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

Friendship and Meaning During the Pandemic

January 22, 2026

At the height of the pandemic, Abigail and I braved forth to attend the Eric Voegelin Society meeting in Seattle. Its members are truth-seeking, spiritually open thinkers. As we arrived, attendees were dropping like flies. One scholar, there for a panel discussing his book, reported that every single panelist had reversed course and would be AWOL. It felt bizarre. Sometimes the two of us were almost the whole of the audience.

It did give us a chance to know better the select few who did attend, but also to visit Abigail’s dear friend, Arlene, who goes all the way back to the New York High School of Music and Art. There are, indeed, no friends like old friends. Their conversation was as familiar and lively as if they had spoken just yesterday.

The widow of a distinguished University of Washington professor, Arlene lives in a beautiful, tastefully decorated, culturally rich home. Her eyes sparkle with intelligent vitality. Abigail recounted the many ways Arlene had made a success of life. They talked about friends from yesteryear, some of whom had not.

After their talk wound down, Abigail was delighted to meet her helper, who turns out to be a descendant of the great Indian chief Red Cloud. Abigail loves Indians! They had a great talk. With her, the fact that I have Indian – probably Comanche – blood on both sides is a feather in my headband. But she did not know that when she married me. So I won her on my own!

A Mission Given By You

January 22, 2026

“Lord, what do You mean—to look at ‘religious lives’?”

Joan of Arc—do what you did (with her) with other individuals.

I was told to study “religious failures.”  “Lord, failure is defined by a goal not reached.  What is the goal of religion?”

Good (question).

“For an individual, it is some kind of relationship to God.  As a society, it is a mission for the society.”

Not quite on target.

“Well, each individual has his or her own religious quest—ideally, a mission given by You.”

Exactly.

“And that reveals Your side of the conversation.”

Yes.

 

 

 

clues

Mind is Like a Fluid …

January 15, 2026

There is a parallel question about language.  How is it that a word relates to or refers to a particular object?  The word is itself an object, a vocalized sound or a mark on a page.  What connects the word “bell” to the bell?  Sometimes it is said that one “points” to the other, but that is a figure of speech.  As the twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observes, the same question arises with pointing.  When you stretch out your finger, why does it direct attention to an object across the room, rather than to itself?

Follow along, and open your mind.  Mind is like a fluid in which human beings and the natural world exist.  By participating in the fluid, minds can understand.  Think of the problem of intentionality.  How is reference possible?  How can essences be grasped?  How can objects be seen?  There must be an interaction, and it is not only causal-physical.  How could it be?  Mind, understanding, is not just physical.  It is a conscious, fluid medium.

“Is it somewhat physical?”

Those categories are not helpful here, but it exerts physical force, has physical consequences.

 

Small-Town Wisdom, Moral Humility, and To Kill a Mockingbird

January 14, 2026

I finally got around to reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It is now a staple of the high school curriculum, but it was not in my day. I’m not sure it had been written yet. It is a terrific book that, to my surprise, centers on the ethos of a small Southern town, a place where people have known each other and each other’s families forever. In a larger city, we present one side of ourselves to the people we meet for coffee. In a small town, people see each other in the round. I was born in Turkey, Texas, in the Texas Panhandle. When I would ask my cousin what the population was, he was able to calculate it this way: Well, the McCorkles has twins, and Sally Sue ran away with a travelling salesman, so it is 994. (Today, it is half that. Such are the winds of change. When I visited it a few years ago, my dad asked, “Has it blown away yet?”)

My relatives who lived there were the best folks I have known. They were astute observers of people, events, and, above all, of character. They did not expect anybody to be perfect and they lived prudently with that fact. They knew how to make judgments without being judgmental. “He’ll work hard as long as you are looking,” was typical of this style. They were great story-tellers because small town life, when you know the people in all their lights and shadows, and take a benign view of their peculiarities and peccadillos, is full of stories.

Harper Lee’s novel is like that. It is told through the eyes of two children. When we are kids, we try to make sense of our world. As we grope at understanding, we get it half-right and half-wrong. His sister cannot remember a time when she wasn’t able to read. She is criticized by her teacher for reading “above grade level.” Her brother explains that this is a teacher newly minted by the state university. She believes in the “Dewey decimal system,” which says that, “if you want to know about cows, you don’t read about them, you milk one.”

Their father, Atticus Finch, is an attorney, respected in the community. He is perfectly embodied in Gregory Peck in the movie version. In typical small-town tolerance, he explains that nobody expects a certain family to abide by the rules. Their kids show up the first day of school and never attend after that. The school just marks them down as present. Atticus explains that, with a father who lives on home-brewed liquor and whatever game he can kill (in season or out), everybody just lets them be. In the calm wisdom of Atticus, the novel teaches moral humility. He never looks for a fight, but does not refuse one when it comes his way. In a small town, you mainly avoid and, whenever possible, defuse conflict. But,.when he is asked to defend a young black man accused of assault, he takes the case. And sticks with it, even in the face of an angry mob.

Throughout the book, there are gentle moral lessons – lessons of honesty and decency – but the only explicit teaching is that it wrong to kill a mockingbird, who is just there to sing. Perhaps we are mainly mockingbirds and should be left to sing our own song, in tune or not.

A Purified Theology Tended to Empty Out the Concept of God

January 8, 2026

My experiences with God were personal and intimate.  Philosophers drain the life out of Him.  God the Person becomes God the Abstraction—the Unmoved Mover, the One, the Absolute, infinite substance, the perfect being, the being whose essence is to exist.  The poet  William Butler Yeats describes the result:  “High on some mountain shelf/ Huddle the pitiless abstractions bald about the neck.”

The great Jewish scholar, Gershom Scholem, explains the phenomenon.

“The philosophers and theologians were concerned first and foremost with the purity of the concept of God and determined to divest it of all mythical and anthropomorphic elements.  But this determination to … reinterpret the recklessly anthropomorphic statements of the biblical text and the popular forms of religious expression in terms of a purified theology tended to empty out the concept of God ….  The price of God’s purity is the loss of his living reality.  What makes Him a living God … is precisely what makes it possible for man to see Him face to face.”