God Archives

Read Chapter 114

November 30, 2023

A Proper Appreciation of Yourself Opens Your Heart.

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.

“Pray and I will tell you”

November 16, 2023

I started making a list of great spiritual leaders to pray about. I thought the question would be, for example, What was God communicating to Martin Luther? But, when I asked, I got a different answer.

Suppose you brought a guy in – say, Luther – and cut him up (dissected him, looked at the elements that make him up). What would you find?

“Not just the single solitary individual, I suppose, but someone immersed in a tradition, institutions, and a culture.”

I act over the centuries in reference to individuals, but also movements, cultures, and the like.

“But only individuals receive communications.”

Just listen for the moment. I interact with mankind, with the universe, in many different ways. Do not assume that the only interaction is the same form of the interaction I have with you. With some it is conversational, but with others it is by inspiration, by My spirit moving through them, infusing institutions and life-forms, cultures, cultural forms, art, music, dance, symbolism, ideational systems, thought forms …

So, looking at each cultural form, I should be able to figure out how it reflects You?”

The starting point is not the cultural forms and asking “What kind of God or transcendent order does that imply or suggest?” but start with Me and ask “What am I doing with that culture, individual, art, art form, or whatever. What is it to Me?” Pray and I will tell you.

“Let Me Tell You What the Story Is.”

September 7, 2023

In a few days, I asked again about God’s story.

The story begins with creation, the evolution up to life, animals, early man. Then to the very ancient communications that require language and memory.

They (My communications) occurred rather simultaneously, and each communication was tailored to and by the recipients. So the precise sequence for telling My story is more a question of narrative strategy than of accuracy or significance.

“But I will have to tell a story that makes sense.”

That makes sense to whom? Let Me tell you what the story is. I am burgeoning forth, reaching out to matter, plants, animals, activating their interiority, giving them direction.

As I have explained, I grew as a Self in response to the interiority of others, and I wanted to communicate, interact, more fully and at a higher level. This (communication) is somewhat possible with early man, who recognized My presence in nature, in life, and also heard, if somewhat dimly and inchoately, My other promptings such as conscience, (the sense of) right and wrong, fine sensibility, appreciation of nature and beauty, love amongst creatures, and mystical union.

“The Soul’s will is the will of God.”

August 18, 2023

I tried to step back to see what question my “soul” would ask. “How can I merge with You? I’m not sure if that’s the best way to put it, Lord: be at one with You, at rest with You, at one with Your will?”

The question is adequately formulated. The goal—one way to describe the goal—is to be at one with God, the God of All. At bottom, the Soul’s will is the will of God. The Soul is at one with God.

It is not that you and I are literally the same substance, the same particular. It is that we are “at one,” in perfect harmony, and not accidentally so. It is in the nature of what the Soul is, that it is at one with God. Remember that these metaphysical (philosophical) categories are crude and inadequate in the first place.

Back to your question: how can you become at one with God? Of course, the answer is that you already are—your Soul, that is. The task is to come to realize that this is so, to realize it not merely in theory, but in intuitive, felt understanding, in your emotions and feelings, and in practice.

“That’s the goal, Lord? It sounds simple. The one-ness is already inside. All we have to do is to bring our conscious selves along.”

That is right. It is the simplest thing in the world. And everyone, at some level and at some moments, knows it, at least glimpses it. But it is very difficult to actualize in practice. The empirical world—the world of desires and the senses—seems so real and is so powerful that is extremely difficult to redirect one’s energy.

And the empirical world is real, in its own way. The world is not an illusion, a mirage. If it is a mirage, it is one from which you can drink water. No, you must respect the empirical world while at the same time emancipating yourself from it, not letting yourself be identical with your interests in this world.

So the world of our experience (and desire) is quite real—it is the arena in which we live our lives and loves, joys and sorrows. In spite of that, we should not let ourselves be ensnared by it.

Like Two Singers Doing a Harmony

July 27, 2023

“Yes, I always think of You ‘pushing’ me, rather than my being ‘drawn’ to You. I respond to orders rather than seeking union.”

