Sense of Soul - Nadia Bolz Weber - Shameless

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

We are SOOOO excited to share with you, Nadia Bolz-Weber is an author, Lutheran minister, public theologian and host of The Confessional! She was the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denver, Colorado. She is also a three-time New York Times bestselling author, her recent book is Shameless, and we highly recommend!!  Nadia is a powerhouse, a strong voice for all! We absolutely enjoyed having her on, and we know you will appreciate her raw, hilarious sarcasm however very authentic views on Christianity!  Please check out her podcast “The Confessional with Nadia Bolz Weber” “Ugly confessions from beautiful people… It’s like a car wash for our shame and secrets.” Visit her website: nadiabolzweber.com Also visit US at www.mysenseofsoul.com, check out our new Ancestry Healing Workshop  CLEAR! COMMENT, RATE, LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE, we really appreciate you!  

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we are so freaking excited to have Nadia on as a guest. She's from our home state here in Colorado, founding pastor at the House of All Sinners and Saints Church until July of 2018. It was filled with transgenders, gays, soccer moms, elected officials, ex-convicts. She welcomed all. She is also a three-time New York best-selling author and her newest book, Shameless, a sexual reformation. She's gone viral, has millions of views on her amazing videos on grace and forgiving assholes. She is changing the way people feel about walking

through church doors. Most feel like they have to leave a piece of themselves out front, and she opened the doors to them with full acceptance for whoever you are. We are incredibly excited to welcome Nadia Boltz-Weber. Hello, good morning. Hey, thank you. Yeah, thanks for being with us. Why did you choose to sit with us today and interview? I mean, you're a pretty big deal, and we're just two moms sitting in a closet. I usually am more prone to say yes if it's not a religion podcast. So if you were two pastors, I would have said no. Why is that? I feel like my calling, so to speak, is more to make these ideas sort of accessible to people who are outside the church

rather than inside the church. And so if I would be exposed to new listeners, then it's worth it to do it. And if I'm doing a religion podcast, I'm not being exposed to new listeners. It's like my fan base, you know? Good point. You know, Mandy and I have just recently done a lot of research on the Bible, on some of the history. day after several weeks of getting our minds blown and feeling very distant from what we thought we knew to be true. Yeah, how did you guys grow up? Actually, I am deep-rooted Catholic. Almost every single one of my ancestors were forced to be Catholic when they came into this country. Way of France, you know, whether that was through the Black Code, free men of color were also under that same French Code. I have a shaman who came way of Canada, who became known as the apostate who converted to Christianity. I have an ancestor who was actually the witness to the immigrants that came over in those first five boats actually were baptized before you got on the boat.

When I was researching that and finding that, I realized how very deeply rooted religion was in my family. But in what seems like a coercive way no i didn't know that there was a lot of things in my history i ended up finding out that what didn't really align with what i thought he knew and that just was a shocking one because i didn't realize how you know as free as america says are. And you know what? They say that this land is based on and for all of those things just kind of been blowing up in my face recently. So,

so what, but did you go to mass every week when you were growing up? I went to Catholic school as a child and I lived in, in new Orleans. Even when we came to Colorado they felt it was important to move next to a Catholic school because no one had ever been to anything but on both sides of the family I was the very first person to go to public school in our family a little bit so was it was it more of like an ethnic identity than like? It was both.

It was all of it. All above. And also I'd say that I read a little bit of your shameless book. I haven't finished it yet. But that part was a huge part of my ancestry that I really faced because women in my family are not like today. They weren't. Sex, the religion, the race everything yeah so is

there any part of catholicism that you still love or hold dear and want to keep you know what's really funny is i really have to be honest and say that some of the traditions I love, I love the smell of a church. Yes. Yeah. You're allowed to love it. I love like everybody, you know, saying hello to each other.

