Author: Jerry L Martin

Jerry L Martin, Ph.D., D.H.L. is former Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder and Acting Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities. He is currently a contributor to the Good Men Project and coordinator of the Theology Without Walls Project at the American Academy of Religion.

Experience God: An Autobiography

“Do you think I could come to the ancient Jews in the same way I came to the seventh century Chinese? to Americans today?”

March 26, 2026

How God Comes To Different People:

I had been told that culture is a factor in divine revelations.

“Lord, why is culture so important?”

That’s like saying, why language?  If I am going to communicate with people, they need a language.  For the same reason, they need a culture.

“They need a culture, but why such a variety of cultures?”

There are many ways of realizing (actualizing) the human story.  Culture enables lives of different (types of) significance (meaning).

“But why, in terms of Your story?”

I need to come to people in all their particularity, not to mankind-as-such.  The Chinese is one way of being.  The primitive is one way of being.  I come to each in its own terms.  Each enables Me to show a different side of Myself.

Do you think I could come to the ancient Jews in the same way I came to the seventh century Chinese? to Americans today? to you?

Learn more about how God comes to different people.

The Courage to Doubt in an Age of Certainty

The Courage to Doubt in an Age of Certainty | Jerry L. Martin’s Daybook

March 12, 2026

The other night I had the following dream. Some people were hosting a group to discuss the God book with me. As we drove to their house, we noticed some neighbors who were coming to join the meeting. To my surprise (actually, shock), when Abigail and I arrived, there was a whole crowd there, lined up in rows on lawn chairs in the front yard. They were facing a porch to be used as a speaking platform. 

I had not planned to give a speech, and had nothing prepared, but I said to Abigail, “I think I had better get up there and give a talk.” “Well, YE-AH!” she replied. So I got up on the porch and looked at the crowd. I said “SOMEBODY has done a great job of getting this crowd together,” and I saw a guy toward the back beam at the compliment. Chatting for a moment with someone in the front row, I said, apropos of I know not what, “Today is tomorrow.” And then I said, “That wouldn’t be a bad name for a speech.” So I said to the crowd, “I did not have a speech prepared but talking with this person up front, I realized that ‘Today is tomorrow.’” I am not usually glib but this time I launched on an elaborated discussion of the ways in which today prepares for tomorrow – enacts it in advance, you might say – and what happens tomorrow is that today’s preparation plays out. And today is, in fact, every tomorrow, and so on in that vein. “This isn’t bad,” I thought, “though it is a lot like a Hallmark card version of a lifemanship presentation.” Then the scene faded. 

Superficial or not, I was probably onto something. I have long felt that I should live every day as if the sum of my life as a whole depended on what I do now and here. My thought is not so much that what you do today sets the terms of what you are able to do tomorrow, though that is true. But my thought is more about the meaning of life, as if the highest ideal I am able to live at this moment casts a meaning over the whole of my life. Whether that is wisdom or just a facsimile of it, I can’t know. I occupy the thought, and can’t see over its rim. Maybe you can. 

Just take in what comes to you.

March 12, 2026

Just take in what comes to you.

 “Lord, how should I approach the ancient scriptures?”

Get into the frame of mind for reading the (particular) work.  That frame of mind is reverential, quiet, respectful, open-hearted.  It does not consist of analyzing metaphors and stories of gods.  Just take in what comes to you.

That guidance cut against my own scholarly training, but from then on I tried to read not only with an open mind but with an open heart.

 

an inconvenient God

Being facing Being

January 29, 2026

I wondered what it could mean for “Being as such” to be a Person, a Thou, as surely, from my own experience, God is.  Then it struck me that this rushing Stuff, this force of Being, is also the being of me.  And I am a person.  So why shouldn’t the rushing Stuff, the Being of—of what?—the World, of Being itself, be a Person writ large?  I don’t mean the World merely in a physical sense, since my own being is not merely that of my body.  Similarly, the Being that animates everything could be a Person.

Looking out the window at the passing trees, it struck me that their very leaves are full of Being as such, the Being that is also a Person, and that it made sense for them to be a Thou for me.  And, more remarkably, for me to be a Thou for them.  I felt that Being facing Being, not necessarily speaking but simply facing, is what personhood is.

How to Pray for Guidance When You Don’t Know What to Do

How to Pray for Guidance When You Don’t Know What to Do

January 23, 2026

Jerry L. Martin on Discernment, Writing Prayer, and Listening for God

A reader of God: An Autobiography, asked me to pray and get divine guidance for a situation in which he is uncertain how to help a friend. The following is my response:

Dear A.,

I understand why, when a friend is in extremis, you worry over how to be helpful, since, in delicate situations and with unknown factors, one can easily trip over oneself. However, my assignment does not include being a medium. I did that once, putting to God a question asked by a life-long friend. I felt beforehand that God did not want me to play that role. However, I went ahead and asked. God answered but I felt I had done the wrong thing, and I have not done it again.

Let me suggest this. My best method is to sit down with a blank sheet of paper (I never do it at the computer). I put the date at the top and address my question in the following fashion: “Lord, …” (Use whatever mode of address feels most natural to you.) Even though God presumably knows these things, I state the gist of the facts and also my own feelings about the situation. If I follow up with something vague like “Lord, do you have anything to tell me about this,” I often get the response, “What is your question?” Prayer always works best if I ask a particular question.

Try this yourself. And then write down whatever comes to you. It need not be a voice, but may be more like automatic writing. Don’t edit it yourself as you go along, as if you could anticipate God’s answer. Proceed on the assumption that there is some divine element in what comes to you. If you have a follow-up question, go on in the same fashion, as long as you have genuine, honest questions.

If the answers you receive don’t make sense or seem completely wrong-headed (“That can’t be right!”), then tell God that and see how God responds. If it still seems like a muddle, then wait a day or two and pray about it again.

There is nothing guaranteed in this way of praying but, if you make it a practice, you will get better at it and establish a better connection between yourself and God. And this will be a blessing!

Warm good wishes,

Jerry