Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert experts on expert. I'm Jack Shephard. Hello, Monica Padman. Hello, DAX Shepard. You're in a stunning orange toad ahead.

Paying guy and guy and my nails match. Yeah, orange is your color. I know. Purples your color, but orange boy, does it make the skin pop, pop, pop. Thank you.

Now, listen, upon popular request, we were urged to have a religious person on to, you know, share a different side.

Yes. Because often I'm spewing my atheistic take on things nihilistic, terrible view of life.

And there's no one there to rebuttal about what the Christians feel like. So we were urged to find someone and Nadia was suggested to us and by George, do we love her?

Yes, she was awesome. Nadia Boltz Weber is a three times New York Times best selling author, a Lutheran minister and public theologian. She is an ordained Lutheran pastor, founder of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. Her books are Shameless, A Sexual Reformation, Accidental Saints, Finding God in All the Wrong People, and Rick's The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and a saint.

Knottiest podcast is called The Confessional, and it features ugly confessions from beautiful people. She is all kinds of fun and we love talking to her.

It was a very cool conversation, so different than our normal ones. It really was. It was fantastic. So please enjoy. Nadia, Boltz Weber. We are supported by Square now.

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He's in charge. First of all, I just want to thank you for doing our podcast.

I think you mentioned, like on one of the episodes, you want to just talk to someone in religion and then a shit ton of people tag me on Instagram and they're like, talk to Nadia. Yeah. People who are not religious, I'm their religion person.

Like, yeah, like anti religion religion. So I'm very proud of my atheist readership. That's my shiny little trophy. Yeah.

I'm going to quote some of the stuff I saw you speak on in learning about you that is incredibly profound and transcends all that stuff. But it really came about because I'm an outspoken atheist.

Lots of our listeners are religious and many of them have said, you know, it'd be cool if eventually when you said that shit, someone had a response, which I totally agreed with. So I guess I just want to declare to you what my intention is.

Sure. Which is I'm not the type of atheist that wants anyone to stop believing in God. Monica and I have a couple of really close friends that I can see Jesus in their life. I'm not denying it. Like I can see that for them. It's really, really cool if I have a single ulterior motive. It's really just to find out how you navigate certain areas of it. That would be very hard for me to navigate for sure.

That sounds fun. OK, great. And also, I equally am not the kind of Christian who people want to come to me and explain why they don't go to church. And I'm like, oh God, I'm so sorry. I don't care. Like I said, it's like I don't have a dog in that fight at all.

You don't get a year end bonus with membership. Even when I was a parish pastor, you know, I found it interesting what people believed in my parish, but I didn't feel responsible for what they believed right at all. Like what you believe has to do with a million things. I have nothing to do with.

Well, I thought maybe we could start with what I interpret as similarities between you and I in that we're both scumbag addict alcoholics.

Yeah, correct. Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that could make us closer than anything could make. Yeah. People close. Yeah. No, I'm definitely a garbage person. Yeah. You're 28 years sober this year. Yeah. Wow. Congratulations. That is so impressive between my boyfriend and I.

I think we have I'm not so great at the math, but he also has I think he has twenty nine years. Twenty nine years.

OK, so that is, that's fifty seven, fifty seven cumulative years. You'd think we'd be more mature. If you do the math you're like wow, you're in the fifth dimension. Right. I'm like, you know, still a garbage person so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well I guess I try to explain to people like oh it is fix nothing. My first thought is still when my daughter's crying like fucking a I got to get up and I got to step over all my shittiness and then I get to the point where I go stand up and go look and then I do it and but that's all it taught me to stand up and go look.

It didn't keep me from being a self-centered idiot.

Yeah, well, my friend said we really suffer from a disease called First Thought wrong. Oh, that's great.

Yeah, I might go further and go like first, second, third wrong for me. I'm like, progress is like I'll go half half. Oh, there's the right answer.

Well, I mean even after all the programs sobriety therapy I do enneagram on if you're into that personality stuff, even after all that, my first reaction to almost everything is fuck you now I almost never stay there, but I pretty much always start there. But the time that elapses between starting there and going somewhere and responding from a different place is shorter. Yeah, but yes, I didn't get a personality transplant. I'm still have the same wiring.

You know, we interviewed Bill Gates on Tuesday. He always warms up for me.

Prior to going in to talk to him, I had to have like a real long lecture with myself, which is like this is not your opportunity to try to prove to him you're smart and get his approval.

That is not what this is about. Like you got to enter this like he's so much smarter than you get off that thought. Just don't don't do that. So it ended up in my bedroom.

And I actually have this moment where I go, oh, I'm really proud of myself. I stayed humble and I didn't do the thing I was afraid of. I wonder if we'll win a Peabody for that interview.

And then I started laughing hysterically because I'm like, look at you, man. You're complimenting yourself on your humility. And then literally, you know, you think maybe you'll win a Peabody. And I shared that. Then the next night at a meeting, I was like, a gift is I laughed out loud. Whereas fifteen years ago I would have planned that Peabody for a good to up your acceptance speech.

What you're going to wear. Oh, I'm mad at totally. Exactly. Said you're going to say, well, so my equivalent is one of my closest friends. Her name was Rachel Held Evans. She died a little over a year ago and she's also. A writer and speaker in progressive Christian circles and a dear friend, we started a conference, we ran four years together during the Obama administration when she announced that she was invited to the White House Prayer Breakfast, my very first thought was, why wasn't I invited to the White House prayer breakfast?

My second thought was, who the fuck thinks that I like you? Yeah, what kind of person?

Like, why wasn't I invited to the White House? I laughed at myself so fast.

Yeah, I love that we have that in common. And then just give people kind of a brief history of of your life. Million people love you, which they all reached out. So most people know this, but you're from Colorado. You had some addiction, you got sober, you became an author. You are three times New York's bestseller. And then you you ended up becoming a Lutheran minister.

And then you founded House for All Sinners and Saints as a congregation of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denver. So how do you get from getting sober to talk to occupying that role?

So I was raised a super fundamentalist Christian like kind of whack a doodle sectarian. We went to church three times a week. Women weren't allowed to pray out loud in front of men, couldn't preach, couldn't be ushers. Even the whole thing about women not having authority over men was taken so seriously that when we turned 12, our Sunday school teachers were always women up until that point. And then we had a man as a Sunday school teacher because 12 year old boys had more authority than grown women in the church.

I was, oh my gosh. Wow. And we were the only Christians like we really believe were the only Christians. And so people would be like, hey, is your new friend, Stacey, a Christian? And I'd have to be like, no, she's a Baptist. And so it was that kind of deal, but it's all I knew. And of course, you don't know your childhood crazy till you meet other people and then you're like, oh, that's not normal.

I left that church when I was probably 16, 17 years old, and I couldn't have anything to do with Christianity. I hated it.

I just got really personal question. Yeah, you can. Is there any trauma that preceded that departure?

I had some trauma, but I had nothing to do with the church. I was just a really sick kid. I had an autoimmune disorder cause my eyes to bulge. I could see white all around the IRS. My eyelids couldn't close, so my eyes are bulged out of my face. And I couldn't have surgery till I was like, Sixteen's not Graves's.

It is, it's OK.

But kids don't get Graves disease, so it went undiagnosed for a long time. I had all this alienation and when I get to high school, the only people who seem to in any way think I was cool were the gay boys like they loved me. What happened was when there's a difference between what I'm told is true or what I'm told to believe is true and what I experience to be true, there's a problem. I was told homosexuality is an abomination and that, you know, all this stuff.

But then I go to high school and they thought I was fabulous. And it was my first experience of people thinking I was cool or even wanting to hang out with me. And it was love, right? These boys loved me and I loved them. And so what I was experiencing to be true was very different than what I taught was true. And Mom and I pretty much go with my experience if that happens. And also I was told, you know, women had to couldn't have authority over men.

But I'm like, but hold on, why am I smarter than my male Sunday school teacher then? You know, like stuff just didn't work. So I left and I hated it. I didn't know any other form of Christianity existed, and I just thought it was damaging and irrational. Fundamentalism is something that is hard to leave, but it's hard to leave in more than one way because it gives you a really dualistic thinking, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You this like there's good and bad, right and wrong. Black and white people are saved or they're lost.

It forces you to be compartmentalized because they're being confronted with reality and you're learning another thing and then you're just really getting good at having multiple personalities virtually. Right.

You have to pretend things are true when you're experiencing them not to be true. It's easier to leave a fundamentalist church than it is to leave the thinking it gave you. And so I ended up becoming this super hardcore leftist activist, but with really the same kind of thinking. Either you're down with the cause or you're against. I mean, I was involved in this like crazy armed land rights battle in northern New Mexico. Oh. I mean, it was just it was not armed to land battle, OK?

But it was the same mentality and in a way. And so I've had so much distance from it now that when I had a prisoner maybe five, six years ago, say, who was just coming out of fundamentalism and which you get so triggered and angry every time she saw something from one of her Christian friends on Facebook, like one of their stupid memes, she just get to get so angry. And she said, nasty. You don't see.

Angry about it anymore, because when did you know you were free from that? And I realized I was free from it when I could look back on my religious upbringing and not view it dualistic, when I could allow myself to admit there were beautiful things about my upbringing and that didn't feel like a betrayal of the part of me, that the shitty things hurt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I was free. That's when I left Functionalism.

Boy, Manuchehr, you're striking on such a larger issue, which is just binary thinking versus nuance and gray and life is almost 99 percent nuance and gray.

Totally. It's harder for us to understand. I mean, we think categorically and so we just want to put things in the right category all the time, which really is a matter of survival. Like, you have to look at a plant and you're like, is that dinner or is it poison? Right. You couldn't be like, is it a shade of poison? It may maybe partially a dinner. I couldn't do it.

