pocket to let you in on all the little known tips and tricks to avoid all the hassle and extra costs that make travel so much harder than it has to be. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.
3:39 Chris Duffy? This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human and your gift will be matched five times.
4:27 Chris Duffy? Today, we're talking about religion and faith with Nadia Bolz Weber.
4:31 Speaker 01 Hi, I'm Nadia Bolz Weber, and strangely enough, I'm a Lutheran pastor.
4:36 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?
4:48 Speaker 01 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's 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.
5:30 Speaker 01 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.
6:09 Speaker 01 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.
6:53 Speaker 01 But then a friend of mine, who was also a stand-up 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 were 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 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.
7:34 Speaker 01 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 my people and my friends and 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 Sinners and Saints ended up being. And it was like anti-excellence, pro-participation. Nobody cared what you believed.
8:18 Speaker 01 That wasn't the basis of belonging at all. And it was a cappella 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 do like beer and hymns in the basement of a bar. We do like blessing of the bicycles and we bless the bicycles. Aspersion is like that holy water thing that you sprinkle holy water, but we do it with like the tat, those little tassely things on the ends of girls handlebars. You know, we, we do aspersion on the bikes and it, we have a thoroughbowl, which is that swingy
9:03 Speaker 01 incense thing you see, you know, smoking incense, but it was made out of 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?
9:21 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.
9:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, that was really important to me because 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.
10:26 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 stand-up comedian. And I think that's really interesting because I also am a stand-up comedian. So I'm curious to hear the.
10:46 Chris Duffy? 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.
10:59 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, I don't know how anybody manages to ever be a preacher without having been a stand-up comic first, because 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 stand-up. A lot of people don't realize that about stand-up. 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? So there's a there's an issue of economy of language,
11:42 Speaker 01 which is why I can deliver a sermon that's 1,500 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 will draw their laughter, right? They will sort of go, we don't trust you. We aren't allowing you to have this anymore.
12:26 Speaker 01 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? We have this really slant view, and that's why the things we say are funny, because 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.
13:11 Speaker 01 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 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?
13:33 Chris Duffy? And yet it's not zero. Your books definitely have a few.
13:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:39 Chris Duffy? 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.
13:52 Speaker 01 There's nothing sort of aspirational about me. 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 want to 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 whisper. 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 pointing 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.
14:37 Speaker 01 If you point 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 think, I just want to thank you for being real. 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?
15:21 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 has it 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. 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.
15:58 Speaker 01 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. 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'm not the same person I was, you know, I am. I'm in my mid 50s, and if I was still saying the things and talking like I was when I was 40,
16:43 Speaker 01 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.
16:50 Chris Duffy? I want to talk to you about some of the like, actual religious parts of, of your work, you know, 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 judgment or politics 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 would be simpler.
17:34 Chris Duffy? And yet 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.
17:43 Speaker 01 This is because I think faith and reason are not as related as people want them to be, you know? I mean, 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
18:26 Speaker 01 and 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 estus et peccator, which means simultaneously sinner and saint. So I really think we're 100% of both all the time.
19:07 Speaker 01 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,
19:50 Speaker 01 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
20:32 Speaker 01 the most vulnerable parts of ourselves as well. And so of course, it would be hard to talk about, you know?
20:41 Chris Duffy? We're going to take a quick break and then we will be right back.
20:56 Chris Duffy? This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. With the holidays approaching, it's a good time to give your home a little attention. Maybe that means making room for guests, finally organizing that closet, or finding a few things to make your space feel more festive. I personally started with my garage, which had become a real mess, the place where things go to be forgotten. I found some storage racks on Wayfair that helped me get things organized. And while I was browsing, I also checked out their selection of Christmas trees, which were beautiful and festive. And I'm really excited about having for the holidays. What I love is it's so easy to find what you're looking For using the filters, customer photos and reviews on Wayfair. I always feel confident that I have found the right fit for my home. And if you want a shortcut to the good stuff, shop Wayfair Verified.
21:40 Chris Duffy? Their product specialists hand vet everything, so you know you're getting a quality product. When refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.
21:56 Speaker 02 Wayfair, every style, every home.
22:01 Chris Duffy? This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.
22:45 Chris Duffy? In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bank. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC.
23:31 Chris Duffy? 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 read you something from Morgan, one of the producers on this show, 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 tense and emotional conversations, especially around the holidays and special occasions.
24:14 Chris Duffy? So that's not an isolated experience.
24:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:18 Chris Duffy? How would you counsel this person?
24:21 Speaker 01 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 fervently that she is doing something that is good, right? What is good is to go to church. What is good is to have your children at church. Then human beings will do a lot of things and sacrifice a lot
25:06 Speaker 01 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 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 assent to the theological propositions in this church,
25:48 Speaker 01 but you do probably assent to the idea of our mom's not going to 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 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.
26:22 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 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?