Yeah. I love the togetherness. I feel like there's a very important part of the church that is needed in every community. I do. I just think that it's a shame that it's been used for power and for control. And control. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the thing is, is like, you're allowed to love those parts, like that you get, those are yours to keep, you know, you can choose what to kind of walk out with and claim, you know. So it's okay to love those things. And also, I think human beings, frankly, are wired for religious community.

I mean, religion has fashioned itself in endless variety in every human culture throughout time. Now, those differ a lot. So it's not to say they're all the same, but they all meet the same human need. And so, you know, so many of us have walked away from religion for reasons of self-preservation or because we couldn't be a part of it and be consistent with our values or for any number of reasons, you know, our mom finally divorced our abusive dad. And now the church tells her after serving, you know, faithfully for decades that she can't receive tells her after serving you know faithfully for decades that she can't receive communion like you know of course a lot of people are like fuck you that literally happened in my family yeah you know i mean what is that mandy i can go ahead

and explain your um gosh mine's easy i grew up knowing nothing i didn't even know what the fuck easter meant i didn't even know what christ meant. My mom was like, figure that shit out for yourself. Were your parents raised religious? Yeah, my mom was kicked out of Catholic school because it was announced on New Year's Eve that my grandfather had the first baby born at midnight with the neighbor. So he had committed infidelity. And so her and her brothers went to school and they said, oh, not, nope, you're not allowed here. Jesus. I know. Just like Jesus would have it happen.

I went on to be very sinful. I loved alcohol and cocaine and partying. And I was the life of the party. And I landed my ass in rehab and felt like I wasn't worthy of God's love based on just the very little that I had learned about Christianity. And I didn't think I was worthy and I didn't think he was going to love me. And then it was interesting. During all my sinning, I actually died. And when I died and hadn't asked Christ into my life, I didn't go to hell.

So I was confused. Yeah. Surprise! You had verifiable data that that's bullshit. I definitely should have been murdered. If this is what hell looks like, fuck yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's my story. And then, and then I sat in a church up at Harmony House in Estes Park, the rehab, and the pastor said to me, do you believe your God is forgiving?

And I said, I do. And he said, well, then if you don't forgive yourself, you're saying you're bigger than God. And it was in that moment moment i realized that i could forgive myself and that my past didn't define me oh that's beautiful that's very good pastoral care from that pastor that's very good yeah i'm always glad to hear the good stories of my colleagues like getting it right because i hear a million of the other kind. Well, girlfriend, you have definitely got it right. And I would love to hear your story as a childhood. Yeah, I was raised extremely religious. We went to church three times a week. The only people I knew were people who went to our church. And those people were also in our home on a regular basis, having meals, having Bible studies,

devotionals. So, you know, my family was just deeply ensconced in what's called the Church of Christ. And, you know, like anybody else, like you don't know, like your childhood's fucked up until you start meeting other people who had different ones and they look at you like, what? That's not normal? You know? So I started sort of meeting people who had different experiences of that. A couple things happened. One, I realized, oh, this isn't normal or average or something. And then, but more importantly, it really challenged so many things that they taught me were true. So I kept being told that like homosexuality is a sin and an abomination, right? So I'm like, oh, okay, got it. That's wrong. That's

bad. But then I went to high school and I experienced a lot of alienation as a kid because of some disfiguring health problems I had. So I didn't look normal. And so when I went to high school, the gay theater boys were literally the first people who ever thought I was fabulous. Like whoever, who, like they loved me. Love gay theater guys. They, they loved me and and that love fucked things up for me because now I have the difference between what I was being told was true and what I was experiencing to be true and for me an idea or a doctrine or an interpretation of a bible verse should never trump our actual experience of the truth, you know, it shouldn't be more important than people. And so that was when there was this like, kind of, you know, wedge for me between what I was taught to believe and what I was experiencing to be true. And so that

