How can the 12-step program help you to rediscover your faith and get back to Jesus? What are the differences between traditional teachings in the church and modern Christianity? Why can’t you simply justify everything with scripture? In this podcast episode, Billy and Brandy Eldridge speak with Nadia Bolz-Weber about faith and modern Christianity. Meet Nadia Bolz-Weber Nadia Bolz-Weber is the author of three New York Times bestselling memoirs: Pastrix; The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint (2013), Accidental Saints; Finding God in All the Wrong People (2015), and SHAMELESS: A Sexual Reformation. She is the creator and host of the podcast “The Confessional with Nadia Bolz-Weber”. As an ordained Lutheran pastor (ELCA), she founded the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, a quirky congregation which she served for over 10 years. Nadia travels domestically and internationally as a speaker and has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, On Being with Krista Tippett, Fresh Air, CNN, and in the Washington Post, Bitch magazine, The New Yorker and The Atlantic. International media coverage includes BBC World Service, The Guardian, and magazine features in Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. Visit Nadia’s website and connect on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Listen to her podcast here. In This Podcast Summary * Alienation within yourself * Sin and liberalism * Confession and freedom * Being a woman at the forefront of the new Christian movement * Addressing inequality as a Christian * The Bible is not a book, it’s a library * Justifying instinct is faith Alienation within yourself When you are told something that you must take as the truth but do not believe it to be true, this creates a conflict. You start to feel as though since it is supposed to be the truth, you are not allowed to doubt it, or to trust your own feelings, or to trust your heart, or to trust your own experience. That conflict often becomes internalized as you start to feel that you are the problem, and you alienate from yourself and often start acting out. This can happen with the traditional teachings in the church, especially surrounding sin, causing you to act out and reject those teachings. Sin and liberalism Nadia describes herself as “not a great liberal”, mainly because she talks a lot about sin, which is not something you hear liberals talking about. But the way that Nadia thinks about sin is “the human propensity to f*** things up”, as defined in Unapologetic by Francis Spufford, which could be more applicable now in modern, more liberal times. Everyone has that part of themselves that they don’t fully trust, the part of them that could “f*** things up”, and it’s a more tangible way of describing something that you need to manage than the more traditional understanding of ‘original sin’. Confession and freedom So often, we don’t want to look at the actual truth of things, the actual truth of ourselves. But Jesus said, the truth is the thing that sets us free, that’s where the freedom comes from. So,