Episode Twenty-Two // Conversation w/Dr Brannon Hancock

You guys, I am so jazzed this week to present what has turned out to be the first part of a (at least) two-parter with Dr Brannon Hancock from Wesley Seminary. I first stumbled across Brannon’s work via this talk which he gave for Wesley Seminary’s webinar series, a presentation that instantaneously had me enthralled. The types of questions we setup in this conversation centre around the technologies we are comfortable employing, those we are not comfortable employing, and whether or not we can rightly see/say that God is the “animating force” behind such technologies.

In the podcast, I open by referencing this news article from earlier on in the week, where Russian president Vladimir Putin used a Bible verse to describe the “liberating activity” of Russian troops in Ukraine:

https://theweek.com/russia/1011510/putin-quotes-jesus-to-justify-invasion-of-ukraine

This type of ambiguity in how we see God at work in the world is my driving passion in this conversation, and why I was glad to be able to begin this wrestling (to be further wrestled) with Brannon today.

For anyone who hasn’t noticed that I’ve been working through St Teresa’s Interior Castle via my blog all week long, here’s a bonus quote from that fantastically evocative mystical work which speaks to the heart of this human challenge:

“…there is no ground here either for approval or for condemnation. We must base our judgments on the virtues. The saintliest will be she who serves our Lord with the greatest mortification and humility and purity of conscience. Little, however, can be known with any certainty about this on earth, nor until the true Judge gives each his deserts.”