God: An Autobiography Archives

“Ego is destructive, separatist, defiant”

October 27, 2022

Ego is Separatist-

An ego rush always broke my connection with God.

So I tried to keep a cold watch on this ego of mine.

When I was still in Washington, D.C., a matter came up about which I needed the assistance of an eminent intellectual with whom I had a limited acquaintance. He was completely forthcoming, and I felt flattered by his response.

“Lord, how should I take this? Is it wrong for me to feel flattered?”

No, it is not. This is joy, the joy of being yourself, which is proper to (appropriate for) human beings. I want you to be happy, to feel the fullness of your own being, its bounty. I blessed you with certain gifts. Of course, you recognize them as gifts, as benefits, as talents. That is okay. It is not the same as ego.

Ego is destructive, separatist, defiant of My will, self-satisfied and self-lustful. A proper appreciation of yourself opens your heart, binds you to Me, to those you love. Remember that I love you—I love all human beings—without reservation. Ideally, you would love yourself as I love you, as I loved Jesus. But that is not normally possible for human beings, because there are many obstacles.

“But it is possible for a few?”

For some, yes. I have blessed them with the ability to transcend those limitations. They can love themselves fully, and this permits them to love others.

One week I testified before a U.S. Senate committee. It did not go well and my ego limped out of the hearing room.

Get your ego out of it. Stand back and look (at it) at a distance.

“A ‘God’s-eye’ view?”

No, just objectively, as if it were someone else.

That helped. If it were someone else, I would know that, even on a good day, a Senate hearing is unpredictable. But there was still an ego wound.

“Lord, what can I do about that?”

Look, you are encased in a body and a personality, and it requires ego strength and self-respect. When I say, “Get the ego out,” I mean the second-order attachment to ego. The ego, like desires, is a fact, a necessary fact. Like the body, it gets bruised. You just nurture it and let it heal. Don’t deny it but don’t dwell on it either. Accept it and don’t attach it to blame. That your ego has been embarrassed is not the same as “doing something wrong.” Don’t blame yourself. That is an example of the wrong kind of attachment.

“Then I should just say, ‘I wish it had gone better,’ and leave it at that?”

Correct.

“The mind is a little reflection or mirror of God.”

October 27, 2022

The Mind Is A Reflection Of God:

Early man was a whole new phenomenon, not entirely expected.

“How can that be, Lord? Weren’t human beings part of Your plan from the beginning?”

Remember that I am following a plan, not inventing it. I don’t know the whole plan Myself.

“So the emergence of human beings was a surprise?”

Yes. Even though I saw the unfolding of life and understood its trajectory, there is a discontinuity between animal life and human life that’s surprising. People are not just smarter animals. It is not just that they have souls—animals have a kind of soul too—it is that they are creative, free, self-reflective, open-ended, have a yearning to go beyond themselves. They are in fact like little gods, though I do not like the usual use of this notion. But people are much more of the same substance and kind as God. That is why I can communicate with them so effectively. The mind is a little reflection or mirror of God.

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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.

“Do you think I could come to the ancient Jews in the same way I came to the seventh century Chinese? to Americans today?”

October 19, 2022

How God Comes To Different People:

I had been told that culture is a factor in divine revelations.

“Lord, why is culture so important?”

That’s like saying, why language? If I am going to communicate with people, they need a language. For the same reason, they need a culture.

“They need a culture, but why such a variety of cultures?”

There are many ways of realizing (actualizing) the human story. Culture enables lives of different (types of) significance (meaning).

“But why, in terms of Your story?”

I need to come to people in all their particularity, not to mankind-as-such. The Chinese is one way of being. The primitive is one way of being. I come to each in its own terms. Each enables Me to show a different side of Myself.

Do you think I could come to the ancient Jews in the same way I came to the seventh century Chinese? to Americans today? to you?

Learn more about how God comes to different people.

The Problem of Spiritual Discernment

October 6, 2022

The problem of spiritual discernment:

The classic text on the question is The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). I read it eagerly, but the section on Rules for the Discernment of Spirits sent a chill down my spine:

“It is characteristic of the evil one to transform himself into an angel of light, to work with the soul in the beginning, but in the end to work for himself. At first he will suggest good and holy thoughts that are in conformity with the disposition of a just soul, then, little by little he strives to gain his own ends by drawing the soul into his hidden deceits and perverse designs.”

