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“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?

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.

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.

Every revelation is limited in this way.

March 23, 2023

I was praying about Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God. Walsch quotes God as having told him, “You’ve the power and the ability right now to end world hunger this minute, to cure diseases this instant.”

Not right.

Walsch asks why God doesn’t put an end to suffering and reports being told, “I have put an end to it. You simply refuse to use the tools I have given you with which to realize that. You see, suffering has nothing to do with events, but with one’s reaction to them.”

No.

He asks, “why not eliminate the events?” and reports being told, “Unfortunately, I have no control over them.”

Overstated.

He reports God as explaining: “Events are occurrences in time and space which you produce out of choice—and I will never interfere with choices.”

Too simple.

According to Walsch’s report, “Some events you produce willfully, and some events you draw to you—more or less unconsciously. Some events—major natural disasters are among those you toss into this category—are written off to ‘fate.’ Yet even ‘fate’ can be an acronym for ‘from all thoughts everywhere.’ In other words, the consciousness of the planet.”

No.

I prayed about other things Walsch attributes to God. For example, “Thoughts are put into action. If enough people everywhere believe something must be done to help the environment, you will save the Earth.”

Yes.

And “So much damage (to the environment) has already been done, for so long. This will take a major attitudinal shift.”

No.

And “There is not one among you who has not made a headache disappear, or a visit to the dentist less painful, through your decision about it. A Master simply makes the same decision about larger things.”

Yes, sort of.

“Lord, you have corrected several of Walsch’s reports. Is this an example of how prayers and revelation generally can go wrong? Is that part of the lesson here?”

Yes, the listener always has concepts and beliefs through which the message must be funneled. Every revelation is limited in this way. That is one reason new revelations are always needed.

I didn’t pray about Walsch after that. Whatever God was or wasn’t doing with him was between him and God.

“That is how revelation works.”

March 16, 2023

How revelation works:

I was trying to be flexible, but my mind was being stretched out of shape. Some days I would doubt the voice. It was, after all, in my head and talked a lot like me. But I was told,

My words are coming to you for a reason. Do not worry that it (My voice) sounds like you.

It is bound to sound like you (and to use) your vocabulary, your concepts. That is how revelation works. But notice that what you are now writing is completely different from what you believed prior to prayer—so different, much of it is profoundly uncomfortable and disturbing to you.

“Well, then, it is not just my own thoughts projected through Your voice.”

As you press ahead and pray more, and read reverentially and in conversation with Me, more revelations will come to you, and you will doubt less. Just relax, and put yourself in My hands.

But being reassured by the very voice I was doubting seemed circular. How can you tell whether a message is really from God? Without mentioning my personal story, I sought advice from a philosopher I knew at Calvin College. Did he know of any writings about how to tell if an answer received in prayer is really from God. I learned that my question had an official name, the Problem of Spiritual Discernment, and that indeed it had been addressed. Now I would get to the bottom of it.

________

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.

“You will never learn from fencing.”

March 16, 2023

You will never learn…:

Giving up my career and risking my reputation in order to tell God’s story involved what sometimes seemed like an intolerable sacrifice. But, of course, it paled in comparison to the suffering human beings have experienced over the centuries. 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 relapsing into fencing with Me on “the problem of pain.” Just listen. You will never learn from fencing.

________

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

“You Cannot Remain Neutral.”

March 2, 2023

On a visit to Colorado, I told a former colleague in the philosophy department about my experiences. I was afraid he would think, “poor Jerry, he has gone daft.” But he listened with interest and respect, and recommended that I read American philosopher William James’ classic essay, “The Will to Believe.”

A British scientist had argued in an influential essay called “The Ethics of Belief” that it is always wrong to believe something without sufficient evidence. He had religion in his crosshairs. But, James responded, there are some beliefs that, if you accept them, will shape your whole life. And shape it in a different way if you do not. You cannot remain neutral; yet evidence is inconclusive either way. In these cases, it is perfectly reasonable to accept the belief even with “insufficient” evidence.

My situation seemed to be exactly what James was describing. Facing a similar choice between belief and unbelief, the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal, saw it as a wager. If I believe in God and am wrong, well, I’m dead anyway, so I haven’t lost much. But if I don’t believe in God, and there is one … well, you might say, there’s hell to pay.