Is it psilocybin? It's poison and it's great. It's so so that was sort of my journey. So what happened was when I got sober, I kept hearing, like, you got to do the God thing, the prayer thing. Like, that's kind of how it works. And I realized I didn't really ever stop believing in God ever. That didn't go away the whole time. I still loved Jesus. I just couldn't stand the church. And so I think that the theological non specificity of the 12 steps is what allowed me to find a theological specificity that met me, where my experience was, if that makes sense.

So I discovered Lutheran theology is just really different than other Christian theology because it's based in paradox. It's not based in that dualistic thinking. It's based in like holding really difficult things in tension together.

So you gave a eulogy or something? Yeah. So I was kind of dipping my toe back into Christianity, but in this more social justice oriented kind of liberal Lutheranism. So I was going to church and a good friend of mine named PJ Moore, I was also doing stand up just because I couldn't afford therapy. And so I just it was I'd rather make thirty dollars, you know, emceeing a scholarly works and work my shit out that way. Sure.

I had I was part of this whole group, this 12 step group that my friend PJ, he was a comic and he was a member of that group and we were really good friends. And you know, he struggled a lot with mental illness issues and he kind of lost the battle, you know, so he ended up dying by suicide. And when he died, all of our friends just kind of turned to me and they're like, well, you can do this funeral, right?

I hadn't been to seminary. I was just literally the only religious person in my friend group, so they assumed you could do it. And so I was like, I guess. So I gave his eulogy and it was at the comedy works in downtown Denver, a packed house. And I just looked out at the crowd. It was like comics who were really trying to not show any emotion because it's like, you know, social Darwinism runs very deep in the green room.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, academics and recovering alcoholics and queers. And I just look out at the sea of people and I I'm standing there and I'm like, these are not church folks, right? And they don't have a pastor. And then I was like, oh, shit, I think that's supposed to be me. Like, it really was this. Like, these people need somebody to pastor them. And then when I thought, oh, I think that's me that set me on my path.

So like my like so called like call to ministry, it was not generic. I wanted to be a pastor to my people.

And then what was the education that you then took on?

Well, I ended up getting a degree in religion from Seyou Boulder, and then I have a master's of divinity from Iliffe School of Theology.

Is there a process, though, whereby you get certified through?

It's extensive. You have to have a graduate degree in theology and then you have to work as like a hospital chaplain for a while and they have to do a year of internship. And then there's a body of people, this committee that's walking with you the whole time. And at each point they decide, do you get to go to the next point? Right. And so it's it's not the easiest thing. And so when people are like, oh, I'm ordained to universal life because, you know, I did my friend's wedding.

I'm like, yeah, I do. You know, how many years of education and training and like a group that represents another group of millions of people had to, like, check me all the way. And I have a bishop and, you know, apostolic succession. The bishop laid hands on me, you know, all of this stuff. Yeah, I had a credit card transaction.

So if you want to see them as comparable, knock yourself out. But I feel like you're asking a lot. For me to see if you were watching Game of Thrones while you went through the courts and you and you didn't miss any of the plot. So yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. And I'm just now I'm catching up. It's so stupid. I didn't think of this, but Lutheranism is Martin Luther Wright, and he led the big break away from Catholicism.

Yeah. So my church house for all sinners and saints that I started our church logo is like a piece of parchment with a nail at the top, like ninety five theses on the door of the Wittenburg Church. And so we used to have shirts that that had that on the front and on the back. It said radical Protestants nailing shit to the church store since 15 17.

So that was our church.

OK, so I watched a video of yours today, but you read this passage and it's about these emperors, basically. And then you started thinking in terms of what do those people really feel when that was written? What were they experiencing? And you said what they're experiencing was basically oppression from these these people, these monarchs.

And you asked your own parishioners what things they felt oppressed by or subjugated by. And overwhelmingly, it was depression and anxiety and these different things. And then you go on to say in this gave me chills.

You said these guys, Pontius Pilate and whoever else are only remembered because they are a footnote to a man named Jesus who hung out with fishermen and sex workers. And that's why they're remembered. They're a footnote to someone more important in your anxiety is a footnote to your life and your boss is a footnote to your life. And I got chills and I'm getting them.

Now, look, monochord on goosebump. I'm like, what a fucking kick ass interpretation. Yeah. Of that. And so I immediately was like, that's kind of my introduction to what you think and how you're approaching this whole thing. Now, here's where I'm confused.

So to me, you're wading through so much stuff to pull out what is good about it. Yes, you did find something that's so inspiring and so beautiful, but man, you had to pull it out of that text. And I'll also argue you had to ignore so much of the text in getting to the things that you would want other people to embrace in. So my question is, why aren't there among the many like minded people like you, why would it be impossible for you to get together and amend the fucking constitution you guys have?

We had a constitution and it had slavery in it. And, you know, at some point we said slavery is bullshit and we amended the Constitution. We didn't leave it in there and just go, oh, skip that part. We amended it. Why don't you guys get together and pull out what's great from that book and find some consensus and just ditch all the misogyny, the slavery issue for sure, the homophobia, the patriarchal. You know, there's so much stuff I write.

You help me understand why that's not an option.

Well, Thomas Jefferson did that dispute. Oh, no. Yeah. He just literally just cut all the shit out he didn't like. There's the Thomas Jefferson Bible. Yeah, OK. So I didn't know that. Yeah, that's not an unheard of instinct. But also the thing about the Bible is it's like the world's most fucked up family album. Right? So, OK, we could say Uncle Lester the molester, we don't want him in there anymore.

But if we do that, we don't know what to look for in the next generation to me to say, hey, there's all that shit in there. All of that is just the disaster of human behavior and greed and hatred. Right. So I don't want to forget it. You know, kind of like in the Solms, there are some homes that are beautiful and praising God for the Leviathan, the sea monsters. Like it's all good. It's all, you know, beautiful.

But then there are songs where it's like, I want to bash my enemies, babies, heads against the Stones, you know? And people are like, they're so violent. I'm like you. You've never thought a violent thing. Like that's not somehow part of your makeup. So to me, it's about this incredible breadth of the human experience when it comes to ourselves and to trying to understand the divine. And it doesn't mean that all of it's good.

A lot of it is absolutely garbage. But here is like something that the Constitution and the Bible have in common is the way people leverage it to their own advantage and pretend that's not what they're doing. So constitutional originalists who are like, hey, it's not me. This is just what the founders wanted. This is what the people who drafted the Constitution intended. So it's not my interpretation. I'm like, oh, it just happens to benefit the category of citizen you are.

That's a fucking coincidence. Show me a black female jurist who's a constitutional originalist. That's not that's not a thing. Same with the Bible. You know, people do the same exact thing in my upbringing. They're like, hey, this is not about us. The.

Men who were preaching and teaching us to behave a certain way, I had to go to Christian Charm class, you can tell that fucking worked like a charm to be charmingly fucking down there saying, hey, it's not us, this is God's will. And they're like, so go make me a burger. Right. So the reason I'm still in the game, the reason I won't leave is because scripture, liturgy, theology, these things are way too potent to be left in the hands of people who only use them to justify their dominance over another group of people.

Yes. And look, I'm very, very grateful that you're a voice in Christianity for that exact reason. But let me try to transpose something more current that I would say arguably sounds like a similar defense is the civil war generals that are, you know, decorating many town squares across America? I feel like the argument you're making is a little similar to those people saying, well, if we get rid of those statues, we're getting rid of the history to which I would argue, no, what we've done is stop celebrating them.

They're not going to be absent from the war chronicles. And similarly, I would say to you, that book is worshipped. It's not the book isn't the history of Western civilization. It is a religious text that people read before bed and they read to their children and their children. It's a teaching tool, and so I'm a little nervous that it's not in the context that I would prefer it to be like, yeah, look at all the nastiness of humanness.

Look at all the patriarchy.

Look at this for sure. But I would say using your analogy, it's to say, look, we're not going to inscribe the bash babies heads against the Stones Psalm on a plaque and then have that in our public square. OK, we're not going to take it out of the book, just like we're not going to take what the Confederacy was about out of the textbooks. Right. And to remove that. But we're not going to worship it. And you're right.

You use the right word. People worship the Bible. And there's a there's a theological term for that. It's called idolatry because the Bible's not God.

Well, yeah, that could be another three hour conversation with you and I that there is a notion that a man wrote it and that man is the man who wrote it is recalling what he learned in a nine hour seminar. You couldn't put twenty five people in a room, give them a half hour speech, get them out of the room, have them write it down and get anything above 20 percent accuracy. Sure. Of course, that's its own concerning issue.

But I do think that there's something inspired to it. But that doesn't mean God, you know how the president's to sign their name. They have that little machine that does it does the things. Oh, I like. Oh, yeah. There's a way that you can have your autograph with a pen and it does.

Oh yeah. It's like been mechanized. Yeah. And there's a fancy word for it. I don't know what it is, but it's not like that kind of transcription system. It's people struggling with their experience of themselves and their ideas of God and inspiration all at the same time. So it's always going to be a mix of those things. And so to me, again, is a Lutheran. I just have a different view of the Bible than most Christians do, because that term, like the word of God to Lutherans, that term means Jesus.

That's the word of God as Jesus. The prologue to John said in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. So to Lutherans were like, that's the word of God. It's a person that we can read about, talk about, preach about, saying about, like that's the word. Now, secondly, the word of God is any kind of preaching or music or whatever that tells that story.