dualistic thinking that I was taught, which is like, you're either us or you're them, you're in or you're out, you're good or you're bad, you're saved or you're lost, you know, that dualistic thinking, you know, in some ways can be helpful to us. Just I think, in terms of anthropologically, because, you know, early human beings, they couldn't really think in terms of subtlety in a way. I think you had to look at something and go, is that in the category of dinner or poison, right? Like you had to know, is this going to help me or hurt me? There wasn't like, you know, well, it's blowfish. And if you really do it, it's usually poison,

but no, there's no subtlety, right? And so I think we're developed to think dualistically, but that as we grow in wisdom, hopefully we begin to see how much gray there is, you know, and how much subtlety and nuance in life, the less easy it is to be right. That's where it comes down. That's what it comes down to. If I can sort of accept that, oh shit, there's more subtlety than I realized, then if it's not so dual, if it's not so good or bad, then how do I know I'm good, right? So then it makes it much more difficult to stand in judgment of other people knowing I'm right. It's been a process. When I left the church, I took longer to leave the dualistic thinking behind than it did to leave the church behind. And, you know, I spent a decade outside Christianity. I couldn't have anything to do

with it. All the shit around gender was just too hard, you know? Not only could women not be clergy, women weren't even supposed to pray out loud if a man was there. If a man was there, the man does it. So all of this stuff about women are supposed to be subservient to men. And again, there was this conflict between what I was being told and what I was experiencing. So I'm like 12, 13 years old. You know, we have these male Sunday school teachers. Once I was 12 or 13, you know, they used to be women. They turned to men because suddenly, well, not turned to men, you know, it was suddenly the people who were our teachers were the men in the congregation and not the women. And the reason was, is because women

weren't allowed to have authority over men in the age of accountability was around 12, 13 years old. And so after boys were 12, 13 years old, they had more authority than the women in the congregation. So I'm going, so now we have the male Sunday school teachers. And I was like, so if I'm being told that I'm supposed to only learn from men, and I'm supposed to be, I'm not allowed to teach men anything, and I have to be subservient, then why the fuck am I clearly more intelligent than my male Sunday school teacher? Like that became hard to justify. Oh my gosh. Let me ask you a question. Do you think that women were made from Adam's rib? Oh, I don't, I don't literally care, but let's see. There are some really beautiful feminist interpretations of the text as well that are kind of like Adam was sort of like the first pancake. It's like you throw that one out.

Once you kind of get, you know, your feel for things, then you make the one that actually works. I mean, there are lots of different interpretations of the text. It's interesting that you brought this up because it's actually what I'm struggling with lately. The fact that Mary Magdalene and a lot of the women weren't put into the Bible, and then that spun me into looking at my ancestry and seeing that back around Henry VIII, they were marrying off six-year-old little girls to kings. It's just been one of those things lately where I'm like, Oh my God, us women have just been so suppressed for so long. I've been frustrated with it. I know you have a tattoo of Mary Magdalene on your arm. Why did you choose

that? Um, I got that tattoo when I was in seminary, when I was sort of, I don't know, I guess, struggling with calling to be a priest, to be a pastor, because I just, I am such a sort of flawed, deeply flawed human being. I mean, I'm kind of a garbage person in a lot of ways. So I just thought, I don't know if I can pull this off, you know. And I just did a lot of more study of Mary Magdalene, and she was the apostle to the apostles. Like literally the whole Christianity thing wouldn't exist if she hadn't followed instructions. She was the first one to witness the resurrection and then Jesus like, go tell the boys, you know? So like if she hadn't been the first preacher, you know, the whole thing wouldn't have even happened. And so one of the gospel accounts was

written from a community where Mary Magdalene was a leader. And one of the gospel accounts was written when, where Peter was a leader, because there's such a difference in the way she's portrayed and what authority she has in these two gospels. So that's based in the actual sort of texts that we have and not in the gnostic gospels but but they made her a whore though Nadia yeah how did that come about yeah that was because I think Anselm one of the early church fathers is I think the first one so I don't know why it why like almost every character in the new testament who's a woman's name is Mary. So fucking confusing. So many Marys.

