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.

This is one of those episodes that is a long time in the making and that tries to address dozens of questions I've received

over the past year or so. How do we parent our kids after deconstruction? What if only one,

half of a couple is going through that? Can people of different faiths have healthy marriages?

How do I relate to my family, who haven't had the same faith changes that I've had

and who think I'm now going to hell? This is a nice, long, meaty episode where we get into

as many of those questions as possible with Dr. Doug Shirley. And this is the kind of episode

that actually might make you think more seriously about becoming a therapist. It's

pretty inspiring. I know it certainly has made me more excited about having started down that

career path myself, and I wish that he was a professor in my own program. Now, Doug is going to

mention a whole slew of thinkers, writers, and theories, almost at a clip of one per minute or two.

But he will always explain them, so don't worry about that. You don't have to know who he's

talking about. But at the end of the interview, I asked him for just a few that he thinks are the

most helpful. So you don't necessarily need to be writing all that stuff down as you listen.

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