I faced my own wager. Either I follow the voice or I don’t. If I follow the voice and it is not the voice of God or anything close to that, what is the worst that can happen? Well, I would be a fool, maybe even a laughingstock, and say goodbye to an excellent career. But, if I decide not to follow the voice and it is indeed the voice of God or something close to that, then I would have really blown it. What if Moses had done that? Or George Fox, the founder of the Quakers? The Old Testament is full of people called by God, who at first demur and only reluctantly heed the call. Even Moses worries (“suppose they do not believe me”) and feels inadequate to the task (“I have never been eloquent … I am slow of speech and slow of tongue”).

I am not comparing myself to these great religious leaders, but all of us in our lives face moments when we have to decide whether to respond to a certain call—be it the call of duty or service or simply, as Joseph Campbell puts it, to “follow your bliss”—rather than continue a more conventional or comfortable course. If I had to live with one worst-case scenario or the other, I could live with being a fool, if that’s what it came to, but I could not live with having refused God’s call.

Making a decision to believe is not quite the same as accepting that belief in your bones. It is more like the first step toward believing. My philosophy still had no place for God—especially for a God who talks to me. Outside the Bible, who talks to 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.

“The whole now needs to be told.”

February 24, 2023

“Lord, what exactly is my assignment?”

The world needs to understand My story, or at least to understand it better. I have given parts of the story to different people at different times. The whole now needs to be told. Your effort will be part of telling that whole story.

“Do You want people to piece the whole together out of the parts?”

What I most want is for people to listen to Me.

“And to listen to what You have told various people over the ages?”

Yes, that is part of listening to Me.

“What exactly do You want me to write?”

God: An Autobiography. My story is the history of Me—how I came to be.

________

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.

“This is not a renunciation”

February 16, 2023

I want you to model the spiritual life. Live it deeply. Theology is not just an intellectual exercise. It must be grounded in an intimate relationship with Me, an intimate openness to My Word.

“Aren’t I already open, Lord?”

Yes, but you turn away. You know the problem. You hold Me at arm’s length and listen to Me only part of the time, and only partially, not as a whole person. You need to draw Me into yourself totally—live through Me—and let Me guide you totally.

“But that sounds miserable. I couldn’t have fun and enjoy life any more.”

No, it doesn’t mean that. You will find life perfectly pleasant. This is not a renunciation. It is an affirmation, a growing in a certain direction, in a certain domain.

This reminded me of saying a sad farewell, before getting married, to all I would be giving up—having my apartment as messy as I wanted, living on pizza, watching the Late Late Show. It’s amazing what a bachelor can cherish as the good life.

“Lord, what do You want me to do?”

Nothing dramatic. Just pause in the course of the day to take Me in. It doesn’t mean you have to interrupt other things you’re doing. But I will be co-present and a co-participant. Try that now, as you eat your lunch.

“Okay, Lord.” I drew Him in and unwrapped my sandwich. “Let me share this with You, Lord.”

Good.

That day I ate lunch “with God.” But most days I do not.

Theology Without Walls – The Transreligious Imperative

January 12, 2023

God’s autobiography is mainly the story of divine interaction with people and with messages given over time to different cultures.

Toward the end of God: An Autobiography… I am told that we stand on the “threshold of a new spiritual era.” “A new axial age.” Spiritually attuned individuals will draw their understanding of spiritual reality. Not just from the scriptures of their own religious tradition, but from, “the plentitude of My communications with men and women.”

Each religion got part of the story. It was now time to put the parts together.

I was told to start a new project, called Theology Without Walls. So I started attending the American Academy of Religion, and in 2014 held the first panel for the new TWW project. I did not mention to my new colleagues what I had been told in prayer. I presented the project on its own merits. The argument for it can be stated in a simple syllogism.

If the aim of theology is to know all we can about the divine or ultimate reality. If insights into that reality are found in more than one religion, then theology needs to take in all the evidence and not be confined to our own tradition. It should be Theology Without Walls.

The project attracted considerable interest, including from leading theologians, and the result is a volume of twenty-one essays by outstanding thinkers that has just been published: Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative (Routledge, 2019). Since I am a philosopher, not a theologian, and since I did not even know any theologians or as a life-long agnostic, much about religion, it seems little short of miraculous that Theology Without Walls has succeeded to so sublime a degree.

All I had to do was whatever God told me. That was all.

“They shook your faith.”

January 6, 2023

One morning I started to ask some trivial question and was interrupted.

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.