26:40 Speaker 01 30 year old Nadia would be like, fuck you, I'm not going to your church. For sure. No question. No question.
26:46 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.
26:54 Speaker 01 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. They're fixed. The only thing that's changed is I've done enough personal work that they don't kick me in the ass as much as they did 20 years ago. 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.
27:35 Speaker 01 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.
28:17 Chris Duffy? Yeah, I love that.
28:18 Speaker 01 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 are some things that aren't gonna change about you. And so how do you have compassion for that?
28:33 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 because they're like, I can't get to 100. And I'm like, fine, just do something, right? And so to me, 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, like, I don't want to just throw my hands up and say like, it is the way it is.
29:18 Chris Duffy? And I know you don't either.
29:19 Speaker 01 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? 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
29:50 Speaker 01 Unnecessarily critical and disappointed in ourselves and other people all the time. 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? So with ourselves just going, having, having low expectations sounds so depressing. And yet I love the idea of doing what's actually possible.
30:30 Speaker 01 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 Methodist believe in progressive Christian perfection. And sometimes if I'm talking to a group of Methodist, I'm like, oh yeah, by the way, how's that Christian perfection thing working out for you guys? Pretty good, you almost there? Because 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.
31:10 Speaker 01 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 two, three percent 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.
31:33 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, 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 because they're bad, but just because 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?
32:14 Speaker 01 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? It's constant. 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? 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'd read stuff online where people are like, you get this like Camino family,
32:59 Speaker 01 where 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, like, 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.
33:39 Speaker 01 It was maybe a 40-minute train ride and by the end, I had put my earbuds back in, right? 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 of weeks in. And so I took a cab and I skipped an entire stage of the Camino to get away from my Camino.
34:03 Speaker 01 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. But what I was laughing at was... How I fell for it again, this thing that I'm gonna be a different person, you know, 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.
34:47 Speaker 01 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.
35:00 Speaker 01 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. Yeah. I just came home from this two week long training in Victoria, B C. 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, because I want to use it in the women's prison, and I want to 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, ten, twelve people for two weeks.
35:43 Speaker 01 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's being ridiculous, right? It worked, like, eighty percent worked, because I really, I wanted something more than I wanted to just be living in my personality in an unrepentant way. And so knowing myself, I did, I really prayed that I could have an open heart and an open mind, and I reminded myself of that the whole time. And it got bad. You know, there were a couple of days where I was like, I can't stand these people, and here are all the things that are wrong with them. And then we sang together,
36:23 Speaker 01 and there's this beautiful oxytocin that you get from singing with people that creates this bond between you. And the sense of well being in connection. And even my personality couldn't tear that thing down that that our brains were doing when we're singing together.
36:39 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'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 and you wrote about that in in Pastriks as well, that that's something that you believe in, even as you have your own strongly held foundational beliefs about your own faith.
37:19 Chris Duffy? I'm curious, because 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. How do you talk about that? Or how do you think about that when when people struggle with it?
37:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, my husband is not Christian. He's a heathen. He has his own spiritual community that he's practiced with for 30 years. And so we we live that out all the time. So I guess it's like, 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 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.
38:23 Speaker 01 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.
39:08 Speaker 01 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 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 symbol 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.
39:49 Speaker 01 And yet it 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 Muslims or a Jews 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?
40:23 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'arifan Allah. The way that I've been taught to say it is heal her, heal him, heal them, heal me. And then heal me in body and heal. Me in spirit.
40:50 Speaker 01 Chris, I think that's so beautiful that those are the two prayers and that they kind of came out of this lineage of both of 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? Do 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,
41:35 Speaker 01 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, that 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 is.
42:19 Chris Duffy? Nadia, it's such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for making the time to be here and for being on the show.
42:24 Speaker 01 No, it was super fun. Thanks, Chris.
42:28 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 Pastries. 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 from me, including my weekly newsletter and all of my projects, at chrisduffeycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team of On the TED side, we've got the celestial coworkers Daniela Balarezzo, Ben Ben Cheng, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Laney Lott, Antonia Lei, and Joseph DeBryan. This episode was Talmudically fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Matthias Salas.
43:13 Chris Duffy? On the PRX side, we've got the gospel of Pro Tools and the liturgy of audio plugins being practiced by Morgan Flannery, Norgil, 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. Share it with someone who helps you to have faith or who helps you wrestle with faith or talk about these ideas. Whoever you share it with, we will be back.
43:51 Chris Duffy? This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human, and your gift will be matched five times.
44:39 Chris Duffy? With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC.
45:10 Speaker 03 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini.
45:43 Speaker 04 Hi there, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work, they actually do it. Start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.
46:23 Speaker 03 Next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Thanks again for listening and take care.
Previous How to turn climate anxiety into action (w/ Luisa Neubauer) (re-release) Next How to make the most of a finite life (w/ Oliver Burkeman) Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
