ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Each week, a well-known guest draws a card from our Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Taffy Brodesser-Akner just released her latest novel called "Long Island Compromise." It's the follow-up to her best-selling debut, "Fleishman Is In Trouble." She talked with Wild Card host Rachel Martin about how her Jewish upbringing shaped her world view.
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Here we go - one, two or three?
TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER: One.
MARTIN: One. Ooh. Have your feelings about God changed over time?
BRODESSER-AKNER: No. Isn't that crazy? I cannot see this world without some sort of design or without some sort of crime and punishment, without some sort - like, without the hope that something is in charge.
MARTIN: Do you need a crime-and-punishment God?
BRODESSER-AKNER: I mean, I've read the Old Testament...
MARTIN: Right.
BRODESSER-AKNER: ...A few times, and...
MARTIN: I mean, my name's Rachel.
BRODESSER-AKNER: ...You better - I...
MARTIN: I'm not Jewish.
BRODESSER-AKNER: ...Mean, in that first chapter...
MARTIN: But I've spent some time in the Old Testament.
BRODESSER-AKNER: I mean...
MARTIN: There's a lot of crime and punishment.
BRODESSER-AKNER: I went to The Met the other day. I had the urge to see some, like, Christian art, some, like, blood on the canvas. Sometimes I get that way.
MARTIN: Interesting.
BRODESSER-AKNER: Yeah, The Met is great for that. I saw, for the first time, this painting of Lot and his children walking away from, I guess, Sodom and Gomorrah.
MARTIN: Yeah.
BRODESSER-AKNER: And...
MARTIN: Just in case no one knows the story, Lot was a guy - he's in the Bible. His whole family was in Sodom and Gomorrah, and then God said...
BRODESSER-AKNER: He's Abraham's brother-in-law.
MARTIN: That's right.
BRODESSER-AKNER: Yeah.
MARTIN: And then God said, this is a bad place, bad stuff's happening here. And you got to leave, and I'm burning the place down.
BRODESSER-AKNER: And Abraham says, we got to get out of here. Don't turn back and look. And Lot's wife - I think about her all the time - she turns around to look at the punishment, and she turns into a pillar of salt. And I was looking at this painting, and I was thinking, wow. She just turned around. I mean, I think about the punishment of - for women in childbirth. The punishment for eating from the Tree of Knowledge was to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden and all sort of mishegoss when it comes to giving birth.
MARTIN: Well, right. So do you just...
BRODESSER-AKNER: Like, I'm fine...
MARTIN: ...Discount those parts of the Bible?
BRODESSER-AKNER: ...Being punished. I'm being - no, I don't discount. I'm just - but every time I hear a horror story, including my own, I always think it's so unfair that we're still paying for someone else's sin because sometimes God and the Bible are very useful tools for a dramatic state of blame (laughter). This is so bad that it's biblical. This is so - this...
MARTIN: And you like that.
BRODESSER-AKNER: I don't like it. I just - my brain needs to make sense of things. What is it about - you're either an order Muppet or a chaos Muppet? Like, I like things to go from chaos to order. I...
MARTIN: And God helps you get there.
BRODESSER-AKNER: And - anything does. Any explanation will do. And when the regular explanations don't work out, you can always go to God.
SHAPIRO: That's writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner talking with NPR's Rachel Martin. To hear more from that conversation, follow the Wild Card podcast.
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