Category: Featured

Tell My Story As I Tell It To You

August 14, 2025

 

“So I should read the scriptures of the major religions?”

Yes, I want you to read the early spiritual history of mankind.  I will lead you to which readings.  I would like you to pray as you read them and take notes as directed.

I grew up at a time when “man” and “mankind” referred to both men and women, and God spoke to me in my own vernacular.

“Lord, You said I was to tell Your story ‘from the inside out.’  But reading the scriptures is ‘from the outside in.’”

Yes, tell My story as I tell it to you.  The only purpose for reading is to give you reference points for understanding My story.

 

Alasdair MacIntyre RIP

August 12, 2025

My friend, Alasdair MacIntyre, died this year. I call him my friend, although our paths crossed only intermittently. I first met him, when he was speaking in Boulder. “I may be a member of the Moral Majority,” he told me. Well, I was too, in a similarly modulated way. Later, when After Virtue appeared on the cover of TIME magazine, I asked him whether he had been prepared for the celebrity. “Not at all,” he said, “not in the least.” But he took it in stride and it served him and his world audience well.

Alasdair owed me nothing. We had never been colleagues or in any other special relationship. Nevertheless, he offered a generous endorsement whenever I asked for it. A few years ago, as he was growing older, lest I leave something important unsaid, I send him a note thanking him for his many kindnesses.

He wrote back that he owed the greater debt to me. For what? For having shared my God experience with him. Though defending one set of philosophical battlements after another over the years, he came, before the end, to have an open soul. God bless him!

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

June 27, 2025

I have been behind – or barely keeping up – on several important fronts. Here is the brief explanation I sent a friend some weeks ago, shortly after Abigail broke a hip, minutes before we were to present papers at the NE AAR:

I have been overwhelmed since the first May 2 mishap. We had a second episode, after being released from Acute Rehab, when, while at home doing rehab with occasional helpers, Abigail’s was extremely weak. They measured her blood pressure: 60/40! I have never heard of so low a blood pressure. There was another drama, which I will spare you, that delayed our calling 911, but when we did, they could barely believe that she was sitting up, able to talk to them. They immediately put in two pints of blood and another pint a day or two later. They were not sure of the source of the bleeding but it turned out to be a bleeding ulcer. They cauterized it. That didn’t quite work, so they did it again. She is now at home and has resumed rehab exercises that may last for many weeks. For me, the impact has been as much emotional as well as being somewhat run ragged. When I fell in love, I was aware that I had a new vulnerability. I have learned to live alone – after a divorce, that can be a relief – but, having found my true love, it would be immeasurably harder to go on alone. That concern has taken the stuffing out of me.

As I now reflect on events, I recall Abigail’s asking the nurses, in a stream of medical queries, “tell me, why do bad things happen to good people?” They smiled and shook their heads. Years ago, she had asked her friend, the Jewish philosopher Michael Wyschogrod. His answer: “Our people on working on it and hope to have an answer soon.” Although, in God: An Autobiography and in Radically Personal, I find clues, this is and remains the unanswerable question.

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Explore more reflections in God: An Autobiography and Radically Personal

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.

Two Philosophers Wrestle with God: A Dialogue

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: A Dialogue

June 5, 2025

The highly anticipated publication that extends one of the podcast’s most profound and celebrated series is now available.

This book captures the thoughtful, philosophical dialogue between Dr. Jerry L. Martin and Dr. Richard Oxenberg, as they wrestle with some of the deepest questions of existence: Who is God? What is the nature of reality? Can we understand ultimate truth?

You can purchase the paperback or E-book on HERE on Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

“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.

“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.

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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.

God's pain, your pain lord

“Can You tell me about Your pain, Lord?”

February 12, 2025

It is not only we who suffer.  I sensed that God does too.

“Can You tell me about Your pain, Lord?”

It was as if I heard a deep moan of anguish, loneliness, despair, misery, hopelessness.

“Are those things you feel, Lord?”

Yes.

“Are they caused by humankind?”

Mainly.

“Is it difficult to love us if we cause you such pain, Lord?”

No, not for Me.  Even when human beings most disappoint, they are infinitely love-worthy.

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.