And then only thirdly, in a tertiary sense, it's the text. And so Martin Luther said the Bible's the cradle that holds Christ, the cradle isn't Christ. That I mean, this is where people get super confused. So they confuse the rapping and the gift, you know. Right. And so to me, anything in there that talks about grace and forgiveness and all the stuff that that whole Jesus thing was about, that has more gravity, that has more authority than anything else in the Bible, and then anything that comes close to that, that message has more authority.

Now, the farther out you get from that message, the less authority it has and farther out.

Does that mean in time and space, like. No, no.

In terms of what that message is, if they're like, well, what do you do with the verse that says that if a man lays with another man, he should be stoned to death? I'm so sorry. I don't have a horse in that race that I don't have to, like, stand up for some shit that's way out here compared to them. That the central message. Yeah, I already have my answer.

You do believe that's relevant and it has value and it should be in there despite the fact that you're not going to make that part of one of your speeches. It's a bummer to me that it still is weaponized by a big sector of the country.

It still is.

They are proof that they can stand on why marriage between two men will ruin marriage because they have this tax that's camouflage for their own hang ups.

That's all it is. Totally. So the thing where you got goose bumps from this this message, I would argue that in some way that's difficult to articulate. It's because there's something in that book that when you do the work and you dig, there's like something transcendent. It's an endless reservoir of meaning and transformation that can be found in it that you're not going to find on Oprah's Book Club list.

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Well, I had a guest on oh, Pete, do you know him? I've been on his podcast. Matter of fact, behind me right here is a still from The Simpsons. Oh, that. And, yeah, an episode he wrote. And one of my books is On the table Accidental Saints By Not Able Celebrities on the Table. Oh, that's awesome.

And I love him. And he did make a great point when I brought up what is the story where they God wants the man to kill his son, Isaac and Isaac, you know, and I'm glad I got that right.

Although theology decrees that I'm like, give me a minute. We is out the pause. We would have made you look good.

But he made a very stellar point, which is, you know, your feelings aside, you and I are talking about that story, and that's two thousand years old.

So you got to at least respect the staying power of it, which which I totally do that.

Clearly, there's some magic there. I would say because it's true. Now hear me out. The reason we are still telling these stories is because the stories are true. Now, here's something the Enlightenment stole from us is the ability to distinguish between fact and truth. So if somebody says, do you think it's a fact that Jesus was born of a virgin, like a medical fact? I'm like, OK, is that a fact that's unknowable. Is it true?

It's absolutely true.

Why don't you go a little further? Yeah. Like to me, that sounds a little bit like I do recognize there are emotional truths that are often in opposition to empirical facts. I recognize that in a big part of our life is is emotional and spiritual. So it has to be given the same way. That's right.

I guess that's kind of what I'm saying, is that there is truth to these stories. There's a spiritual truth to them. And when people get hung up on. But is that is it verifiably, factually true? We weren't even thinking about verifiable factual truth until about 20 minutes ago in humanity. You know, the scientific method and human reason and all that shit that the Enlightenment hey, I'm a fan of penicillin. Like I'm not saying it was bad for us, but I'm just saying Charles Taylor said the Enlightenment gave with one hand and still with the other.

So there are things that it took from us. And so fundamentalism did not exist before the Enlightenment. Fundamentalism is literally a reaction to the Enlightenment.

Are you anti enlightenment? No, I think that there are things that it gave and things that took away, because now after the Enlightenment, if we have a way of understanding reality like scientific, the scientific method, verifiable facts, things like this, now that human reason has been elevated in that way, then these other things that we know are true in terms of religion. Now, in order for us to still think they're true, we have to believe they're fact in the same way that idea of a literal seven day creation thing, creationism.

Yeah, that's that's this weird mix of like the Enlightenment telling us there's only one way to understand what's true.

But then what would we say that what's true is subjective versus what's factual is objective? That's a good question.

Yeah. I don't know that I have an answer for that. Yeah, that is a really good question.

I just have a few thoughts in order to lay them out correctly. I was I wanted to write them down this morning. So here's one thing I thought. Do you think the blind eye we turn towards the gnarly parts of the Bible is easy for us to do?

Because we've been conditioned through having parents who are deeply flawed and may have hurt us, but who we love deeply.

Do you think our willingness to accept this misogynistic, xenophobic, scientifically inaccurate, geologically impossible text is sad in that it's sad? We've been trained to accept that because we desire the love of our father or God that much?

Isn't this one big abusive relationship? Shouldn't we reject the love of someone who would ask us to kill our son to prove our love and commitment to him? Isn't that pathological? OK.

There's a lot of yeah, there's a lot in there. I guess my question of that story is less like what kind of God is it that would ask this and more what is it within humans that makes us believe that God asks this of us? So there is a truth to be found in the story. But for me. But it's not the one I think I was taught.

Yeah, but what's been explained to me in defense of that story is that, well, God didn't kill his son and that when he proved his love and devotion to God, of course, God would never let him kill his son. And he didn't. But I'm not very satiated with that answer. That's still a very vain God who wants to test your love and. Clearly shown there's conditions to his love, right, and that is so similar to to our flawed parents, we all have and I don't think kids feel the same way about me.

And I just I get worried that we're conditioned to ignore what we know. Like you were saying, you know, the reality is not meeting up with what you're being taught. And I think, sadly, we're pretty conditioned to be that way. Yeah.

Do you do Javerbaum is he is God on Twitter the tweet. Oh, God, yeah. Yes. He had a show on Broadway that was called. Oh gosh. It was basically God offers new new commandments like he has Sean Hayes on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw. I saw. I saw it. Yeah. So one of the most brilliant there's a term called Jesus which is where you take a text in the Bible and you just dig the shit out of it.

Like you kind of go, what is this word, what is that you look for? What's the interpretation you just go to town with? Could it mean this? Could it mean that? And he's an atheist. I mean, I've hung out with the dude. He's atheist, but he had, to me, the most astounding interpretation, exegetical approach to this Isaac story, Isaac and Abraham story, I remember. But he goes, one of the commandments was, thou shalt not seek to have a personal relationship with me.

This is evangelicals are all about their personal relationship with God. Yeah, yeah. Sure, yeah. Yeah. So one of the new commandments don't seek that out. Right. And yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes, here's what it's for your own good because I had a personal relationship with one of you once and it brought out the worst in me. So in the text Abraham has a very particular relationship with God. They were just close.

Yeah. They were just there were brothers. OK, let's say OK. In Dave's interpretation, God in the play is saying don't try and have a personal relationship with me. It brought out the worst in me because I really was close to this guy Abraham. So much so that I said, I want to give you your heart's desire. And what Abraham and Sarah wanted more than anything in the world was to have a son. And Sarah was old.

They were old, right. They were like, it's never going to happen. And an angel comes and says, no, your descendants are going to fill the land. And Sarah laughs because she's like, I got a dusty assume there's no family. That's adorable, but not so. You may not purchase things. And then they had the son, Isaac. Right. And so imagine if you're elderly and you think it's never going to happen, you have this precious son.

And so God's like, yeah, I had a close relationship. And he and he goes, what do you want? He goes, I want a son. And I gave him then he wanted more than anything in the world. And he loved that son so much that I started thinking, does he love that son more than he loves me? And then I did a super fucked up thing and I just did him like, do you love this son?

Will you kill the son for me? Right. It's so it was this genius telling of the story. But to me, the stories in the Bible tell us about ourselves. And if we're lucky, we get a glimpse of some kind of truth about the divine as well.

OK, so in your mind, because again, and I'm not saying this in a patronising way to me, since I don't believe that the man Jesus Christo's was actually the son of God, I recognise there was a man here by that name who sure has a history. I acknowledge that. Yeah. But because I don't believe he was divine and I know you do. But then I do recognize that you also are going to concede that the Earth was probably not made in seven days.

Where are you on the part? Where is the God you worship that vane that he could make a mistake? Is he all knowing and omnipotent, but yet also got jealous of a child he created?

I think God was like, oh, man, you guys drive me nuts. OK, let's see what can I do to set this straight? And so God's like, I think I'll just make myself manifest inside rapidly dividing cells inside the womb of an insignificant Palestinian girl in the first century who's not married. And I'll see how they do it, like forever. This is how I want to be known, you know, as a completely powerless, vulnerable, homeless infant that has no place in our society at all, like absolutely marginalised.

And gods like this is forever how I want to be. No. Yeah, yeah.

No, no. That's a yeah. In that if there were a God in the God chose to send his son down and he put him in that position, it would be very admirable.

That's what I would hope.

I'm not big enough to do that. I have children and I made money. And I can tell you I'm not going to help them when they're older, but I'm going to fucking help them when they're older because I'm not big enough to do that.

I'm too human to let them suffer.

I actually don't dig the hole son of God thing. You don't know. Jesus is just God, yeah. OK, here's here's the thing is when people start talking about Jesus like he's God's little boy, it gets it gets it gets very disturbing to me because it's like God is divine child abuser. So then the story is like God had a little boy. He only had one. We don't know fertility issues, not sure God has his little boy.

And he loved that little boy so much. But you know what he had to do because you masturbated. He had to call that little boy. You know, it's not like how in the world.

So he's died because I put my mom's underwear on when I was nine. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's your fault and you should feel real bad. Matter of fact, you should feel so bad about the fact that you caused God to kill his little boy he loved so much that you're good. Like this is the whole. Yeah, there you go. Evangelical Christianity. God is divine child abuser, trying to make you feel bad so that you'll act good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Now, it's also technically heresy to say that he's the son of God is heresy not to use that term, but functionally, if people mostly an American evangelical Christianity, if you say God, they think God the father, right? Yeah. Dude, in the sky, all the power, long beard, capricious killer surveillance system. A Robert Grilli drones. Yes. Yeah, exactly. OK, so that's what they think. Then there's just a couple of kind of minor supporting characters, Jesus in the Holy Spirit who are less important.

