“The Eternal Already had the Potential to be a Person.”

September 4, 2025

“Lord, what was there before? What motivates the act of creation?”

I received the following words and images which I recorded in my notes.

“A feeling of loneliness, of searching, reaching—not yet a Person. Expanding into the great emptiness of Nothing, which is ‘infinitely empty’ far beyond (far more empty than) empty spaces. ‘Who am I? What am I? Am I an I? What is an I?’ A chaotic feeling of the infinite rushing at the edges.”

“Lord, why did eternity ‘shatter’ in this way? Did the still, self-sufficient stuff explode?”

I received the sense: “Brittle, crystalline, too perfect, static, isolated, removed, alone, bored, incomplete. The eternal already had the potential to be a Person but could not do so without creating time.”

And I also got the feeling that God desperately wants to be understood.

I Draw Man Forward . . .

August 21, 2025

What I had been told about Creation still bothered me and I was relieved when God started talking about the process of evolution.

“Lord, do You have to will creatures to evolve into homo sapiens or does it just happen by natural processes?”

That’s not a well-conceived question. It rests on a false dichotomy. Remember that nature is itself teleological, except it is much more complicated than that apparently simple statement. I provide—I am—the telos or purpose, and I follow the telos as well. However, I draw man forward to greater development in the very process of interacting with men (people). At the time of early man, I am not yet sure what is missing. I am not fully developed Myself yet, since I have not encountered beings who can call forth My full latent nature. For the moment, call it a dialectical evolution responding to My need for development.

Here and elsewhere, “man” has the older sense inclusive of both women and men.

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.

“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.

I Will Be There

March 6, 2025

Let’s go to Moses.

Exodus reports that the Israelites “groaned from the bondage and cried out, and their plea from the bondage went up to God. And God heard their moaning, and God remembered [literally, took to heart] His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the Israelites, and God knew.”

“What did You know?”

What I needed to do.

“And what was that?”

Read the next chapter.

“It’s about Moses encountering the burning bush.”

Yes, I had to get his attention. Often I have to put something in people’s paths to get their attention.

“And the Lord’s messenger appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush, and he saw, and look, the bush was burning with fire and the bush was not consumed. Moses thought, ‘Let me, pray, turn aside that I may see this great sight, why the bush does not burn up.’ The Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, and God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’’’

“He reports for duty, ‘Here I am.’”

Moses had the capacity to listen to Me and to obey.

God gives Moses his mission. “And now, go that I may send you to Pharaoh, and bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt.” And Moses asks, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?”

But Moses will not be on his own. “And He said, ‘For I will be with you.’”

Moses protests. “Look, when I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’, what shall I say to them?”

There are various translations of God’s answer, the most revealing of which is by Everett Fox. Moses should tell them “I will be-there” sends me to you. “What does this mean, Lord?”

Several things are going on in that name.

I did disclose it and they got it essentially right. Self-disclosure is part of it. Presence is part of it. The fact that I am seen all the time, that I am ever-present to people, communicating with them sotto voce all the time. It is also reassurance, because I am there to help. When you need me, I will be there. It also has something to do with the quality of presence, that I am fully and authentically and immediately and intimately present, as when you say that one person is “more present” than another.

It means that My essence for human beings is that I will be there, be present, that I am a companion and friend and ally; that My very presence is the heart of Me, and is what (the what of Me) human beings need to know, (the what of Me) that matters.

I will be there for you, by your side, in the fight or in the suffering or in the love. I will be a participant and a partner. That is My essence for human beings.

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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.

“Everything God has spoken, we will do.”

February 13, 2025

God Has Spoken:

One day, after breakfast at a little café in Alexandria, I was told,

Don’t go to work

It seemed to be a training in obedience.

“Lord, do you know we have to get that grant proposal in today?”

Of course.

My organization lived on grant money. But the voice said not to go in. What to do? Well, the sky is not going to fall if the proposal goes in the following day. I would go back to my apartment.

As I turned on the ignition, the voice spoke again.

You can go to work now.

I remember that incident because something was at stake, but usually I was told do something trivial, such as to listen to a different radio station or sit in a different chair. As these arbitrary commands continued—mounted as it seemed—Abigail expressed concern.

This sounded more like Boot Camp than spiritual guidance.

Maybe I shouldn’t do everything I was told. Maybe I should, as she put it, “use your intelligence.” I was puzzled. Was I supposed to second-guess God?

The next day I stopped at Border’s bookstore near Pentagon City. On the way out, I felt guided to move in a particular direction, like a dowser following his stick: first straight ahead, next to the right, then straight ahead, now stop. I was at the religion section. I felt guided down to the third shelf on the right, and finally to a particular book.

It was a book I never would have chosen on my own: John Calvin’s commentary on the Gospel of John.

I know that Calvin is one of the great theologians of the modern era, but I had an impression of him as stern and rigid. I picked up the book and it opened to John 8:28, where Jesus says, “I do nothing on my own.”

