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.

You Have Permission is now also on YouTube. Going forward, pretty much every episode will be here in audio form on the

podcast feed and also in video form on the YouTube channel. There are some benefits to watching

YouTube. Obviously, you can see my face and my guest's faces, but also occasionally I'll use

visual aids of one sort or another to kind of highlight

something that we are talking about.

Everything will still be here in audio form and still be understandable to an audio-only audience.

I know that is primarily going to be the case, at least for quite a while.

But if you're interested in YouTube, head over to the link in the show notes,

subscribe to that channel, and see which episodes are available there in video form. Thanks. Dr. Melinda Berry, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Absolutely. I'm excited about where this conversation is going to go.

So am I. You were heartily recommended by Kristen Tidman, who does media and marketing stuff for us and

appears with me on our Q&A episodes that we've been doing. You are a professor at Anabaptist

...