Well, that's heresy. It's called Arianism, not related to the racist thing, but you know, the like the fourth century, it was ruled heretical. So if the Council of Nicaea, when they came up with this sort of formula for this is what Christians believe they were like, it was all about who is Christ and it was all about the Trinitarian thing. Yeah. So to them, they're like, no, Jesus is God. God is three things at the same time.

Now talk about like paradox and not dualistic thinking that God is like relationship.

Well, my my favorite meme I'm sure you've seen it is a picture of Jesus. Prain, have you seen this one? Jesus is praying and it says, God, can you hear me? It's me.

You totally. But I know like Trinitarian theology is a bit of a mental pretzel, but I like it because it keeps us from getting too prideful about knowing exactly what the divine is like. Like I kind of like the fact that it's super puzzling. Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, you know, in my judge, it's not to say that I'm judgement less of Christians. Again, I am truly in support of anyone that's finding any peace and harmony and betterment. Through that, I truly am. The arrogance flag gets waved when the notion that you could understand this thing totally.

I need a God who is maybe slightly more mysterious and nimble and powerful than my ability to understand God.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. We are problems. Yeah, yeah. That's an AA thing. It's like, yeah, I need a God that's big enough to solve my problems because I can. Yeah.

But the Trinitarian thing also it's kind of like I think of baseball like if the is honest to God we're like one inch farther apart, they'd never score. And if the Pacers were like one inch closer they'd score all the time and it would be even more boring. So I think of that with like Trinitarian theology, this idea of these three beings in relationship or three ideas or three pieces of wisdom or truths or whatever in relationship is balanced in that way.

So anyway, most I would say technically most Christians in America are heretics.

Yeah, OK, so I guess what I'm having a hard time differentiating is when you read and you're interpreting these stories and you're finding the humanity takeaways and how it's reflecting what we do on Earth, what is the difference between what you're doing and then like how we read the Bible the same way where we don't believe in God, but we're still taking it, as, you know, what's a nicer word than fable? But like, these are lessons. These are lessons.

Beautiful teachings. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely stuff to be learned, whether you're an atheist or you believe. And I guess for me, the people who are strong believers believe the text and it seems like you interpret the text. So what? I don't what is the difference between what you are doing and what we're doing? You believe in Jesus, but what does that mean?

What do you believe he does for you or you believe he's real? I believe he was real. Yeah. He mostly gets me better parking spaces.

Oh, man. I got him. I would like. Yes, I mean, once you get a gold card status, it goes with the parking, yeah, VIP all the way.

I don't know. That's a really good question because I do believe the stuff like I'm down, like I believe in the miracles. I believe all the crazy shit. Now, it's very hard for me to defend why I believe it. Because it's faith, right? I don't know. You never understood. How do you defend Faye? Right. It's not it's never appealed to me to even try. Yeah. And so I just get back to, like, the fact that I don't really care.

Like, when I was in my parish, I didn't care what my parishioners believed, but I cared deeply what they heard, what they heard from me. I was responsible for what they heard. And for me, their point of gravity to the whole thing is grace. That's the center point of the whole deal. If it's if it's anything other than grace and mercy and forgiveness, then I don't think it's actually Christian.

Well, and I want to say, anyone that wants to hear of Jesus's literal life and who he chose to spend time with and what the message was, he said that we know for sure, I can't imagine there's a human on earth that would object to his lifestyle in his message of forgiveness and his message of love and his message of inclusion.

There's no question that that person was a Siddarth or a Abood or one of these enlightened, enlightened human beings that have been here.

Right. Or maybe not a human being, but there's no pushback for me or monochord. I can't imagine anyone on the message, the teachings, the spirit of Jesus.

You know, I'm sure on that now, OK, I, I end up speaking out a lot of events that aren't Christian events. So I'm like, it's such an insufferable term. But thought leader gathering. You know, and feminist gatherings and wellness conference, all this stuff that's not Christian. Right. They're like, bring in the token one we can handle.

We can handle. Yeah, we're guilty of that as well. Like I can talk to this person.

So people come up to me again, they tell me their stories about, hey, I was raised Catholic, but my mom divorced, finally divorced from my abusive dad and then they wouldn't give her communion anymore. So I can't have anything to do with the church or, you know, I was raised Methodist, but, you know, the pastor was embezzling money. And I really looked up to him and I was like, I can't you know, I don't want anything to do with it.

Not once has somebody come up to me and be like, well, you know, I was raised Christian. But then I just one day I just realized that Jesus guy just doesn't have much to offer. Yeah, like, no, not once. And so what I realized is that people don't leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus. People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much they can't stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about that and clearly isn't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. And then I just want to take one second to bond with you because I'm being adversarial. But I also don't want to bond with you because in my own life I have an experience you're describing, which is I enjoy reading critiques of AA. People have sent me lots of scholarly critiques of AA and it does fit the definition of a cult. There is stuff I can't deny about it. Right. And then for me, it comes down to like all of that could be true.

But that happens to be the thing that saved my life and I had tried nearly every other thing. So regardless of what your academic resistance to AA is, I can only go on the fact that it saved my life and that I also did things that I don't do that I don't believe in. In the act of doing those things I don't believe in is actually just an act of humility, which I greatly needed. And also I couldn't solve the problem on my own.

And there's some magic in there and I don't know that I could put it into text, you know. So that's something that I'm not even threatened when people hate on him. I get it to man. If I if I were you, it would look like Scientology to me and great. But for me, I'm only here because of it. So I don't know what to tell you right now.

I think the big book had some kind of divine inspiration to it.

I do too. But let me tell you, I am in favor of amending that book. They need to get rid of some of the language. They need to make it, in my opinion, less Christian. I mean, they're saying a god of your understanding, but it is still very Christian leaning, in my opinion. I do think we should amend that book.

There are some misogynistic stuff, you know, to the wives. There's stuff that that we could we could do better. We could we could take the same message and we could do better. Let me give you another example. I say I'm in AA. Right, right, right. I'm not allowed to do that. But I also understand that I'm doing it in twenty twenty. And that law was written for AA in nineteen fifty six.

And when there were three dozen people and like one of them goes, hey, I got sober in AA. And then six months later, they're drinking the impact to AA when one of thirty six people it's not working for. Yes, very different.

So I'm like you, I'm trying to find what is the real intention of that and the intention of that tradition of being anonymous at the level of press. And whatever the intention is, no person should become the symbol of AA. I should be the face of AA. And then when I fail, that shouldn't be an indictment of AA. And so I say I'm in AA because I'm OK with some people being mad at me to get the 25 people that listen to this show that then found themselves in AA meeting.

I'll live with the 25 people that may be lived for the old timers on pissing off.

I mean, the spirit of the thing or the letter of the thing. Yes, it's the same dealing with scripture. I mean, you know, Jesus had some harsh things to say about divorce, right? Well, at the time, it truly was a really radical way to protect women, because at the time, if a man could just issue a letter of divorce whenever he wanted to, and it's not like she could go back to teaching a death sentence, that's a death sentence.

That's right. And so a thing that was intended to be a protection of the vulnerable. How is it weaponized against people in the church? By telling your mom who left her abusive husband she can't have communion anymore because she got divorced? Are you fucking kidding me?

Right. I mean, exact opposite outcome of the intention and and pridefully.

So right. Then they have just filled with pride about, well, you know, we're we're walking the narrow path and it's not popular. No, you're not popular because you're an asshole. Don't confuse those two things. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, every population of people have had deities. They've had a creation story. There's nothing unique. We all do this right. And there's a ton of very valid now scientific evidence for the evolutionary benefit of us believing in God. It allowed us to gather in groups of large numbers, allowed us to trust other people if we both believe in the same God. I know you're a friend. It was rewarded heavily through evolution to believe in God. Sure.

Social cohesion. Yeah, it curbed people's evil desires because there were rules. Yeah, sure.

And now if you're a theologian, so you look at the Judeo-Christian tradition, you know, we know it comes from Mesopotamia, that area. We know that that area was between the Tigris from the Euphrates. We know that that area flooded all the time. And when it flooded, it was apocalyptic. It wasn't like a flood we deal with. It was life ending. You compare it to a religion that is cropping up at the exact same time in Egypt where they live on a fertile crescent.

Everything's predictable. They're not losing crops. There's no famine. Sure there God is far less of a fear mongering God that needs constant appeasement, constant acts of worship. And so what do you do with that info? Someone like you were you can recognize like, oh, the environment. We can predict what kind of religion the people will create. And does it make you question, wow, I'm using a religion that was created in a world that was very insecure and I don't live in a world that's insecure.

Is this the best fit anymore?

Yeah, I do find it interesting, but I think always it's going to be human beings struggling with what it means to live together, what it means to live on this planet, how we understand transcendence. It's always going to be a variety of those things. So to me, it's interesting because it tells us so much about ourselves and what I think anthropologically about religion, which I oddly do a lot. It's because human beings have always been religious, like religion has fashioned itself an endless variety, every place, every culture, every time.

Because there's certain I would argue there's certain just needs in the human being. Yeah. That have always been that through religion.

And again, not to talk shit about the Enlightenment, but Deep Thinker is going to write you a hate letter. But it gave us a lot, but it didn't remove the needs that were met through religion. So this is one of the things I see as why I do my work is because I'm interested in what are the needs that aren't getting met, because people aren't going to church. And instead of saying, how can I get them to go to church or how can I make church more sexy and appealing?

I'm just out there doing my work thinking this meets a religious need and people. Yeah. So I don't care if they intellectually assent to the same theological propositions I do. It doesn't matter.

