Explore Selections From The Book Archives

“Yes, that is important!”

June 15, 2023

What is important:

We were living in Memphis, Tennessee, where my dad was going to college on the G.I. Bill. We attended my grandmother’s Pentecostal church. I would listen to what grownups said and try to think whether they were true or not—especially when they contradicted themselves. If heaven was a place of eternal joy, why didn’t they rejoice when somebody died? They made way too much of dressing up for church, when what mattered—they said—was the state of your soul.

“Lord, I took things people said seriously and placed the highest value on truth and on being right with God.”

Yes, that is important!

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.

________

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

Too Interesting

June 7, 2023

This is where, in my view, the book really gets interesting.

Almost too interesting.

In fact, I found it hard to re-read the chapters coming up.

I mean that literally.

A swirl of feelings fogged the page. I relived the events, relived what I had been told, relived what I was asked to do, what absurd mantle was being placed on my shoulders.

The disturbance is not just retrospective. I am now about to share these things publicly for the first time. I think now, as I did then: Surely not, Lord. You can’t mean that! What will people say? What will they think?

I will be told things that deeply disturbed me, and may disturb you.

I will be given a much bigger assignment than I ever imagined, much bigger than I could possibly welcome. You may think, as I did, surely not!

If so, just stay calm and set your concerns aside for the moment. The first step to understanding something new or unusual is to “suspend disbelief” at the beginning. You have to take it in, as best you can, on its own terms. You need to try to see how it might make sense, how it might fit in as an extension or modification of your current beliefs. Critical evaluation can be put off. There will be plenty of time for that later.

On the other hand, you may be more open than a life-long agnostic and temperamental skeptic like me. Either way, I will be happy to have you as my companion on this journey. None of us should have to travel alone.

________

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, autobiography and sparks of wisdom. In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Martin has testified before Congress on educational policy, appeared on “World News Tonight,” and other television news programs

“The answer came in a female voice.”

June 1, 2023

The female voice of God:

One day, a New Age friend gave me a mantra that was supposed to “center” one’s self. I thought I would give it a try. I don’t remember the mantra now, but it was addressed to the “Lord,” and I asked, “Is the Lord in the mantra You?”

There is only one God but many “lords,” many spiritual beings for whom that is not an inappropriate title.

Your early prayers—which were addressed to “Lord” and you thought perhaps Lord Krishna or Who-knows-who—were about right. When you address “the Lord,” you do not have to specify or have in mind a particular spiritual entity. The Lord who is right for you at that time will respond. The Lord that was right for your early prayers was Me, and so I answered.

I had a very basic question. The God who speaks to me is personal and, in human experience, persons are either male or female. The voice I heard was definitely a masculine voice but sometimes, in some indefinable way, I felt there was a feminine side to God. To my surprise, the answer came in a female voice.

No, not exactly. There are many sides to God, some of which you might call feminine.

Many sides? Some masculine, some feminine, some something else? The sound you hear is categories shattering.

_______

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.

Thinking about Infinity

May 25, 2023

Thinking about infinity:

The radical thinking God asked for has really been beyond my intellectual reach.

I tried to think about infinity, for example.

It is certainly a daunting concept. Every philosopher is aware of such puzzles as Zeno’s paradoxes and Immanuel Kant’s antinomies.

The Greek philosopher Zeno argued that, if the tortoise has a head start, Achilles can never overtake him. Once he catches up with the tortoise’s previous position, the tortoise will have moved forward.

Achilles will now have to reach the tortoise’s new position but, by the time he does so, the tortoise will have moved forward again, even if only a little way, and Achilles will have to catch up to that position, by which time the tortoise will have inched forward yet again, and so on.

Since there are an infinite number of points between the tortoise and the goal post, and an infinite number of points can never be transversed in finite time, Achilles can never catch the tortoise. Of course, in real life, he could. That’s why it is a paradox.

Kant’s antinomies are more metaphysical than mathematical but also have to do with infinity.

For example, either the world had a beginning or it did not (these alternatives are the antinomies or contradictories). If it did, one wonders what happened before that? And if it did not, there would have to be an infinite number of moments in the past, and is that really conceivable?

There were world-class physicists at a conference I attended.

One reported that mathematicians had now proved you can have an infinite space within a sphere—within a ball, in effect. He said it made no sense to him but, since mathematicians had proved it, he had to accept it.

A great deal of contemporary science doesn’t “make sense.”

While I was balking at giving up my categories for understanding the nature of God, I saw what scientists have to believe when they do quantum mechanics. They have to believe that some subatomic particles do not actually have a location prior to being observed.

They have to believe that a certain change in one particle is always followed by the opposite change in another particle even though there is no contact between them and no way for the second particle to “know” which way the first particle changed.

If tough-minded physicists could be that flexible, surely I could too.

