My name is Dan Koch. Like many of you, I've been on a complicated faith journey for a number of years now.

And while I tend to find myself on the progressive side of Christianity, my goal is not to make liberal converts.

I want this show to be a resource for Christians to my right and to my left, as well as

former Christians and non-religious folks, anyone who finds themselves asking difficult questions

about God, science, prayer, fate, suffering, evangelism, and more. So many of us have been given bad answers to those good questions, often by people with

pure intentions.

I want to say that you have permission to take both Christianity and the modern world very

seriously.

And I hope to facilitate that by introducing you to people seeking God across

the Christian spectrum, engaging hard questions in a multitude of ways. Thanks for listening.

We've gotten some good feedback on these Q&A-style episodes.

The first half is on the main feed, and the full version is for patrons only.

You can go to patreon.com slash Dan Coke to become a patron and hear the whole thing.

But today we answer a question that I've gotten a lot over the years, really over the last six or seven years, the entire time I've been podcasting.

And that's once you believe that people aren't going to hell, once the main stick is removed from the carrot stick situation of conservative Christianity, is there still a carrot? Why go for the carrot? Why be

religious? Why be Christian? And it's a really interesting question with some really

interesting assumptions behind it, I think. After we get through that question, we talk about

who I want to have a beer with, a fictional character, what I'm

planning to teach my son about sex, some meta-narratives in pop culture that I think are helping

me wrestle with big questions, boundaries, and ex-pastors finding callings after deconstructing

their faith and no longer being a pastor or having it no longer

makes sense to work as a pastor. It helps us a lot when you share episodes. And so this episode

...