You just want to provide comfort and safety and unity. That's why I started my podcast, The Confessional, because I've been part of two different communities that practice some form of confession. Right. Twelve steps and the Lutheran Church. Yeah. And when people in my church, they data fail themselves a private confession and absolution with some regularity. And it was always an honor to ask, but often super boring. Oh, OK, because they wasn't spicy enough.

No, I'd be like they'd finish. They'd be so tense, you know?

I'm like, nothing personal, but I'm super unimpressed with your like, you know, forgiveness is for everyone. So you might go out and try harder next to make it make it count. Or is the underage sex where's the cynicism?

Shame this one this one girl show. Her confession was something really it was spicy. It was something really real. And she was so tense at the beginning. And then afterwards she was like, relax, we're laughing, you know, broke the tension. And she goes, Pastor Nadia, I just want to say that I'm so glad that you're my pastor because I just know you've done a lot worse than that.

Yeah, yeah. See, it's like a little service. It's a service I offer, but knowing that's a function of religion. But most people aren't religious. Now, I wanted to create a place where people could talk about stuff that still haunts them, you know. Yeah. And and then at the end of every episode, I write a benediction just for them. I write an original blessing that I record at the end. And so again, where do you receive a blessing?

That was a function. That was a priestly function. Where did we substitute like Instagram likes like. Oh yeah, yeah. Where do we go to receive a blessing. So I'm writing blessings for people. And so I guess I see myself as like a public pastor in that way. I describe it as I sort of like snuck into the cathedral and grabbed the most beautiful stuff and put it and put it out on the lawn with a free sign.

Yeah, no, I think it's so wonderful night. See the value you're adding to tons of people's lives. That's very clear to me.

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Now, when I was talking to my wife before I came here, I had written out a few things and I thought, I know better than to just speak. So I ran by her some of my thoughts, like she really liked the parent analogy. Right. And it's funny, when you have kids, you see you see how we we train them and it starts with Santa Claus and it's like it becomes this huge fucking conundrum when you're a parent for me who values honesty above all things.

That was the thing I thought was missing with adults in me when I was a kid. And and I go, OK, so there's this guy comes down the chimney. Redser lives in North Pole, sees everyone, blah, blah, blah. And I can see on this three year old's face that doesn't make sense. Right. And I see the best part of her punching holes through that. And then I find myself creating more lies to get her to believe that.

Well, how does he get everywhere? Oh, well, he can kind of stop time, right. So he's doing this for a long, long period. But for us, it's only eight hours at night. But for him, it's like God knows how long. And while I'm doing that, because the first child, we did it for a while. And so there were so many lies, I was like, now there's a fucking elf on the shelf.

And if you touch the elf, then you're going to hell or he won't come back or he's got to go. And I'm like, Oh my God. So I quickly thought, oh, this is a this is a little thing that we can start telling people to not listen to their intuition and to ignore the best part of their brain. The critical part that's punching holes in it go, no, no. We'll just forget about those and just believe in it, because there's presents coming and there's heaven coming.

And I saw the parallels and I'm like, oh, we start them on Santa Claus because it's so immediately appealing that then the transition into oh yeah, there's this guy, he's his dad, he's a sonneborn. Babies born to a virgin that we've kind of hardwired them to just ignore all that critical thinking and go with it for this ultimate prize. It my wife told me when I was laying this out, she said, the thing you're ignoring is the emotional aspect of this.

And you have to recognize that a lot of people like me have great anxiety. Not everyone's like you like, so self-assured and you're not fearful of this and that a lot of people want a dad or they want a mother. They want someone above them that can comfort them with the anxiety that so many of us deal with just living on this planet, in these cities in the way that we weren't designed to live, that you can't take that comfort away from people.

And so I recognize that. And she's dead. Right. And I'm glad she pointed it out to me. I would argue I get that from community. I get that from if you look at people's needs. Right. It's like fresh air. It's water, it's food, it's shelter, and it's fucking acceptance. It's as important you'll die without it. Yeah, but does it matter whether or not the magic of church is that community and the acceptance?

I pointed out to her we had a bunch of people over yesterday. There was this mass cohesion. Everyone was getting along. It was so wonderful. I said, did you have any anxiety during that period? She's like, no, I didn't. I go because you were in a group. You were in a community. Always good. You were safe.

Can't we get all that without the father?

I think people do. I think that there's a brilliant book by Dave Saul called Secular Society, which is basically saying, look, religion just makes you feel bad about yourself. Like I don't want to have anything to do with that. But in the book, he argues, instead of yammering on about how much time you're spending at church so that you can feel good, you talk about how much time you spend at the gym so you can justify your existence, you know.

Oh, yeah. Now, rather than only thinking clean thoughts were only eating clean food, you know, we just we just substituted like purity systems. And then we congratulate ourselves from getting away from religion. I totally agree with the whole original sin thing I do think exists in all of us.

Like we are so prone to that guilt and the feeling of toxicity and needing cleansing for sure.

And so where do we find that? I mean, you can find that in like a really deeply, deeply rooted mythological system, sacred texts, certain liturgies, practices. One of the reasons I do like church and I'm a liturgical person, so I go to I like really deeply traditional church.

I didn't know. I don't like liturgical. Thank you. We love your words. What is the liturgical. So have you ever been to like a Catholic mass? Oh, you are an Episcopal service. That's a liturgical service. So it's a liturgy. So you're singing the Curia and now you're going to do the Lord's Prayer and and there's ritual to it and there's parts of it that are unchanged. And so it house for all sinners and saints. It was very liturgical.

We used very traditional worship. We did a Gregorian chant setting of shows.

I love them, but it wasn't conventional. So we did it totally in the round, you know, led by a drag queen. I mean, it wasn't conventional, but it was traditional. And so I'm really drawn to that myself. And the reason is, is because that the liturgy has been sort of worn smooth by generations of people before me and contains the wisdom, the practices, their pain, their joy in it somehow because it's been done.

For so long in that way, and so the liturgy because of that, has an integrity of its own and what and why that's important to me is it doesn't demand my integrity in order for it to be efficacious. That's meaningful to me. Yeah. And so if you're kind of just making up your own thing and taking a little from this and reading a little tick, not hon. And then taking a hot yoga class, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.

But I think it's half half measures avail us nothing. It's OK. I mean, I'm not saying I'm not saying there's something wrong, but I think when people are like, I'm spiritual, not religious, I think what they mean is like I have curated a set of beliefs and practices in my life that give me a sense of well-being. Yeah, yeah. And that's fine. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. The thing I do wonder about it, though, is if that's your approach, are you going to curate the aspects that say, hey, think about giving away 10 percent of your income?

Yeah. Oh, by the way, also, pray for your enemies and forgive people and, you know, invite people to your home that are you're uncomfortable with or whatever. Like, is it going to include shit like that unless it afflicts the comfortable and comfort the afflicted? It might make you feel well, but it's not probably going to transform you.

I agree with you becoming self actualized through these three or four different things may work for some people. And I'm also nervous, those things that you pointed out, that I think, you know, being a cohesive member of a group can give you or help you find, hey, I have to ask the question that started this whole thing. So the whole reason I was ranting and the whole reason people suggested I talk to you, and I think rightly so, is you are a feminist.

So the issue I raised is I was sitting in a meeting in there and there was at a church.

So there was looking at all this different religious stuff. Right. And I was just looking around, looking at the Last Supper. Right. I'm looking at this different thing. I'm looking at. It's like Jesus is like, dude, the apostles are all dudes. God doesn't have a wife. There's no woman involved that the only woman is this virgin. You know, she couldn't be accepted if she hadn't been a virgin. And then the other one is Mary Magdalene.

And she is a sex worker, right? No, no, no. I got this wrong last time as well.

No, Mary Magdalene was not a sex worker. Oh, she was. She's conflated in the text with other women. So she did have seven demons cast out of her. So she did have kind of a rough story.

Well, who were the sex workers you were referencing that he had with? Oh, there's lots of those guys, just not Mary Magdalene. OK, so I'm looking around at all this stuff. And again, I don't have the knowledge of the Bible that I shouldn't even be speaking on it. But my understanding of it is basically I was just thinking if I was a woman, this is identical to women sitting in a classroom where you look up on the wall and it's Abraham Lincoln and it's George Washington and it's Thomas Edison is like, where is your place in this?

Like, to me, that is such an indictment of how patriarchal history is, is is there's no place for you. How does a young girl sit in that classroom and aspire when there's no one there representing her? And I just got very critical of the religion is just like, who is the here? Who's the female hero? And then I said that and I got all these responses from people, understandably so, who are defending their faith. Well, you don't know about this woman.

She was awesome at Bindu. They listed five or six women, but I've never fucking heard of them, you know, maybe they know maybe they have like hundreds in the Bible.

Yes. I mean, it would be it would be crazy to ignore the lopsidedness of that book in the religion in general, that the women I don't know why my daughter would want to join that religion. And they for sure you could answer that.

So. Oh, God. Well well, fuck them very much, first of all. But yeah, for sure. It's written from a male perspective. It's mostly male characters. But for instance, who was Mary Magdalene? There was one person who was chosen to witness the resurrection and told to go and tell everyone else about it. That's Mary Magdalene. Oh, gosh. She was told go and tell. She's she is the apostle to the apostles.

None of this shit would exist if she had not done that.

Yeah. The most impressive thing was the resurrection, right? Yeah. I would say more than water into wine.

I'd rather be able to rise from the dead than have wine one that well now. But you know, I know I in the past I was actually Jesus or the one you know, another thing about when we're talking about life is something fact or is it true or what do you believe the Enlightenment? All that stuff is that there are a lot of liberal Christians who don't really believe in the resurrection. Like they're like, no, it was that his God consciousness was so complete that even after he died, it felt like he was still with them.