Evidently, the evil one is a very good con man. Could my voice be a clever deception leading me down the garden path? How could I tell? St. Ignatius explains,

“We must pay close attention to the course of our thoughts, and if the beginning, middle, and end are all good and directed to what is entirely right, it is a sign that they are inspired by the good angel. If the course of the thoughts suggested to us ends in something evil, or distracting, or less good than the soul had previously proposed to do; or if these thoughts weaken, disquiet, or disturb the soul by destroying the peace, tranquility, and quiet which it had before, this is a clear sign that they proceed from the evil spirit, the enemy of our progress, and eternal salvation.”

My prayers did suggest “good and holy thoughts.” God had certainly not told me to do anything wrong. On the other hand, the prayers very much disquieted my agnostic soul. Well, it is actually more complicated than that. The moments when I most “dwelt in God” were calm and reassuring. But I was not always comfortable with what I was told. And I was most disturbed when I was not actually praying, but wondering what people would think if I told them I talk with God—and He talks back!

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Learn more about spiritual discernment.

Tell it from My point of view

September 29, 2022

God’s Point of View

“The story of your interactions with various peoples?”

That but not only that. Tell it from My point of view, not the history of people’s experience of God.

“Lord, the total story of Your interaction with people would be too vast.”

No, all history is selective. Use a different word—like episodes—if you like. But it is history in the sense of being chronological, developmental, and dramatic in some sense. There is a subjective point of view (Myself), intentions and concerns for the future, regrets about the past, and so forth.

“What are the materials for this history? The great religious texts?”

Yes, of course. That is one side of the human-divine (interaction), like hearing one end of a telephone conversation. So that is one starting point. But there are others as well, and I have been leading you to them—the physical record, the geological record, the biological development, the stars and galaxies, time and creation, and so on.

And I will tell you many things Myself—that is the “new revelation” aspect. Nothing overly dramatic there—I reveal Myself all the time.

Learn more about God’s point of view.

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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.

“Pure energy, pure creative force, pure Being…”

June 2, 2022

Pure energy:

Later I was told more about God at the Beginning.

Before I was a Person, I was around “for a long time.”

First there was Nothingness, not just empty space—there was no space and time either. Out of Nothingness I erupted, “created” Myself.

“At that point, I was just pure energy, pure creative force, pure Being, Being itself.

Space and time were created as a result of my Being. They were the frames of My existence. The physical universe spun out of Me by My overflowing.

“I am the to-be of all things… not yet a Person… not yet self-aware. I was amorphous energy flowing out radically in all directions.

(Before Creation) I am pure spirit, sufficient unto Myself, and have no “body.” And I did not exist in a world with physical bodies.

“I felt I was lacking something—grounding, facticity, the blunt materiality, the standing-against, the hard edge to push oneself against, the resistance and friction that physical objects have. So, out of my Being, a world was spun.”

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Listen to more about God and energy 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.

“Open your mind.”

April 1, 2022

Open Your Mind:

The idea that there are many gods still did not sit well. “Lord, which are You saying, that there are many gods or many descriptions of God?”

They are the same.

“Manifestations of God?”

Yes.

“But that means there is only one God.”

No, that is too simple. Open your mind. Do not assume your current categories are adequate. Imagine other possibilities. Do thought-experiments. For example, what if a being/beings do not have to be only one or only many? What other ways are there to think about it?

What other possibilities? I was steeped in Western philosophy, in which the great metaphysical debates have been conducted in terms of such concepts as the one and the many, universals and particulars, identity and difference, being and becoming. I constantly pressed God to explain things in terms familiar to me. Sometimes He did, but often he told me that I had to revise my concepts and loosen my logical constraints. These were the only concepts I had. Where does one go to get new concepts?

God continued,

Similarly, what other ways are there to think about infinity, omniscience, and so forth. And, most fundamentally, what other ways are there of thinking about being, nothingness, existence, the power of existence, the act of existence, the force of creation? I will guide you, but you have to make the breakthrough. I can’t put new concepts into your head.

“Once again, why not?”

The human being is a ...

I seemed to get a partial answer that was making sense in terms of what it is to understand a concept, but it was immediately erased, as if someone pushed the erase button on a tape recorder.

The answer is very complex and you don’t have time for Me to go into it all. You need to get back to work now.