Calvin explains that “Christ wants to prove that he does nothing without the Father’s command … he depends entirely on his will and serves him sincerely … he does not just partially obey God, but is entirely and without exception devoted to his obedience.” It was a lesson in obedience.

Near the register, there was a display with another book I never would have bought on my own: The Ten Commandments, by Dr. Laura Schlesinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel. Many people like Doctor Laura but the few times I had heard her on the radio, she seemed harsh rather than loving. I believe in tough love, but she just sounded tough. However, I opened it and my eyes fell on a line bold-faced in the text. It is where the people of Israel accept the covenant: “Everything that God has spoken we will do!” Another example of total obedience.

I had been led to one other passage in Calvin’s commentary. John 9:4 says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.” Calvin comments, “as soon as God enlightens us by calling us, we must not delay, in case the opportunity is lost.”

The note of urgency reminded me of the story a village chief in eastern Brazilia told of his own encounter with a divine being.

He had encountered the being while out hunting, but was too scared to speak and the being left.

“At night while I was asleep he [the divine being] reappeared to me. … He led me some distance behind the house and there showed me a spot on the ground where, he said, something was lying in storage for me. Then he vanished. The next morning I immediately went there and touched the ground with the tip of my foot, perceiving something hard buried there. But others came to call me to go hunting. I was ashamed to stay behind and joined them. When we returned, I at once went back to the site he had shown me, but did not find anything any more.”

He had missed his moment. I did not want to miss mine.

“I Am Pulling Life Forward.”

January 16, 2025

Go back to My loneliness. Feel it along with Me. The universe has exploded into being, and I scramble to order it. Then there are long eons, though remember that “long” doesn’t mean exactly the same to Me.

The following came to me as God’s experience: “I am dwelling in the vast loneliness. It is the loneliness of a huge figure who does not know He is alone, since the idea of others has not yet appeared, so it is just this huge unexplained emptiness.”

I was beside myself. I had reluctantly given up my happy agnosticism—and for this? I had higher expectations. “Lord, that doesn’t sound like much of a god.”

You are diverting yourself from the task of describing My life because of fears that you will say something wrong and embarrassing. Don’t let your fears guide you. Just listen to Me and dwell within My heart and tell My story from that vantage point.

However disappointing, the voice was still authoritative. I relaxed and, once again, was taken back to the Creation, in (for me) uncomfortably anthropomorphic language.

I am awake. I rise and shrug off the cramps of night. I stretch my arms, move my feet. It is good to be alive. I look at the world, matter, around me. Dead. Nothing there. I am ready for action, for interaction, but there is nothing. Just whirls and splashes and explosions.

Matter has a subjective side, a “within,” that subliminally experiences its surroundings, but that is too limited to interact with, too limited to be satisfying. It is like the story of the tar baby—you can poke it but you do not get much of a response. The Mayan myth of making men out of clay and wood is not far off.

In Popul Vuh, the Mayan creation story, God aims to make men who can “walk and talk and pray articulately.” He first tries making them of wood and then of clay, and finds those don’t work very well.

So I infuse My spirit into matter, as if trying to blow life into it. (Like blowing bubbles) I blow and blow molecules, complex molecules, the building blocks of life.

This was a meaningful image even if anthropomorphic. Even for scientists, the origins of life—even the answer to “what is life?”—is a profound mystery. If there is a God, then surely He would be part of that story, and “blowing life into it” might be about as precise as anything.

“But why did it take God so long—millions of years—to develop life?”

Long? It was the twinkling of an eye. Time is much more relative than you imagine. Those millions of years were no longer than the first six milliseconds of the universe.

Listen to Your Body

September 19, 2024

There is another way to listen to God. One day, when I was fatigued from travel, I was told to take a day to rest.

“But I have so much work to do, Lord.”

Always listen to your body—it is also My voice.

“It Leaves Out the Most Interesting Part of the Story.”

September 12, 2024

“Lord, is the theory of evolution correct?”

It is not a bad theory. It is a short-hand that works, but it leaves out the most interesting part of the story. It is like behavioral psychology in this respect.

While Pavlov’s dog salivating tells you something about animal and human behavior, seeing people solely through the lens of stimulus-and-response conditioning leaves out what is really interesting about them. Similarly, the theory of evolution is okay as far as it goes, but leaves out the best part of the story.

“Death and the Hope of Immortality . . .”

July 4, 2024

“The next phase is what I wonder about. It looks to me as if You communicate some sense of moral order and hierarchy, reverence for life and death, a sense of the meaning of life … I am feeling that this is Your voice, not mine, Lord.”

Yes, it is. They were understanding Me well enough to understand that life has meaning—a beginning and an end and the sense of a meaningful movement from one to the other, summarized (judged, reckoned) at the end. Death and the hope of immortality, which isn’t merely the fear of death but the understanding that there is a vertical dimension to life and (that) its meaning does not stop with death, that there is a larger story the individual is part of, and his (and her) spiritual development is not limited to just one life.