Category: Explore Selections From The Book

Yes and No

July 10, 2025

I read more of Conversations with God on a long coast-to-coast flight, occasionally pausing to pray about this or that, and writing the brief answer in the margins.  I asked about the following statements Walsch attributes to God.

“You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter.”

Wrong.

“This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged:  that God cares one way or the other what you do.”

Wrong.

“You are in a partnership with God.  We share an eternal covenant.  My promising to you is to always give you what you ask.”

Yes.

“The promise of God is that you are His son.  Her offspring.  Its likeness.  His equal.”

Yes and No.  Partners, yes.  Both necessary, yes.  The same in scope and power, no.

“I tell you this:  all you see in your world is the outcome of your idea about it.”

Too simple, but the overall direction is correct.

“The person who has the ‘faith to move mountains,’ and dies six weeks later, has moved mountains for six weeks.”

He has stated it all too simply and so the answer is off-center.

“I tell you this:  every experience you have, I have.”

Yes.

What He Said, I Said

July 5, 2025

God had explained that He is a Person, but not a human being.  “But Jesus is.”

Yes.

“Then how can it be right to say that Jesus is identical with God, that he is God?  Two beings cannot be identical if one is human and one is not, one is mortal and the other is not.”

This notion of identity is not helpful here.  Jesus’ whole heart and soul and mind were one hundred percent infused with Me.  What he said, I said—just as what you are writing now is what I am telling you.  And some of your thoughts are put there by Me, which means they are Mine, because they are put there by an indwelling of Me in you, a partial merge, if you will.  This is not just inspiration.  When I enter something, I really enter it—become infused—”intermingled” is too weak a word because the elements are no longer separately identifiable.

Well, all that was a lot to take in.  I would have to “let it percolate” as Miss Finley, my high-school Latin teacher, used to say.

Evolution, Animals, Creation

Man is Important But so is the Rest of Creation

June 19, 2025

The previous prayer continued, but something I received later might be helpful here.  I had been guided to read about evolution and animal behavior.

“Why read this, Lord?”

You need to understand—to have enough concepts to understand—My history with the world, including all forms of life.  Part of the distortion in religions is they are homocentric (anthropocentric).  Man is important, but so is the rest of creation.  My history involves close interaction at every level.  Every level is part of the healing, re-creation of the world, its unfolding, fulfillment.

God's Hands Holding A Child

“Consciousness is Quite a Miracle”

June 5, 2025

Life is at first of a very low level—something like bacteria and viruses—tiny bits of life—moss and slime.

I asked, with some edge, “Lord, did You interact in a personal way with moss and slime?”

It is better if you don’t interrupt with questions.  Just listen.  Questions can come later.

Remember that I am learning all the way.  I do not know what the final product may be.  Man, as he now exists, is not the final product—only the future will tell us, including Me, that.  I feel My way, pulled forward by a felt telos or goal emergent in each step, the way an intellectual project often develops from one insight to another.  I am pulling life forward, eliciting the development of its potential, drawing it to more complex forms.

In this process, consciousness is quite a miracle, even from My point of view.  I had consciousness before, but I didn’t think of it that way.  I just was, and matter was.  It was quite startling to see other consciousness develop.  Previously (all) consciousness had been coextensive with and hence identical with Me.  It did not make sense to think of there being others as well.

“The Common Ancestor is Eve . . .”

May 23, 2025

According to the Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe, DNA studies “point to the conclusion that all of the present-day populations throughout the world were most probably derived from a single common ancestor, within the span of the past 200,000 years.”

“Is this the same as Adam and Eve, Lord?”

Don’t be too mythological.  That is, they were not in a Garden of Eden and so on.  But the Garden story captures with great precision the prototypical experience of human innocence, and of Divine innocence and awkwardness.  In that sense, the common ancestor is Eve, a creature of a higher development than ever before, with a new level of interaction, able to hear and respond to a higher level of whispering, and hence, over time, of much greater development.

The story of Adam and Eve portrays the first kind of experience I had with human beings.  I created them in My image.  As essentially creative force (Myself), I gave them creative force, the power of sexuality and the ability to create other human beings.  I gave them objects of beauty, in nature and in each other, and pleasure in eating, moving about, and enjoyment of each other.  I had been all alone and I enjoyed the company.

At first I imagined I could walk among humans and enjoy their company.  This required that they obey me, while not being in awe of me, and that they retain a certain innocence.  This was my first experience in discovering that humans cannot interact with God in the simple, direct way they interact with one another.  Like children not separated from their mother, at first they had little individuality or purpose.  They enjoyed the good things I had given them and did not understand the power of good and evil or the power and complexity of their own sexuality.

Nothing Existed But Me and That Itch

May 15, 2025

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.  Then I asked him to stop standing on my intravenous tube.  When it was time to go into the operating room, he snatched away my blanket with so violent a jerk that 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.  I was not supposed to move.  My nose chose that moment to itch.  It grew more and more intense.  For a time, nothing existed but me and that itch.  Then I understood I couldn’t fight it.  I just had to live with it until the procedure was over.  At that point, the itch disappeared.

 

“Think in a Different Way”

March 27, 2025

“Lord, I have the feeling that you want me to read and think less, and to listen more and just write down your story.”

Don’t stop thinking, but think in a different way. Don’t work so hard to figure everything out, to make it rational, to make it fit your categories. Just listen and think through the implications of what I tell you.

“But, Lord, some of what I learn from You comes from worrying over what you say.”

Sometimes yes, but often no. Sometimes your questioning just gets in the way. The main point is to open your mind, to try to understand what I am saying on its own terms, and to see ways it might be true or understandable to you.

If something doesn’t make sense to me, how can I supposed to “see ways” to make it understandable? How do you get to that vantage point?

 

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.