So you basically have, you know, everyone's Mary, lots of sex workers and various women of the city, you know, all these characters. And so they're often just conflated with each other. So if you look at the actual text, Mary Magdalene was not the woman in the city who washed his feet with her hair, right? One of the gospel accounts says that's Mary of Bethany, who's Lazarus's sister who did that.

And one of them said it was a woman of the city. So there's a conflation. I mean, look, when you have four, if you have four different accounts of stuff that happened, and those weren't written for a very long time after the events happened. There's a lot of contradictions in the text, which I think is great. It should foil our attempts to pridefully say we know exactly what the gospels mean when they contradict each other. And instead, people find bizarre ways of saying, no, they don't contradict each other. And I do absolutely know what they mean. It's literally not in the text. So I mean, anybody flouts that as being true,

just doesn't read the actual text. So I have a Martin Luther tattoo. Can you explain why you chose that one? Well, it's sort of a quote from Luther in Latin on my wrist, simul justus et peccator, which means simultaneously sinner and saint. And so one of the things that drew me to Lutheran theology, which is really distinct, is it's really based in paradox and not duality. So it's based in living in the tension between two things that seem contradictory, but both are true. Like the fact that we're all simultaneously sinner and saint, 100% of both all the time. Nobody's 80-20, you know, like it just explains sort of human nature, the fact that we, everybody has a capacity to be destructive and hurtful. Everybody has a capacity to be healing and loving. And that's

part of human nature. And what happens when we think we're all one and not the other, it can be incredibly damaging. Like, it helps me never be disappointed in a way to understand, oh, no, human beings are garbage. I mean, like, there is nothing that we can't make ugly or horrible. You know, honestly. Also, we're glorious and like astounding and beautiful. Like both things are true. I'm watching this show called The Vow on HBO. Are you guys watching this? Oh my God. About NXIVM.

Did you watch that documentary series, Wild Wild Country on Netflix? That one is about the Rajneesh Puram, which was a cult or a spiritual community. Started with a guru in India, and then they built a whole city in Oregon. Yeah, yeah, I did. And then, of course, everything goes sideways. But what's interesting about both of these stories is what's similar in them, in that charismatic leaders who end up having truly cult followings, the thing that they are exploiting in people is beautiful. Like, it's the fact that people want community. It's the fact that they desire meaning. It's the fact that they want to be part

of something beautiful and transformative. They believe that it's possible to live in community with each other, to like grow as humans, to access transcendence. So that is the thing that is exploited when you have charismatic leaders who have no actual oversight, you know, who are just allowed to be an authority in and of themselves. And so often, like with both of those stories, what's interesting is they both started out in like what seemingly really beautiful, positive ways with meditation or with self-improvement and awareness and doing your own emotional work and, you know, stuff that really was having a positive effect on people's lives. And then it all went to shit eventually, you know, and there's like sexual exploitation and financial exploitation and personal control and all this stuff.

One thing that I'm grateful for is that I'm a founder of a spiritual community and I'm a charismatic leader my whole life. I've been like, hey, let's do this. And everyone's like, okay, you know, they follow me. And so, but as much shit as people talk about organized, quote, organized religion, you know what I have? I have a bishop. I have an entire organization that's making sure I'm still on the yellow brick road, that I haven't taken people into a field of poppies. And so, you know, say what you want about the downside of organized religion, but there's oversight for people like me. I was in, I did that, an interview with Krista Tippett on that show On Being. And it was live. This was maybe six years ago. It was live. And we did a Q&A and someone said, so you have an issue with authority, right? Like you do your own thing. You're independent. And I'm like, yeah, fair enough. And they're like, but