I did try to think about infinity.

One of the basic paradoxes in the philosophical tradition concerns whether it makes sense to have an actual or completed infinity. No matter how large the number, you can always add “plus one.” So it seems that the number series simply goes on forever and can never be completed. If so, infinity is more a process term than the description of an actuality. It expresses the possibility of a larger number, not the actuality of an infinite quantity. But that seems to mean that no thing or being could actually be infinite. The number series can always go on, but each number is the end point of a finite series of numbers.

That means that God could not actually be infinite.

I wondered if that was adequate. I tried to think of a completed infinite. In our home, we have two mirrors that face each other. Each one mirrors the other, and mirrors the other mirroring the other, and so on, with the result that one sees an infinite series of mirrorings in each mirror. And they all exist fully and in the present, not just as a series running into the future.

Maybe, I thought, this was an actual or complete infinite.

But, no, the mirror images get smaller and smaller but at some point they are presumably too small to be mirrored, so there are a finite number of reflected images after all.

Moreover, although the images seem to us to all exist at the present moment, in fact light takes time to go back and forth, and that means there is really a series of images. Even if the series could go on forever, it would never be completed.

Perhaps I was on the wrong track.

What is meant when people say that God is infinite?

Do they mean some kind of actual or completed infinite? Or is it another way to say that nothing is missing. That is a less puzzling idea. In a perfect painting, nothing is missing. There is nothing to be added. Perhaps that is a thought in the right direction.

Then I remembered: I had already asked God, Are You infinite? The answer was “I am boundless.”

It is not clear what “boundless” means. Literally, it would mean “without bounds or limits.” But the next two answers may be relevant here. I had asked about omniscience, in effect, infinite knowledge, and was told, “I know everything that is important.” And I had asked about omnipotence—infinite power—and was told, “I can do everything I want (care) to do.” That sounds more like the perfect painting.

___________

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.

“It is good, just let it happen.”

May 4, 2023

Let it happen:

One experience, late at night, went even further. I felt the distance or boundary between me and the world becoming narrower and narrower, and less and less distinct. Slowly, subject and object were blending, becoming intimately bound, not standing apart from one another. I was noting this intellectually, but it was not an intellectual experience. It was, you might say, an ontological experience, an experience of my whole being. Finally, for a few moments, it approached total one-ness, the complete loss of awareness of self. At that point, I pulled back.

“Lord, what is the meaning of this kind of experience?”

There are many levels and kinds of experience with Me (including music). Do not make too much of it. It is good, just let it happen.

It does not mean that you are about to become a mystic or anything unworldly. It is not unlike—it is on a continuum with—a wide range of spiritual experiences, in and out of religious practice and sensibility, that people have all the time. But it is definitely good. It will give you energy and peace and insight, so let it in.

Many times one “loses oneself” in an experience, but those moments are less threatening than merging with God. I pulled back, but felt a nagging sense that I was not supposed to.

________

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.

“Listen to Me even when I whisper.”

April 27, 2023

Listen to Me even when I whisper:

I began to take the prayers more seriously and started writing some of them down. Sometimes the voice would speak to me even when I was not praying. One day I was driving to New York, running behind schedule. Along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, I kept hearing a faint sound, not much more than a gnat in the ear, and I kept trying to “brush it away.” But it was persistent, and so I finally paid attention. It was the voice telling me to pull over and pray. I don’t remember the rest of what I was told, but the first words I have always remembered,

Listen to Me—even when I whisper.

I have tried to do that ever since but it is not always easy.

________

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.

“Let it be.”

April 20, 2023

Let It Be-

“When I was in the third grade, my parents both worked. After school, I was supposed to wash the breakfast and lunch dishes. I would look out the window and see the other children playing in the building site next door. It had a big pile of sand, an open foundation, and other attractive hazards. I wanted sooo much to play outside with the other kids. Sometimes I would give in to temptation and go out to play ‘just for a few minutes.’ Before I knew it, Dad’s car would appear and I would be in deep trouble.”

Yes, you were often denied joy during childhood and that cramped your ability to experience joy.

It was also fragile and threatened. You now carry that wariness over (to the present). You should place yourself faithfully in My hands and enjoy what happens and assume that what goes wrong is just part of the divine plan.

Let it be.

________

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, autobiography and sparks of wisdom. In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Martin has testified before Congress on educational policy, appeared on “World News Tonight,” and other television news programs

________

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.

“These moments were not empty suffering”

April 13, 2023

Empty suffering:

Any person who believes in God has to confront the problem of human suffering. Why does God permit it?

“Lord, does suffering have any purpose or meaning?”

Of course, suffering is what makes life serious. Imagine a world in which actions never resulted in suffering. Imagine a world without the pain of regret, without feeling bad about doing something wrong (or) shameful.

“But disease serves no moral purpose.”