You know, they do this thing where they're like, no, because that's just silly to believe in something so anti scientific. Right? Right. I'm like, I totally believe in the bodily resurrection. And the reason is, is because the body is pretty important. Throughout the whole story, I don't want it to end with it suddenly being an idea, you know, the idea that God's in a human body and then God takes on a human body and then his last supper, he's like, this bread is my body.

Like, eat it. Like, it's so disturbingly physical and like a super redemptive way for me that I don't want to, at the end of the story, for the body to just now be a feeling or an idea. I like the crazy thing about a resurrected.

I'm totally keeping the moment in sixth sense where you realize Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time.

I mean, there's no movie without that turn. That's right. So I and I get why it seems super crazy to believe it.

Yeah, but I'm fine. I'm fine with that. I guess I'm I'm not fine with the lack of females in the religion. I'm not and I don't know how everyone addresses that.

But where is that not true. I agree with you.

But we have the option of going forward changing that and including and putting the pictures on the wall and putting in the classroom and all these people that deserve to be up there. Sure. You don't even have that option. To my knowledge, you couldn't really decorated church with all these women that are symbols of power. I don't know how you fix it with what? You already have a set of characters, right?

Yeah. I mean, there are a lot more than people talk about in the Bible, like there's an awesome one. Yeah, l was this woman who in the Old Testament and churches where they were at war and there was like the captain of the army and they were trying to win the battle. And so she kind of like tells the captain of the army she sleeps in his tent and she was like, hey, come in here and does what he stumbles in, like, Stephen did it.

And then she puts a tent stake through his head. Oh, yeah, yeah, man. Why is why is it she in the stained glass window? There should be a major. We're going to stay. Exactly.

Do you make an effort in your congregation to to shine a light on the women? It's actually an ethic. I mean, I have an ethic. So there's a set of assigned techs. It's called the lectionary. So every Sunday there's a set of assigned techs, there's a Hebrew Bible, there's usually an epistle, a psalm, a gospel reading that are assigned for the day. So I have an ethic as a preacher. If there's female imagery, I use it.

If there's a female in the text, I preach on her. So I make I actively make the choice. So the epistle a couple of weeks ago, I posted a sermon, a video of my sermons are like eight minutes. Nobody's ever complained. I am very sorry. I just posted where Paul is talking about. We know that the creation has been groaning in labor pains. Right. It's this beautiful image of labor. So that's what I preach, John.

I mean, you have to look for it. But but there's so much there that's been so readily ignored. Yeah. Even Spirit is is a female word. So I almost always refer to the Holy Spirit as she.

Oh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. I have one more question. And it's it's about accountability, both good and bad accountability. Dax's said we have some people in our lives that are very religious and they're beautiful. Oh, they're the most beautiful people in our lives.

They're by far. Yeah, yeah. By leaps and bounds. And sometimes I look at our friend and I think it is not fair that she is giving Jesus all the credit for her goodness when she is a beautiful person. And I and I'm sure Jesus plays a role. But all the credits being given away and I don't really think that's fair and I think it happens on the tail side of the coin, too, where it's like, well, this was meant to be.

And, you know, I think sometimes Baramulla said, God wants you to forgive me to take that person to court.

And I just think this idea of accountability, and especially in the good things about you, like you should own those a little more and.

Yeah, well, I guess I would never say like if there's good in me, it's not me, it's Jesus. I but I would say it's my experience with God's terrible mercy. So I wouldn't say it's like Jesus. This character from thousands of years ago somehow has made me a good person. I would say I have experienced Grace when I didn't deserve it so often in my life that there's something in me that shifts when that happens. So I didn't muster it up myself.

Right. I know that there is something spiritual to it because I am kind of a garbage like like left to my own devices. I'm not self generating goodness machine. Yeah, yeah. There has to be a lot of other things put. Inside, in order for the goodness to come out, it's there, but in order for it to be activated, it comes out in those waves. So Grace is like the thing I end up just talking about.

You don't hear a lot of conversations about race and because it's like basically offensive, the idea that you would get something good that you didn't earn as the opposite.

Yeah, it's totally it's like it's kindness in spite of someone's actions, which is like the most inspiring, aspirational place you could be.

You can't earn it. I mean, that's the weird thing in our society, to get something beautiful that not only you didn't earn, but you can't earn. That's just counter intuitive to us. But I describe Grace as like Grace is like this freight train that delivers into my life all of the most beautiful, transformative, unburnable things.

Yeah. See, and here's where I'm totally relating to you, because this is where, like, AA has given me children and all this stuff.

That's right. Like so you think your virtue earns the right to eat a perfect peach in summer? There's nothing that is great. The fact that the sun comes up every every day, my virtue can't pull that fucker up. There's so much grace around us. Yeah. And we seem completely obsessed with who's good enough, who's worthy. What are you earning? I mean, the whole debate right now about like, well what if people are making that six hundred dollars that's more than they earn at their job.

They're not going to get back to work. I'm like, the problem is they're underpaid, not the fact that they finally have a living wage.

It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

You're right. The last book I wrote was about sex and Christianity. I mean, it was like a complete like, let's rework all these texts that have been weaponized against people. Yeah.

And and that and that's shameless. A sexual shameless. Have you ever heard of purity rings.

Oh, this is one of my favorite things you've done. Yeah. Please tell us about this.

OK, so I interviewed people for a year and a half and just said, hey, what message did you receive from the church about like sex in the body, gender? And then how did that message affect you? And then how have you navigated your adult life? And there were so many stories about being given a purity by your father.

May I add, daddy, daddy daughter dances and like he comes with flowers. Oh, it's so creepy. Anyway, in my way of dealing with hearing all these stories was, you know, there's a thing in Isaiah about it's on the United Nations statue outside the United Nations that says that we will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Right. So it's this idea of taking that which was weaponized against us and making the choice to transform it into something that could heal us.

Yeah. Yeah, right. And so with that in mind, I instigated this art project where I invited women to mail me their purity rings. I had the melted into a sculpture of a vagina. And then I gave it to Gloria Steinem on stage at a feminist conference.

Oh, that's amazing. So that's what we wrote about her a lot to my daughters. So what is this dance in your church like about premarital sex?

But all that stuff about not having sex before marriage when we were agrarian for a long time. Yeah.

Before we were industrial, post-industrial. Right. And so you had to kind of know who owned what, who was going to inherit what. And there was no reliable birth control. And so in a way, you could see how they're like, you know, you should probably keep that shit inside marriage just economically. It makes a lot more sense. And marriage happened about forty minutes after puberty. Oh, yeah.

So, yeah, you know these. Yeah, they weren't like they were there wasn't six years of being horny and meeting people at bars and saying no.

Right, exactly. Exactly. So it's just very, very different. I mean I try and me to make a case in the book for part of our spiritual wellness is sexual flourishing. And what does that look like and how do we be honest with ourselves about what that looks like? And I started seeing it as like I mean, it sounds I don't know how to say it without it sounding kind of creepy, but like, I wanted to know my parishioners.

Are they having good? Yeah, cause, like, how is that not like a sort of spiritual concern? Because I was married to a very good man who who had never deserved for me to say anything bad about him, because truly he's he's amazing, father. Great. And but we had a sexless marriage and we had no intimacy at all. And I know what it's like to have that part of me completely shut down and at what cost.

And that's what. Made me write this book because when I got together with Eric, who I'm with now, we've been together for years, but we've only been together a couple of weeks when I had to go on tour to support the UK in the German version of one of my books. So I was on the road for three weeks and we just had just amazing sex. And, you know, I had that dry spell and it was and I was like, this is so good for me.

Oh yeah. Like how I felt like my heart was less shut off from other people, from the world, from myself. And all this stuff was stirring in me. And I was walking through London and I was like, can you get on like Skype right now? And he goes, Yeah. And I said, Why do you feel like the church has tried to control sex for so long and he's not Christian and without skipping a beat, he goes, I just assumed that the church saw sex as its competition, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. And I was like, oh, I'm writing a book. Yeah. Oh, fuck that. I'm like, that was the moment. So it was an interesting thing to explore. I got in some trouble.

I was going to say, because you have bosses, right, being officially associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church. You have bosses, right? I have a bishop. Yeah.

So do you do you ever get in trouble?

Oh, not with him. He's one of the best men I've ever known in my life. And I mean, he's known me for years before he was my bishop and he believed in me and my voice when I was like still trying to piece together a college degree in my 30s. So he's incredible. Actually, I was doing on being that Krista Tippett show on NPR years ago, maybe six years ago. And someone's like, well, you were like you're super independent.

Maybe I have an issue with authority. Do your own thing. Right. And I go, yeah, fair enough, because but you're in a system under authority, kind of like you ask and I go, yeah, he goes like you have a bishop. And I said, yep. And he goes, just tell us how you've navigated that. And I was like, are you kidding? I'm why we have bishops like somebody like me should probably have a bishop.

Somebody should be looking over my shoulder like it's just still on the yellow brick road. Yeah. Yeah. Bursey taken these people into a field of poppies. Also, you think there's not a lot of potential problems with an intelligent, charismatic person starting a church?

Exactly. That's gone wrong 90 percent of the time. Correct.

That's why I'm saying this is one of the differences. You know, evangelicals, they don't have bishops. So if you have charisma, people are like you have the anointing. Go and lead these people by an arena. Yeah, exactly. And then there's so much harm that that ensues from that. So he will actually ask me, like, how's your soul? Has your ego just, like, destroyed you because of your career? How are you?

Like, I'm glad I have someone looking over my shoulder. Now, his colleagues across the country were not so happy, so. Yeah. And the American conservative website, you know, wrote some fake news stories about me. Feminist Pastor Nadia Boltz Weber says pornography is ethical.