you're in a system under authority. Like you have a Bishop. And I said, yeah. And he was like, tell me how you've navigated that. I'm like, what are you kidding? I'm why we have Bishops. He's like, you're fucking kidding. Someone like me should have a bishop good god you know i was watching that wild wild country and there's this woman sheena who ends up being in charge and and she would she had a similar personality to me i i do enneagram work so i don't know if that's the language you guys use but i'm an eight on the Enneagram and she is too. And I was watching her, everything unfold. And I thought, yeah, man, that's when I would have gotten the guns too. You know, like, like, like if there's nothing to identify and regulate the shadow side of ourselves within spiritual communities okay that's a problem that's a problem and so when i'm watching

the nexium thing that that showed the vow i'm like nobody was questioning this guy keith raniere nobody was thinking i bet there's a shadow side to that dude how is he how is he pursuing his self-interest in a way that's being pawned off as like helping other people? You know, like there's none of that. And so the point about the tattoo, to get back to it, is that when you have that ability to hold both of these things as being true about yourself and everyone else, I think it allows for communities themselves to be healthier for people.

I think idealism is an extremely dangerous thing for human beings. I feel like going back to a church at this point would be very difficult for me. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Of course it would. Yeah. I never suggest to people, well, you know, you should really try and find your way back to organized religion. For some of us, that's a healthy path, but for a lot of people, it's not. And I totally respect that. I think that it's important to do personal work around the stories we have about our religious upbringings, if we have them, because of the thing that I asked you at the beginning like what part do you still love and cherish because if there were good parts to a fucked up religious whether

or not I practice the religion there's some go-tos I still do absolutely and then that's and that's fine because what happens is I was watching the vow and thinking these people were so devoted to this community they were part of, a lot of which was really beautiful. And so then for it all to crash down because of sexual exploitation from the founder and all of this stuff, what happens is we become alienated from our own story, in a sense, right? So if you have a religious upbringing that is simile justice epicator, right, that's simultaneously good and bad, when it's so bad, you have to leave. I just think the healthiest thing is to eventually come back and somehow allow yourself to still feel good about the things that were good. Because that's when I transcended, oh, that sounds too lofty of a word, but that's when I dealt with the duality that I was raised in, is when I was able to look back on my dualistic thinking, fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and when I was able to acknowledge

parts of it were beautiful beautiful and parts of it, those beautiful things I get to keep, when doing that didn't feel like a betrayal of how the ugly parts of it hurt me, that's when I was able to sort of heal and feel more whole. Because what do you left? How do you even make sense of the good things when there's so many bad things I just think we have to do that work and I don't even know what it's called but yeah being able to hold that there is truth about things being good and bad at the same time feels so much more integrated way to live because otherwise the choices feel like delusion or

resentment. You know, either we're deluding ourselves and going, no, it's all good. Everything was great. Or resenting the bad parts so much that we're stealing joy from ourselves about the good. So true. It's just, I think that there's a lot of contradictions in the Bible. Is it a credible book? That's just kind of what I've been battling with, being a little bit more awakened to things. And you know, the book of Enoch, you know, I've read, I've read Mary Magdalene, I've read the Gospel of Thomas. And I'm just like, why are these things not taught? Like, what is the conspiracy around religion? Yeah, those things are called the Gnostic Gospels.

And Gnosticism was kind of ruled to be heretical in the fourth century. And it's very sexy to assume it's because they didn't want us to know the truth. That's fine. But really, it's because Gnosticism in general has a spiritual elitism to it, and that's why. It sort of opposes Christianity, not because it's female-empowered and we couldn't handle that, but ultimately because Gnosticism really is about the fact that there are secret teachings that only special people have access to, which is just completely opposes the gospel of Jesus, that somehow there's only special people who get to know the special things,

and then they get to be enlightened and move on. So in terms of the Bible, is it true? It's like the Bible is a library. It's not a book. And so it's like, if you look at my bookshelf, there's poetry, there's biography, there's history, there's novels. So you can be like, is your library true? Well, each of those types of literature tell us a sort of truth from different angles. And so the idea that the Bible is some book that God basically wrote and everything in it is factual, you'd have to really tie your brain into knots to make that be true. Like, it makes no sense. You're right, there's a million contradictions. And so that's not, that to me, that's not, I'm interested in what does the Bible do, not what it is. So I know that