That is good. The shallow seeking of union with Me is a delusion. The goal is to be “in tune” with Me. The work will flow from that. This is not just a matter of doing your duty. It is coming into alignment with Me—like two singers doing a harmony.

Thinking about Infinity

May 25, 2023

Thinking about infinity:

The radical thinking God asked for has really been beyond my intellectual reach.

I tried to think about infinity, for example.

It is certainly a daunting concept. Every philosopher is aware of such puzzles as Zeno’s paradoxes and Immanuel Kant’s antinomies.

The Greek philosopher Zeno argued that, if the tortoise has a head start, Achilles can never overtake him. Once he catches up with the tortoise’s previous position, the tortoise will have moved forward.

Achilles will now have to reach the tortoise’s new position but, by the time he does so, the tortoise will have moved forward again, even if only a little way, and Achilles will have to catch up to that position, by which time the tortoise will have inched forward yet again, and so on.

Since there are an infinite number of points between the tortoise and the goal post, and an infinite number of points can never be transversed in finite time, Achilles can never catch the tortoise. Of course, in real life, he could. That’s why it is a paradox.

Kant’s antinomies are more metaphysical than mathematical but also have to do with infinity.

For example, either the world had a beginning or it did not (these alternatives are the antinomies or contradictories). If it did, one wonders what happened before that? And if it did not, there would have to be an infinite number of moments in the past, and is that really conceivable?

There were world-class physicists at a conference I attended.

One reported that mathematicians had now proved you can have an infinite space within a sphere—within a ball, in effect. He said it made no sense to him but, since mathematicians had proved it, he had to accept it.

A great deal of contemporary science doesn’t “make sense.”

While I was balking at giving up my categories for understanding the nature of God, I saw what scientists have to believe when they do quantum mechanics. They have to believe that some subatomic particles do not actually have a location prior to being observed.

They have to believe that a certain change in one particle is always followed by the opposite change in another particle even though there is no contact between them and no way for the second particle to “know” which way the first particle changed.

If tough-minded physicists could be that flexible, surely I could too.

I did try to think about infinity.

One of the basic paradoxes in the philosophical tradition concerns whether it makes sense to have an actual or completed infinity. No matter how large the number, you can always add “plus one.” So it seems that the number series simply goes on forever and can never be completed. If so, infinity is more a process term than the description of an actuality. It expresses the possibility of a larger number, not the actuality of an infinite quantity. But that seems to mean that no thing or being could actually be infinite. The number series can always go on, but each number is the end point of a finite series of numbers.

That means that God could not actually be infinite.

I wondered if that was adequate. I tried to think of a completed infinite. In our home, we have two mirrors that face each other. Each one mirrors the other, and mirrors the other mirroring the other, and so on, with the result that one sees an infinite series of mirrorings in each mirror. And they all exist fully and in the present, not just as a series running into the future.

Maybe, I thought, this was an actual or complete infinite.

But, no, the mirror images get smaller and smaller but at some point they are presumably too small to be mirrored, so there are a finite number of reflected images after all.

Moreover, although the images seem to us to all exist at the present moment, in fact light takes time to go back and forth, and that means there is really a series of images. Even if the series could go on forever, it would never be completed.

Perhaps I was on the wrong track.

What is meant when people say that God is infinite?

Do they mean some kind of actual or completed infinite? Or is it another way to say that nothing is missing. That is a less puzzling idea. In a perfect painting, nothing is missing. There is nothing to be added. Perhaps that is a thought in the right direction.

Then I remembered: I had already asked God, Are You infinite? The answer was “I am boundless.”

It is not clear what “boundless” means. Literally, it would mean “without bounds or limits.” But the next two answers may be relevant here. I had asked about omniscience, in effect, infinite knowledge, and was told, “I know everything that is important.” And I had asked about omnipotence—infinite power—and was told, “I can do everything I want (care) to do.” That sounds more like the perfect painting.