Lunch break was over. The vague sense I had afterwards is that a concept is not a distinct entity, like a momentary thought or idea, that you might just zap into somebody’s head, but more like a pattern of mental behavior that has to be lived through, like knowing a melody.

Jerry Martin’s Daybook

October 3, 2021

Jerry Martin’s Daybook-

A friend writes on his late wife’s birthday: “Her favorite poem was W. H. Auden’ stop all the clocks poem. I am sure you know it. She told me she would read it the day I died. She never got the chance.”

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Read further Daybook entries – Click Here

Learn more about Jerry Martin

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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.

“An Inconvenient God” by Jerry L. Martin

July 9, 2021

An inconvenient God:

If God were made-to-order, like something you can buy on the Internet, what kind of God would we pick?

In our modern society, everything is available at our fingertips, so we would probably want a God that makes everything comfortable for us — a convenient God, one who gets us a better job, helps us find a parking place and, when we hurt ourselves, kisses it and makes it better.

A convenient God is a wish-fulfillment God.

That sounds nice, but is that the kind of God we encounter in our lives? Unfortunately, no. While we live in a convenient world, the God who shares our journey is an inconvenient God. We are thrown into rough situations, and our God makes demands on us, such as the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.

And the correct response is an inconvenient prayer: “Thy will,” not my will, “be done.”

Therefore, instead of creating a fantasy vision of what a perfect world would be, suppose we start with the real world and ask, in light of its rocky paths, what kind of God is present here? And what divine purpose is served by throwing us into such a world?

***
Real life is filled with drama.
It has ups and downs, loves and losses, triumphs and failures, days we rise to our best and times we fall to our worst. Our lives are like obstacle courses or quests where pits must be avoided and dragons slain.

What could possibly be the purpose of such lives? Any good parent knows. Any good coach knows. Readers of quest tales know. We do not grow from luxury. A convenient God would, like an overprotective parent, save us from learning life’s lessons.

The purpose of our lives is not just ease or pure pleasure or wish fulfillment. As I was told in prayer, “The purpose of life is not to sit in the lap of luxury.” Why not? Wouldn’t that be a great life, one a loving God would want to give us?

Well, ask yourself, would you want your child, at a young age, to win a billion-dollar lottery, to be able to buy whatever and whomever the darling desires, to live in a protective bubble that would keep disease and hurt out? Would that even be a life?

I was told, “Immersion in the world — with its causal networks, its guilty resistance — is necessary for growth. One needs a hard reality to work against. Otherwise, nothing would be serious.”

We grow from adversity, from challenges. Sometimes we learn more from failing than from succeeding. My colleague, the economist Kenneth Boulding, used to say, “Nothing succeeds like failure.” It is failure, he would say, that tells us where the edge of the cliff is.

As a drama, life has a meaning, shaped by how we cope with the ups and downs, how we deal with our own mistakes and the cruelties inflicted on us, and yet remain open to love and hope.

***

When my wife and I got married, we included the 23rd Psalm in the ceremony. While it is usually reserved for funerals, we knew that all of life is a Valley of the Shadow of Death. But throughout it all, God stands with us — whatever we face.

Why is there suffering? I was told in prayer, “Suffering is the law of growth.” We grow only through suffering. Even to love is to suffer.

We talk about a perfect God and expect him to be writing the perfect script, as if everything were programmed from the beginning. My sense is that God doesn’t lay out the story in advance, and have us walk through it like automatons.

We write our own script with God as co-author.

We create our own dramas, with God as partner — when we are paying attention. In prayer, I was told that the world is like an improvisational theater in which God is the director of players who aren’t listening.

A “perfect” world may not even be desirable. Imagine a world without suffering, where no matter what we did, everything turned up roses. It would be a world in which actions had no consequences. It would not be a real world at all, but a hologram world, and we would be hologram people.

Real life is lived in an inconvenient world in partnership with an inconvenient God.

It is a tough life in which God is not overprotective, but is always on our side. When we are in harmony with the divine and enjoying life’s bounty, God rejoices. When we are errant or in pain, God suffers.

Maybe the real world — inhabited by the flawed people that we are — is not convenient for God either. God is part of our drama and we are part of God’s. We are in this together.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this piece
An Inconvenient God was first published by Tulsa World in 2016.

Sparks

July 9, 2021

Sparks from God:

More Sparks

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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

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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.

Sparks are visual insights from God.