You know, like. Yeah, sure. Just because I was like, I don't think we should just keep heaping on shame that people are like when people feel bad about the fact that they're turned on by pornography and maybe they have a little bit of compulsive behavior about it, why in the world would you heap shame on them? That seems like the last pastoral response in the world.

It's already probably partly a response to shame. It is, yeah.

Oh, my God. When you take the shame part out of the equation, the compulsivity of it really lessens.

You're so right. Well, not I really, really like you. I really do hope I get to go to a meeting with you next time we're in Denver.

I'd love to go with you in person or or we could go to church. OK, I'll go to church. I'm scared. I've been in church basements. Well, that's that's why I also people get a little upset with me when I'm speaking at church events. And I'll be like, let's be honest. There are people who are speaking honestly about their lives connecting to God and to one another more frequently in our church basements than in our church sanctuary.

Let's just be honest. Also, AA isn't having committee meetings like how can we get more members? You know, they're not scared of their institutional demise in the way the church is.

Well, the thing I think is just so incredible about AA is just like how is there been a leaderless organization that is somehow thrived for seventy some years? It's I mean, that's the magic in my opinion.

It's beautiful. It's because it insists on maintaining suspicion of all people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, Nadia, thanks so much for your time and I really do want to talk to you again down the road. So next time you write a book or something, please come on here and tell us about it. I love it so much. Things that have.

Yeah, it was great. Right. And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soul mate on a. Padman. Whenever there's a problem around Adventure Bay, Marnie and her team come and save the day.

Monica, Monica, be there on the double. Thirty three year old Monica. Wow.

How's your birthday week going? Good.

What was your favorite present you got so far? You don't have to say mine. Well, I haven't got nerves yet. We can't we don't have to count it.

That's true. But you looked at a picture. I was so excited for it.

You got me a treadmill. You got your treadmill. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been really can take the handles on or off like that part, so it could just be flat. It's Stow's stuff.

Stuff. So. So, yeah.

Do you think it's cool that you can do it on your level. Isn't it. Me. I never saw that anywhere. Well I'm just more thinking about you editing and like walking on the treadmill as you edit because you can be at a desk.

Yeah. That's what I need to look at it again.

You think that's too much business to be doing editing?

No, I think it'd be great. Yeah, because you could maybe just bang out like an hour of brisk walking. You you wouldn't even notice you did.

It's so cool. And I've been wanting one so bad.

I was out on a limb. You've never expressed a desire, but I thought you like to jog and sometimes it's just too hot or it's inconvenient.

I've been wanting one for a very long time, decade probably. And I was like, there's no way I can have one in my apartment.

Where would I put it?

And that's been the huge issue this whole time. And now it's because it would totally slide under your table. It's the best case scenario.

You put a rug over it on your Temel glancing at your table right now, imagine it.

So there are arms you can put on it. Oh yeah.

They just they lay flat next to it, then you crank them up when you want to have some Sopore.

It's so cool.

I was so excited. That's actually my favorite present. It is. Yeah but I'm not going to tell everyone. How about your least favorite present.

We got the present you didn't like that you hated in the person who gave it to you. Jess, what do you give you for.

He gave me hair play. Oh, that was nice. Well, it was the the only thing I asked for and he did give it to me, but he doesn't know how to do it. So he just shook my head a lot.

He's never had a girlfriend with, like, long hair. I still appreciate that he tried. Yeah, he gave it a shot. It was nice of them.

Speaking of I mean, I'm afraid to tell the world about in case they steal my idea. But I have a business venture that I'm going to start, which is a hair play studio.

Oh, hair place studio. Yeah, I think that's genius. You've got all these immigrants in L.A. that are doing much worse jobs than have the foot massages. You know, you're dealing with people's gnarliest feet. They let them soak in a bucket of water beforehand. Yeah, that's to get rid of the smell or whatever. But I got to imagine that that group of people that's currently doing foot massage would way rather do hair play. Well, yes and no.

Right here on your hands, easier on your hands, but your your head can get gross.

Some people's heads are gross. Yeah, they're scabs. There's there's vermin. Yeah.

Yeah. Lice, scabies. OK, they're not allowed to come to this place if you have scabies or lice.

I wonder if, like, when people got there, you could put them under what would look like one of those old fashioned hair dryers at the hair salons that the women would put your curlers in your permanent in there and put that dome over their head.

Yeah, if you could retrofit one of those with a big burst of UV light, that would kill all the vermin.

Oh, very good. Yeah. In the caves. I'll bring that in as a part of it. OK, and there's probably going to be hair washing as part of it, too.

Mm hmm. But then it doesn't feel as good, right. Yeah.

And then you can dry the hair quickly and like a head of hair like yours, it takes a while. Like you took a shower, I'm guessing like two hours ago. And your hair is soaking wet right now. Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, I have some things to work out, but anyway, there's going to be a hair place chain, a chain of them, exactly like a Drybar of sorts, but just for hair play, because so often when I'm getting a massage, I want hair play and I'll say, can I have a little extra on my head? Oh, and they'll say, sure, and then they do. But it's not what I'm looking for. It's not hair play.

I see a potential issue on this venture, which is like if I were to be a cocaine distributor, it'd be a bad idea because I would do all the product.

I'm a little nervous that if you own this shop, you're not going to be running it as much as just receiving airplay the whole day.

Well, it's part of research and development. So you are going to do that? Yeah. OK. So you basically are going to need to get a second person involved to run. I have a few people involved.

Well, you do already. Who else is involved? Our friend Matt, the hairstylist. Oh, sweet, sweet man. So sweet.

He's a hairstylist in L.A. and he's really good. And we have ideas about this. And also Carly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, can I make a suggestion, like one of the menu items be lice check and it's not an actual lice check. You're not looking for lice, but those long, silly cuties. Yep, that would be great for me.

That's part of it regardless.

So it would be like a suite of things and among them would be the lice check.

Yeah, but I don't think we should call it lice check because that sounds off-putting. We're going to have to call it like hair needle.

Oh well that's scary to know, but hairpins.

How about leprechaun check.

So it's like sounds like something positive might come out of it. Oh, unicorn's. I don't want to go through your hair looking for a unicorn. Miniature unicorn. By the way, everyone assumes that unicorns, if they exist, it would be the size of a horse. But what if they were the size of a seahorse and they lived in your hair?

All that cute, that hair.

Cause you hear conjecture. I mean, they fly around. That's a Pegasus. Oh, unicorns don't fly. They don't have wings.

They just have a big rod on the top of their head. Yeah. So a Pegasus is a unicorn that flies. Well, it's a unicorn, so it's a horse that flies. So what is a unicorn that flies?

There are no flying unicorns. Oh, my God. I'm going to invent that. OK, great. That's business.

I'm busy man. I have a lot going on.

You're in a sweet spot of creativity. We're like you're thinking of the things so quickly you can't even flush them out.

Wow. You're like Edison. So, Nadia, do you check the facts? Is there a God?

Oh, yeah. Obviously we're not going to check religious facts on this fact check, though. I think that's should go without saying.

Yeah, you know what? My conclusion was? A, I really adore her. Yeah. Also, it's like every kind of religious conversation you would have, although it was a peaceful one. It's just like she believes that.

I don't believe that no one's ever going to sway anyone.

It's not the kind of thing I don't think that you're swayed one way or another. I imagine every armchair left this with the same opinion they had when they came in.

Maybe I would say this. I think for some people, if you believe that religion is bad. Oh, uh huh, you might not believe that anymore after you listen to this. Right. I see the value of some people believing in that and the lessons and the goodness that it can bring. Yeah, but if you already believe that. Which we do. Yes, I do.

Yes. Yes, I already believe that. And I do think this is an area where atheists are unfair or cherry picking. Yes, some religion is terrible for people. There's many factions, the FDLE, the Mormon fundamentalists who are practicing pedophilia. You know, that's but it's way too broad of a net. It's like saying males are dangerous. Well, many males are very dangerous in many males are not very dangerous. Yeah. And same with religion.

It just includes way too many people to make any kind of assertion about them. Yes, but you can point to the history of how religion has, say, slowed down science, like by imprisoning Galileo for having the audacity to suggest we revolve around the sun.

Yeah, yeah.

I think probably people's opinions on whether they believe in God are probably the same. But I, I do think her lessons and stories and her thoughts on religion are awesome. And I do think with atheism, my issue with atheists often is my issue with religion. It's the same issue that people are just trying to get everyone to believe what they believe. And I am totally fine with everyone believing what they want to believe.

Yeah, I'm not trying to get anyone to believe I know that. Yeah, but many atheists are.

There's like a movement I guess. Yeah.

I think in response to some of the religious motivated terrorism, it seems like, oh we got to get people off this path like it feels existential in those moments.

Right. I just disagree that it's the religion that's causing. Yes. Yes. And I think has brought me around to your side of things.

Why?

I think I think it's I do also think it's it's problematic to have as a concept in a religion of fatwah. I agree. I think that's a little dangerous because I agree you're relying on God's input on who should be murdered.

And I don't think that should be a part of any religion. Personally, I agree.

Yeah, I asked a few things that I just don't feel like I got any answers. And I think that's just part of this.

I'll add to that there's lots of debates I love to try to win.

Like, it's very fun to try to maneuver and bring up a fact or this and that. And I just don't have any motivation to, quote, win a debate. Yeah. So it was tricky in that way where there were points where I was just like, yeah, I just like this person a lot. And I disagree with that notion that a God should tell you to murder your kid as a test of your love for the God.

But I'm going to leave it at that, I guess.

Yeah, well, there were some facts and one was. So she has Graves disease. Yes. She said children don't get it, but obviously they do get it because she got it.

I want to see a cousin of mine had it in their youth.

