There is another way to listen to God. One day, when I was fatigued from travel, I was told to take a day to rest.
“But I have so much work to do, Lord.”
Always listen to your body—it is also My voice.
Listen to Your Body
September 19, 2024
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.
“It Leaves Out the Most Interesting Part of the Story.”
September 12, 2024
“Lord, is the theory of evolution correct?”
It is not a bad theory. It is a short-hand that works, but it leaves out the most interesting part of the story. It is like behavioral psychology in this respect.
While Pavlov’s dog salivating tells you something about animal and human behavior, seeing people solely through the lens of stimulus-and-response conditioning leaves out what is really interesting about them. Similarly, the theory of evolution is okay as far as it goes, but leaves out the best part of the story.
Does God Still Speak to Us?
September 12, 2024
Did revelation end a long time ago?
Philosopher Jerry L. Martin explains that God continues to speak to us, with new messages that we need to hear now.
Watch my other Videos – HERE or on my YouTube Channel.
God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher – is the true story of a philosopher’s conversations with God. Dr. Jerry L. Martin, a lifelong agnostic. Dr. Martin served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Colorado philosophy department, is the founding chairman of the Theology Without Walls group at AAR, and editor of Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative. Dr. Martin’s work has prepared him to become a serious reporter of God’s narrative, experiences, evolution, and autobiography. In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Martin has testified before Congress on educational policy. He has appeared on “World News Tonight,” and other television news programs.
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Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.
He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.
“The extended lines of relations meet in the Eternal Thou”
September 5, 2024
I had read Martin Buber’s I and Thou when I was a college freshman and had not looked at it since then. But, when I fell in love and realized that she loved me back, the opening words of Part Three came back to me: “The extended lines of relations meet in the Eternal Thou.” Love between human beings has a trajectory toward God.
These Have Been My Most Faithful Servants
August 29, 2024
It [a new divine message] will be most hard for two groups—the atheists, secularists, who have set their hearts against Me, against hearing, and (followers of) the old religions, who are set in their ways, very attached to specific forms and formulas. The latter pains Me because, in many ways, these have been My most faithful servants. Like a servant whose master has died and faithfully carries out his last wish—but misheard the wish. The old religions are mostly based on insights, revelations I gave them. But they became rigidified. Partial insights were mistaken for the whole.
He Got Most of it Right
August 22, 2024
The brash display at the front of the bookstore announced Conversations with God—the first of three volumes in which God tells all … to somebody else! I thought I was the one anointed to carry God’s message. What’s going on here?
Before my own experience, I would not have thought for a minute that the author, Neale Donald Walsch, actually heard from God. But, if God spoke to me, He could surely speak to someone else. In fact, He had told me that He communicates with people all the time. Walsch also reports God as saying, “I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom do I talk, but who listens.” Just what I had been told.
Has God appointed two messengers? With different messages? Or is this guy not on the up and up? I have to admit I was skeptical. My own prayers were herky-jerky and the voice I heard spoke in my own casual vernacular. Walsch’s conversations are reported in polished prose. That looked rigged.
Nor was I impressed with what Walsch reports having been told. It sounded like pop Buddhism—feel-good stuff that sells books but is unlikely to be God’s authentic word. Wasn’t Walsch just a charlatan?
When I asked, I didn’t like the answer.
The book of prayers [Conversations with God] is nice enough, but it will be dismissed by most as an oddity, not a revelation—even though he got most of it right—but I couldn’t write the blurb!
“Believing in Me is the most natural thing in the world.”
August 15, 2024
Judaism, Christianity, Jews, Jesus—all this upset me, so, for a time, I concentrated on day to day matters. One morning I started to ask some trivial question and was interrupted.
Did I tell you to ask a question? Just listen. You stopped asking about Me because some of the answers disturbed you. They shook your faith.
That was true. When answers upset me, I would start thinking that, surely, this was not the voice of God. “Lord, why is faith like that? Why is Your interaction with us so tenuous and subject to doubt?”
First, it is not. During most times, people have not had trouble believing. Believing in Me or in some gods was—is—the most natural thing in the world.
Second, my “invisibility” has to do with the kind of Being I am. It’s like asking why we can’t see neutrinos. Nobody can see your “mind.” You believe in “other minds” with no greater “evidence.”
God was alluding to the topic of my doctoral dissertation. One of the great philosophical puzzles concerns skepticism with regard to knowledge of other minds. The problem arises from the fact that we do not have direct access to other people’s thoughts and feelings. We only observe their outer behavior. In fact, we do not have any proof that others really have inner thoughts and feelings at all. Yet it is reasonable to believe they do. Is God any more elusive than minds? Well, He certainly seems so.
Although the voice was always palpably real and authoritative, I continued to experience resistance. My agnostic worldview really did not have room for these encounters. I was always walking a tightrope with unbelief just one misstep away. I had decided to follow the voice, but this decision would be tested.
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Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.
He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.
Suffering is the Test of Humanity
August 8, 2024
“All that’s rather abstract, Lord. What exactly does disease do for us?” I thought of Job’s boils.
Suffering is the test of your humanity. There is no greater test than pain—how one copes with it. It is easy to be nice, faithful, and such, when things are great, but very hard under adversity.
“But, Lord, that just seems perverse—or cruel.”
No, that’s not so. Think about your own times of physical suffering—in the hospital, for example—the shots, the clumsy aide, the itch, the nurse about urinating, those were full of growth.
Those examples brought back memories. When I was still single, I had suffered a mild heart attack. I was put in the intensive care unit. They took blood tests, day and night. There are a limited number of places from which blood can be drawn, and the same spot cannot be used again right away. The wrists are ideal, but mine are sensitive and a needle there smarts. One does not have much power as a patient, but safeguarding my wrists became my prime imperative for the next two weeks. One after another blood drawer would come, and I would plead, argue, wheedle, and insist that they find some other place to puncture me. Each resisted at first, then managed to find a spot.
“Yes, that is certainly Me.”
August 1, 2024
“Lord, do any of the gods of the world’s religions fit You correctly?”
Some—many—come pretty close.
“Lord, is the God of the Old Testament one of the accurate depictions?”
Yes, that is certainly Me. And that is what I was like at that time. I led you to the Miles book because that is something he got right. Much else he got wrong—such as his reading of Job.
I had read and liked Jack Miles’ award-winning book, God: A Biography. Though a trained theologian, Miles reads the Bible as a work of literature in which God is the main character. That may sound as if it would fail to do justice to scripture, but in fact it enables him to avoid the worries that theologians and historians usually bring to it. He just lets the text—and the character of God—speak for itself.
My Revelations Evolve
July 26, 2024
My revelations evolve. I reveal different things now than millions of years ago.
“Millions of years ago?”
Yes, I revealed things to prehistoric people, though they had a limited ability to understand. My revelations to Abraham and Moses were unusual, because they marked the first of the clear messages that got through and were really understood.