there are certain stories in there that tell us who we are and tell us about the world and the divine in ways that are timeless, and yet will be interpreted differently every cultural context in which they're read. I know it tells the story of Jesus, and that is always the center point for me. So in terms of like how true or how important or authoritative the Bible is, it looks like a sort of a target to me, in the sense that the thing that I think it's mostly about is Jesus, and the gospel of Jesus, and so that's at the center. So any texts that have to do with that have a lot of authority to me. And then any texts that sort of support those same ideas also have some authority, but then the ones that seem to completely oppose those ideas,

they're of interest. They tell us what was going on at the time. There might be something there. Do they have the same amount of authority as the stuff close to the middle? No, not at all. So Lutherans have just, that's our view of the Bible. It's very different than others. So when people are like, well, what do you do with this verse in random verse in Leviticus about homosexuality? I'm like, oh, dude, I do not have a dog in that fight. Like, that's your argument because of how you see the text. You can't make it make sense. That's not my view of it. So I can't even be part of that argument, you know? Who is God to you? And is God, do you look as God as an authority to you? Because I'm Christian, I feel like the most reliable way for me to know who God is,

is to look at how God chose to reveal God's self in Jesus. That's pretty knowable as a person who said things and did things in the world and whose life had a particular impact. So if I ever have this view of God, and it doesn't hold up against what I know of Jesus, I go with the Jesus part. So it's kind of simplistic I guess now at the same time I think God is the source of all things the source of all life and it is grace that we get to come from that like there's a part of of our source in all of us like that divine spark the part of us that's unhurtable, that is pure and beautiful, comes from God. So I believe God is who we come from, and God is who we go to, and God is who we get to draw upon as our source. When we don't have enough mercy or love or forgiveness, we can draw upon our source. One God, one people, people you know just as chosen people

i literally had made a comment one time i made a comment i said we're all god's children or something and i had a christian come back to me and say no you're not god's child unless you not everyone is god's child and I just thought so sad that you believe in a God who would be that picky about the people he made I'm only they're the only good-looking ones or something are you kidding me I agree 100% like God created humanity in this mind-blowing diversity I mean think of how think of the different varieties human beings come in, the different languages and bodies and skin and beliefs and, you know, the different types of environments we live in and ways we live. I mean, it's just, it's incredible. And then God's

like, but yeah, I only love and I'm pleased with people who happen to, and then you fill in the blank, this tiny circle of people. I'm like, that makes no fucking sense to me at all. That's nice. It makes none sense to me too. So explain how bad it is that only Jesus could then get you into heaven. And then the rest of you who live on the other side of the world who have no clue about Jesus just burn forever in hell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also think that's bullshit. And I'm what I guess you would call like a Christocentric universalist. So like my thing is Jesus. That's my thing. was about whatever God making this crazy decision to become manifest inside the womb of a homeless Palestinian teenage girl you know I mean whatever that was um and then everything that ensued from that it was for the redemption of all things and people the. It was for some kind of restoration and for the purpose of beauty and redemption for every single thing. Now, because I think that's God's nature.

Now, how God accomplishes that same thing, I do believe that's who God is, through other religions, simple systems, cultures, languages. Is it really my business? I believe God does that through all of it. And I don't need to understand how or why for that to be true, but I do believe it's true. So I have respect for all these different traditions, and I know that there is a way that God is redeeming us in all the world through simple systems I will never be called into or understand. But I need a God who is

more powerful, more nimble, bigger than my ability to understand God, right? Otherwise, all I'm worshiping is my ability to understand God. I'm not worshiping God anymore. I don't know if you've ever read Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Living Buddha, Living Christ. It was a great book. It was amazing to see somebody from another culture read a book. He has no background, you know, to come up with his own interpretation of the Bible. And he was like, oh my God, I love Jesus. He's a Buddha. I mean, that was so beautiful for me to read. Totally. One of the books that sort of re-evangelized me, like, like sort of made me go,