You can get it. It's just much less common in kids than adults with this disease. The body makes antibodies like. Has the thyroid gland to grow and to make too much thyroid hormone, hyper hypothyroid hypos, not enough and hypers too much, right? I think so. I was trying to remember that. I think that's right.

By the way, you say hyperactive. Do you think you could say hypoactive like that with me currently? I just said, yeah, we'll say hypoactive. I'm hypoactive currently.

Oh, he's so hyperactive.

People would think you were saying hyperactive now because you say like this, he's like hyperactive. Oh, yeah, I like that.

Good read. What can I bring up something unrelated. Uh huh. I noticed that our new friend, Bill Gates, had a lot of comments on the post. Right. And I had not read any of them because it was a busy week with the surgery and then also working all week.

So I glanced at them last night. Wow. Did the freaks come out for that?

What do you mean? Oh, my gosh. I am totally naive. To how many? Well, this is a twofold thing. I do think at least half of them are Russian bots. Oh yeah.

For people who don't know, there's a New York Times article about this. It's really important to note that Russia's goal is to sow dissent among us.

They want us to fight. That's their singular goal. They don't really have a position on any topic other than they like to isolate things that are device divisive and then to stoke them social media. And so just listen, even if you're an anti Voxer, that's fine for you.

But just know that Russia is stoking the anti vaccine movement.

They are very much behind it. And they clearly have to be behind this Kuhnen thing, which I can't even comprehend.

This conspiracy theory, as I understand it, it's that there's this elite ring of pedophiles, including actors, celebrities, and there's like blood.

Isn't there like a blood thing, like you eat their blood or something? Oh, OK.

For youthful zombies, I think there's something about blood.

So there was a smattering on BeeGees comment section about their pizza symbols, which is like the pizza gate. It's a kuhnen thing.

So you've got yeah, I don't know if it's hundreds of people or it's dozens of people with hundreds of accounts.

I don't know how much is Russia, but I will say, wow, if it represents an actual number of people who believe that there's a celebrity ring of pedophilia. I'm so nervous for those people. I was pretty shocked. I'm like, oh, there's some people that are really hanging on by a thread to reality, I would say.

I mean, I didn't look so I don't know. I would say whatever the percentage is, is not representative of our listener base.

Well, definitely a bar of the of people. Oh right. Yeah. I don't yeah.

It's point zero zero zero one percent.

However, I personally know a couple people who believe it that believe in Q and I know.

Yeah. And they're real people. What active imaginations they have. I'm almost jealous like when I imagine like what is it. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have some big mind.

You both guys are very old. They're well known that they're hypersexual, not hypo.

Oh. Is it's own like wow. You're really they're saying that.

Oh well that yeah. Bill Gates is part of this. Bring about it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my. Yeah.

And there's a silver bullet is he was on a Eppstein flight.

I was like yeah guess what. Thousands of people are on Eppstein flights. Yeah. I've interacted with tons of people that certainly have crazy secrets, you know, make me complicit in there.

No it does not. Yeah. It's bonkers.

It is. It is bonkers. I'd really like to have an expert on on conspiracy theorists. I would too, because it's a psychological thing.

I have my own theory on it and I've tracked someone close in my life who they're interested in conspiracy theories, ebbs and flows. Right. And and I've noticed that it seems to be highest when this person feels the most rejected from society or from the system that seems to be benefiting other people and not them. So I think there's a huge correlation of people who feel excluded from the system. Yeah. And then once they feel that way, then obviously the system must be conspiring to exclude them.

My big issue with people with conspiracy theories is tell three people in your life a secret that you actually trust. Yeah. And see how long that takes before that secret gets to everyone in the group. It'll get to everyone in the group within two weeks.

And that's people that you love and trust. Yeah.

Now add in these conspiracies that involve thousands of people, but nobody tells anyone and no one goes to the paper and you just can't keep secrets that.

Well, yeah, I think that's a generous view of it. I feel obligated. To imagine this is someone that maybe I would have loved. I think there must be an emotion at the bottom of it that I feel bad for.

I'm sure there is.

I just don't know. Kind of like your terrorist point of view, which I think is involved and correct. Which is instead of like proving to the terrorists that they're misguided, totally create the environment by which they would want to choose a different life.

I totally agree. So I don't think me telling the Kuhnen people that they're fucking insane will be helpful. Agreed?

Yeah, agreed. That's why. Yeah, I think having an expert on to explore that psychology is interesting. And I think your theory is generous.

The people I'm talking about are objectively not excluded from anything now. They may believe they are. That's the tricky thing.

There's people that are successful and yet still feel. I'm not saying they are, but they feel excluded from something.

It's also interesting, the people that I'm talking about, I enjoy very much.

Yeah, as people. I enjoy their company so much and it's a hard thing to reconcile.

Yeah. I guess also what makes it a little scary is if you believe in something that crazy. I'm nervous that your behavior in response to that might be equally insane. I guess it's like if you believe in that, then I'm a little nervous about all your decision making.

Exactly. Exactly. OK, so the Jefferson Bible, I'm going to read you a little piece on this. All right. Fifty years to the date after signing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson died on July 4th, 1826, just hours before the death of his fellow signer, John Adams.

Yeah, that's so crazy. Weird coincidence. If you read the John Adams McCullough book, it's really great. But those two are pretty much enemies. Yeah. And they they had all these weird parallels. They died on the same day. They did a bunch of a bunch of eerie stuff.

But six years earlier, Jefferson completed a 84 page manuscript called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, gleaned from the four gospels of the New Testament and Jefferson's private work. It remained unknown until his great granddaughter sold the manuscript to the Smithsonian. In 2011, the Smithsonian undertook a challenging restoration project of the fragile document. What is now known as the Jefferson Bible was presented to scholars and the general public at the Smithsonian, Albert H. Small Documents Gallery.

Maybe I would love that version. Maybe I need to read something positive about him because I've only read really negative stuff and I dislike him despite his genius. Clearly a great writer, be a real pedophile traveling abroad with a a slave for 14 or 15 year old girl.

This is where the argument that everyone makes, including myself and it's real about that, was a different time. That was a different time when men did this and that was a different time when race was this. And that's true.

We have to let people evolve and we have to let people match up to society and not apply the standards of now to the past. Right. But Thomas Jefferson was a pedophile.

But that time, 13 year olds had babies all the time. So then is it fine?

Well, I would say that what you have to acknowledge is that in that time, he wasn't traveling through Europe and people were like, what the fuck is he doing with this 14 year old girl?

They weren't. And it wasn't news and. You know, I think there's a lot of ways you have to evaluate it. One would be like let's say let's just say for shits and giggles, people drink mercury as a cure all back then because they with the best knowledge they had, that was a good idea.

Well, now we would look at that and oh, that's insane.

That's poisonous. But it would be wrong to say that person was stupid because they weren't stupid in the day.

Yeah. So it's a tricky thing because, like, are we saying that's OK for the time? I mean, it kind of I guess was. But it's it's not. Yeah.

Yeah. Well I think it more should be like when those things are brought to light, it should be a moment to reflect on how much we've evolved in the past goodness.

And how misdirected we were for a great majority of the time we've been here as we are currently misdirected, which will be revealed later.

Yeah. Yeah, great. I'll tell you what's not going to reverse is how good you look in orange eyelash.

That's never there. Never. Sure. Yeah. In 30, 52, they're never going to look back and go, oh man. Can you believe back then that was an OK color for her to wear. There's still going to go great color for her.

Actually, no, because what if Kuhnen is real and this is the color of it. Oh. And then they're going to look back and say she was involved. She knew she wore that color. She is bad.

Yeah, well, they'd be wrong. I guess they could still say, but she looks good in it. Yeah. OK, so the pen that presidents use called an auto pen and it's a signing machine that does the automatic signing of his signature or autograph.

It says many celebrities use it, so we should look into getting one.

Well, you know, Christine, has this book been in Kristen's book, The World Needs More Purple People? Part of the deal is she has a sign. Oh, I know what it was. Oh, my God. There's a pallet of the books in our garage.

And every time I see her signing it or even look at the pallet, I get filled with anxiety of how I just I couldn't say my name that many thousands of times.

And so I thought if I ever wrote a book, I would want to negotiate that I don't have to do that. I was like, you have to because they sell them at stores. Yeah, well. And I was like, why would they need to get a stamp or now I'm learning there's a lot of and it says they range from twenty ten thousand.

I'll take the two thousand one book.

A lot of presidents have used it about Trump.

I'm sure Trump does not use it because he probably gets a lot of this is not political, but I've seen his signature.

It's pretty well, a it's pretty it looks like calligraphy, but also there looks like there's way too many letters in it for Donald J.

Oh, and I've looked at it. It looks like there's like thirty five to sixty letters in it.

I'm like, what are all those letters signature.

You look at it, I remember watching them sign one thing and I thought, oh does he have, doesn't it look. Yeah it looks like it's odd. It's very vertical. Yeah. I don't know there it looks to be way too many letters in there for the spell.

Donald, just kind of look, I don't want to give him any praise ever. It's a gorgeous figure. I don't, I don't that signature doesn't.

I like it. Yeah. It's nice. This goes back to Thomas Jefferson. You know, of course it's right to bring up the fact that he had all these indiscretions. He was also a great writer and he helped frame something that somehow has lasted for years, is relevant to acknowledge that. Yeah. Similarly, Trump has a beautiful signature.

No two ways around it.

OK, the Sean Hayes play is an act of God, an act of God. That was crazy that she brought up a play, actually saw him only seen, what, eight or ten in my life?

Max maximum. I'd say maximum amounts.

That's all. That's all. Good job on the facts, my friend. Thank you, my friend. Bye bye. Love you. Let me.