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By Jerry L Martin on May 21, 2013 in Book

What it is like to be God.

Abigail’s train had still not arrived. I paced back and forth, no longer seeing the other people in the station. What to think? What to feel? Finally, I forced a deep breath and, with irritation mitigated by resignation, asked, “Lord, what exactly do You want of me?”

I want you to describe the inner life of God, what it is like to be God.

The inner life of God? What it is like to be God? I didn’t know what this could possibly mean, but I forged on. “Lord, why is that important for us to know?”

Mankind sees God only from the outside and that leads to distortions in its view of God (as it would of anyone)—too distant, awesome, oppressive, Other. Even mystics are very one-sided. They experience oneness but that is not the same as empathizing with My subjective experiences.

Okay, I could see that, if God is too distant, it would be hard to relate to Him. But there was still a problem. “Lord, we think of God as being so infinite and ethereal that ‘subjective experience’ doesn’t even make sense.”

Exactly—that’s one of the distortions. Although I am much more than a Person, I am a Person, a soul, like you. You—people—cannot relate properly, constructively, to Me unless you understand that. (Take) love, for example. My love comes across as impersonal, generic, oceanic wallowing, but (in fact) it is quite specific, concrete, with feeling, with response to the particulars of your being, of your life.

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Read Chapter 1

I am the God of All.

The first time God spoke to me I didn’t believe He existed.

Billy Graham once reported, “I know God exists—I talked to him this morning.” Theatrical posturing, I thought. Graham may have been talking to God, but I did not believe for a minute that God was talking back. I remembered psychologist Thomas Szasz’s comment: “If somebody talks to God, that’s praying. If God talks to them, that’s schizophrenia.”

I had been raised in a Christian home, but those beliefs did not survive Philosophy 101, where arguments for the existence of God were shot down like skeets. Since that time, I had been what one of my professors, Philip Wheelwright, called himself: a “pious agnostic”—respectful of belief in a higher reality but, when it came right down to it, staying eye-level with the natural world, the world of experience as I then knew it.

It is said that you do not have to believe in God in order to pray. That is what happened to me.

I had been divorced for many years. I always thought I would be happier married, but as the decades rolled on without Miss Right showing up, I began to think she never would.

Then one day, the phone rang. . .

Click here to continue reading Chapter 1

More Comments

Jenny on Read Chapter 601st, May 2013 08:56:45 AMJust letting you know, I am your friend along the way. I know it's not easy to share from one's personal relationship with God- especially when it's outside the box. It takes a lot of courage. Continue reading
- Jerry L Martin responds
  Jenny, thanks for your spiritual companionship. It will be quite a journey! Continue reading
Miriam Fernandes on Read Chapter 630th, April 2013 03:20:30 PMAt this point I am only curious to know what religion/faith you became. Continue reading
- Jerry L Martin responds
  That's okay, Miriam. Curiosity is the first step to understanding. I will be interested in what you think after you have read more. Continue reading

What People Are Saying

Once I finished a draft of the book, I asked people I knew – some I knew well and some I had only recently met -- to take a look and give me some quick comments. I pointedly did not ask for praise, but for “honest responses,” since only those would be helpful in editing the book. Here are excerpts from their comments.

“This work has the potential to be the most influential book in our time. It exudes spiritual authenticity as it is well-grounded in human experience. It advances a way to embrace spirituality in oneself. As your own experience, the work is anchored in our time, our experience.”
– Celeste Colgan, Ph.D. (English), former Deputy Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities

“Thanks for this wonderful gift. This is a remarkable document. I’m only two-thirds though, and I’m anxious to see how things turn out.”
– Wesley Morriston, Ph.D. (Philosophy), Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder; Board Member, Society of Christian Philosophers)

“I am reading your draft slowly as a devotional and am so full of thoughts and feelings about it that it is hard to know where to begin. I think this is very important. Much of it sounds like God to me, sounds like how what I take to be God sounds in those moments when I am in touch (and I am struck by how very in-touch you are, how constantly). The freshness of the talk, so fresh it makes you laugh -- I experience God that way. The wisdom. The love. The reproach when necessary (how God exits when ego enters).”
– Jeanine Diller, Ph.D. (Philosophy), Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Toledo

“It is one of the most intriguing, unusual, passionate things I have ever read. It is very special.”
– Matthew Foster, Ph.D. (Theology), Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, Molloy College

God: An Autobiography

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Read Chapter 65

What it is like to be God.