oh yeah, I do really believe this was written from a Native American perspective. It was about Jesus as like a Sundancer or whatever. And it was so beautiful. And it was so orthodox. I mean, in the most beautiful way to the story and to the text and just blew my mind. And it made me believe in God again, you know. So I think that when all we can do is say, oh yeah, there's one way to believe there's one truth, there's one way to live. And that's what we're going to do. It's idolatry. Lots of people have spiritual gifts, right? Yeah. Some don't. I mean, come on, really? Some don't. Wait, hold on. At one point, weren't you like a psychic at a call center? Yeah, yeah.

That was, it was very brief because I was horrible at it. But yeah, yeah. I did that for a few weeks. I wanted to know, I mean, like, did God just stop talking to us, you know, or is it just the terminology? Are we not supposed to channel messages of good from our loved ones? They did it the whole time in the Bible. I mean, everybody was seeing things, reading things, talking to people. The whole book is about different spiritual gifts. But I think that it was not in real time. And so what I mean by that is that the things that were taught, the stories that were told, the wisdom

that was garnered had been worn smooth by decades of telling it, by struggling with it, by examining it, by going, does it hold up before it was ever even written down? And so I think that back to the simile just to set Picator, I try as a quote, spiritual leader to remain sufficiently suspicious of myself at all times, you know? And so meaning anybody who claims to have some special knowledge to be some fucking shaman or, you know what I mean? Like, oh, I'm accessing the divine directly downloading. Well, I feel like we can make that determination decades from now. But not while you're getting a publishing deal about it. You know what I'm saying?

Or like doing celebrity retreats for $10,000 a piece. It is the community of hearers and readers who decide, hey, we feel like that's inspired. Right. What are you doing for your intention? Never in real time. Yeah. Okay. So I get that. That's totally cool. Hey, Mandy and I had done a episode last summer. It was so super fun too. We had, we didn't know anything about anything. So we were just researching and it was on aliens versus angels and how they have all these similarities. I'm just like, I went to freaking sunday school

i even taught sunday school i've never heard of them have you heard of nephalemes oh yeah i'm like part nephalemes i would say because i'm that's it because i'm part i like to think i'm part nephalemes because they were giants and i'm like 6'1". Me too. They're like, what is your heritage? I think I'm probably part Nephilim. It didn't show up on the 23 and Me, but I don't know. Probably related because I'm tall like that too.

No one's ever talked about that. The crazy shit in the Bible is amazing. What about the guy who he wouldn't listen and to someone and so god just started talking out of his donkey like literally talking out of an ass i'm like well that never stopped but talking out of your ass the little cute little chubby cherubs are you kidding me that blew me away i'll never be able to think of an angel the same i'm seeing six faces and whatever they're horrifying yeah no one just why why do you think

the very first thing they say every fucking time is hey don't don't be afraid like every time that's in like the angel manual like they have angels hell no they're all like don't be afraid. Why? Because they're terrifying. I know. But that's just the thing. Mandy actually and I talked about this a few weeks ago. Why did the church or man put the fear of God? Fear shouldn't even be in the same sentence as God. Why?

It's just easier to control people that way and to get their money. Yeah. You know, I loved in one of your interviews, you talked about how we do need some structure. You're seeing this shift where especially these younger generations, like my son and my daughter, there's a lot more access to internet and they're doing a lot of fact checking and they're also a lot more in tune with themselves and they seem to care more about the earth. I don't know. They're just like this really special generation. They get a lot of... They're not as conditioned. They're not conditioned as much. But you were talking in an interview about how it used to be easier. We could, we were told who to, where to worship, what to wear, what to be like. And now we're kind of like able to find our free identity. But at some point, that's causing a little bit of anxiety as well.