Now you are fencing with Me on “the problem of pain.” Just listen. You will never learn from fencing.

Disease, disaster, aging, death are essential aspects of suffering. “We” live in a physically vulnerable world. That is the essential condition that makes life serious.

“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.

A couple of years before these prayers began, I suffered a mild heart attack and was rushed to 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.

One after another blood drawer would come, and I would plead, argue, wheedle, and insist they find some other place to puncture me. Each resisted, then managed to find a spot.

I was transferred to another hospital for the surgical procedure. I was met by a technician who said his name and stuck out his hand—while looking the other way and standing on my oxygen tube. When it was time to go into the operating room, he snatched away my blanket with so violent a jerk it would have ripped out the intravenous insertion if I had not by now been on high alert.

Once in the operating room, I was placed on a slab with my arms flat at my side.

Medical equipment loomed above, posing an impressive threat. “Don’t move!” I was told. My nose chose that moment to itch. The itch grew intense, then more intense, dreadfully intense, until nothing existed but me and that itch. Then I understood. I can’t fight it…just have to live with it, until the procedure is over. I don’t know if the itch went away or what—I forgot all about it.

The procedure went smoothly.

I watched the monitor as the surgeon snaked a catheter through an incision in my groin up to a major coronary artery where a stent had to be placed.

Opening an artery is a very serious matter. Bleeding can be life-threatening. The patient has to lie flat and immobile for twenty-four hours. Nurses at my first hospital had been angels in white, but here I was attended by Nurse Ratched’s less charming twin.

She seemed to resent patients needing her help.

Finding it difficult to manage the bedpan flat on my back, I asked for assistance. She acted as if it were a dirty-minded request and responded by threatening me, “If you can’t manage the bedpan, we will catheterize you!” Finally, I did manage, and it was time to close up the artery. Another patient had told me the closing could be dangerous as well as painful.

“Who is to perform this delicate operation?”

Nurse Ratched gave me the grim news: young Mr. Sizzorhands, the technician whose previous efforts to hurt me had been foiled, would now have another shot. I asked for someone else. “He is the only technician available.”

“I am not going to let that guy lay another hand on me.”

She made it a battle of wills. We went back and forth. Finally I said, “Let me speak to the doctor.”

She said she would see what she could do and, after a time, she returned with a young Asian-American attendant. He had magical hands. I didn’t feel a thing.

My body was recovering nicely, but the whole experience—starting with “indigestion” in the night (I didn’t know that was a heart symptom), calling the office the next morning to find out what nearby doctor was covered by my health plan, driving myself (fool that I was) to the doctor’s office, filling out forms and waiting for some time before going up and telling the receptionist, “I may be having a heart attack,” the quick examination and discovery that I was at that very moment in the throes of an incipient attack, an emergency medical team rushing to my side trying to head it off, being shoveled into an ambulance, the sirens, intensive care, the surgery, the whole ordeal—left me feeling fragile, as if I were made of spun glass. A sharp tap and I would shatter.

They (these moments) were not empty suffering; they even had to do with leading you to Me.

“How so, Lord?”

They focused your attention on your mortality, which (led) you to open your heart fully to Abigail because you realized how precious this love was. And it led to your prayer to serve God.

________

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 law of growth in the universe.”

April 6, 2023

“I have read that our grace or salvation had to be ‘purchased at a price’—namely, God’s giving up His only Son. I really don’t understand this, Lord. Did You really suffer from giving up Your only Son?”

It is more complex than that. God as Son takes on the suffering of mankind, takes it on quite literally and co-suffers with mankind. I co-suffer with mankind. Otherwise, I would have put creatures into a fallen (limited) world and watched them suffer from a distance.

Moreover, My growth requires that I suffer. Suffering is the law of growth in the universe. There is even a form of suffering for subatomic particles—the constant disequilibrium and disruption of particles. Like muscles, things grow by being torn apart and healing.

Okay, so we suffer, Jesus suffers, and God suffers, but the question remains: How does the fact that suffering is divinely shared make anything better?

Why am I holding back?

March 30, 2023

As I worried over the changes all this would require, especially stepping back from my work and reducing my salary. God chided me for “hoarding.” Then He added,

Think about your intelligence.

Lord, are You suggesting that I am hoarding it too—holding it back instead of using it in Your service?”

Yes.

“Out of my own fear of not being up to the task?”

Yes.

“Lord, I can take actions You command, but I can’t change how I feel.”

I did not ask you to change your feelings. You may still feel insecure if you want. I asked you to stop hoarding your intelligence. That is an action.

“Do you have something specific in mind?”

Yes, you could be talking to serious people with religious interests right now, and you’re not. I’m not pushing you to work harder but you could be making notes toward articles. But you hold back. I am not directing you to do something different so much as not to hold back for the wrong reason, out of insecurity.