I think it causes a tremendous amount of anxiety. What a massive shift it's been. I mean, look, I don't want to live under some authoritative rule where I have to dress a certain way and talk, you know, all of that. I'm glad to throw that aside. But I don't know that we always understand how quickly that happened in terms of human history, and what the cost is of that happening. Because our psyches can't catch up to that big of a shift that quickly, I think. And so there is an enormous amount of anxiety from the fact that I am the arbiter of all truth now somehow. I have to decide what is true. I have to decide what is good, what's righteous action, you know, who are the good people, what kind of romantic relationship

is good enough for me when I see all this shit on Instagram and think maybe it should be looking that way. But then there's this other thing over here and, oh my God, and I have to choose my career. And now I have to choose my gender. Now I have to choose like everything, right? So it's like, holy shit, of course we're all medicated. I mean, it feels impossible to do that and to know we're doing it right. How do you know? How do you know that it's good or it's the right choice? I mean, for everything to be determined by the individual is exhausting. Yeah. You said something that just totally stuck out to me. You get a lot of people that want to

talk about your tattoos and your look and how you don't look, you know, like you'd be a pastor in a church. And you're like, that's not what people should be asking me. What people should be asking me is why are these people listening to me and coming to me? Yeah. I forgot I said that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, like have some curiosity about that Like, why, why do I have half a million social media followers? Why is your church is going empty? Right. Right. And like, why is, why is the congregation I founded doing just fine, you know, and still thriving? Like, those are, those are better questions than like, what are your tattoos mean? Why do you think they're coming to you? I would be more interested in hearing other people answer that because I could say anything.

I could be like, cause I got an awesome rack. I don't know. Okay. Well then I'll answer that. I could make up anything out of my ego. I would say this is just maybe my opinion because our world is shifting towards authenticity and vulnerability and you are a fucking amazing human that shows that on all levels. You implement what everyone hopes to be, the truly nonjudgmental. You fucking throw all your dirty laundry out there. You keep your shit humble. humble you check yourself you are just raw and that's what those people are attracted to i think those are the things that allow me to be hearable you know because as soon as somebody is like arrogant or starts talking in that preacher voice or whatever it is or thinks they're the shit i I turn off. I mean, I'm not going to listen anymore.

Yeah. And now it's time for Break That Shit Down. People still want to hear good religious teaching, not bullshit religious teaching. And so I think people listen to me. And now, you know, I have a huge atheist readership because just the wisdom from the Christian tradition, they're down with. So, I mean, I think, you know, as the institution of the church is dying, I think that it is good for them to pay attention to, yeah, it's not because the basic wisdom within this tradition is worthless.

It's because they've confused the wrapping and the gift for a very long time. And they've protected the wrapping and ignored what the gift is. And the gift is just the perennial wisdom that comes out of all of the traditions. You know what I mean? Each of them has some kind of perennial wisdom that can be so transformative for any human who hears it, you know? Yeah, you've taken out all the bullshit. Yeah, and so as a religious leader, I'm just a caretaker of this very particular tradition

that has the perennial wisdom within this one tradition that I am ordained in. That's, I just stay in that lane. Yeah. Where can everybody find you if they wanted to check out your books and blogs? I'm always in my apartment because it's the pandemic. No, don't find me here. I, let's see, I have a a newsletter on Substack called The Corners. So you can just Google The Corners, Nadia Boltover. I have a podcast called The Confessional with The Moth and PRX. I love it.

Thanks. You know, I'm on Twitter and all that. We are curious. Are you mixing something up? You left the church because you said you just felt like your time was done. What are you up to? Well, I mean, the podcast was huge. That was huge. And then and I bought a sprinter van that's being outfitted into a little off grid, tiny home camper. And I'm going to take it out on the road in the spring and kind of turn

it into a mobile confessional booth and maybe try and figure out how to do live events. I might do like a local NPR affiliate parking lot tour across the state. So I'm going to be out there doing stuff. We can't thank you enough. You know, we have a soft spot for Colorado. Thank you for what you've done for the community. Awesome.

We really appreciate you. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up.

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