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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.

“These moments were not empty suffering”

April 13, 2023

Empty suffering:

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 fencing with Me on “the problem of pain.” Just listen. You will never learn from fencing.

Disease, disaster, aging, death are essential aspects of suffering. “We” live in a physically vulnerable world. That is the essential condition that makes life serious.

“All that’s rather abstract, Lord. What exactly does disease do for us?” I thought of Job’s boils.

Suffering is the test of your humanity. There is no greater test than pain—how one copes with it. It is easy to be nice, faithful, and such, when things are great, but very hard under adversity.

“But, Lord, that just seems perverse—or cruel.”

No, that’s not so. Think about your own times of physical suffering—in the hospital, for example—the shots, the clumsy aide, the itch, the nurse about urinating, those were full of growth.

Those examples brought back memories.

A couple of years before these prayers began, I suffered a mild heart attack and was rushed to the intensive care unit. They took blood tests, day and night. There are a limited number of places from which blood can be drawn, and the same spot cannot be used again right away. The wrists are ideal, but mine are sensitive and a needle there smarts.

One does not have much power as a patient, but safeguarding my wrists became my prime imperative.

One after another blood drawer would come, and I would plead, argue, wheedle, and insist they find some other place to puncture me. Each resisted, then managed to find a spot.

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 and standing on my oxygen tube. When it was time to go into the operating room, he snatched away my blanket with so violent a jerk 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. “Don’t move!” I was told. My nose chose that moment to itch. The itch grew intense, then more intense, dreadfully intense, until nothing existed but me and that itch. Then I understood. I can’t fight it…just have to live with it, until the procedure is over. I don’t know if the itch went away or what—I forgot all about it.

The procedure went smoothly.

I watched the monitor as the surgeon snaked a catheter through an incision in my groin up to a major coronary artery where a stent had to be placed.

Opening an artery is a very serious matter. Bleeding can be life-threatening. The patient has to lie flat and immobile for twenty-four hours. Nurses at my first hospital had been angels in white, but here I was attended by Nurse Ratched’s less charming twin.

She seemed to resent patients needing her help.

Finding it difficult to manage the bedpan flat on my back, I asked for assistance. She acted as if it were a dirty-minded request and responded by threatening me, “If you can’t manage the bedpan, we will catheterize you!” Finally, I did manage, and it was time to close up the artery. Another patient had told me the closing could be dangerous as well as painful.

“Who is to perform this delicate operation?”

Nurse Ratched gave me the grim news: young Mr. Sizzorhands, the technician whose previous efforts to hurt me had been foiled, would now have another shot. I asked for someone else. “He is the only technician available.”

“I am not going to let that guy lay another hand on me.”

She made it a battle of wills. We went back and forth. Finally I said, “Let me speak to the doctor.”

She said she would see what she could do and, after a time, she returned with a young Asian-American attendant. He had magical hands. I didn’t feel a thing.

My body was recovering nicely, but the whole experience—starting with “indigestion” in the night (I didn’t know that was a heart symptom), calling the office the next morning to find out what nearby doctor was covered by my health plan, driving myself (fool that I was) to the doctor’s office, filling out forms and waiting for some time before going up and telling the receptionist, “I may be having a heart attack,” the quick examination and discovery that I was at that very moment in the throes of an incipient attack, an emergency medical team rushing to my side trying to head it off, being shoveled into an ambulance, the sirens, intensive care, the surgery, the whole ordeal—left me feeling fragile, as if I were made of spun glass. A sharp tap and I would shatter.

They (these moments) were not empty suffering; they even had to do with leading you to Me.

“How so, Lord?”

They focused your attention on your mortality, which (led) you to open your heart fully to Abigail because you realized how precious this love was. And it led to your prayer to serve God.

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.

I Did Not Feel Ineffable

January 18, 2023

Mysticism is often considered the highest level of religion, but for a long time, there were no mystics.

God was interacting with people in many ways, but not through mystical union. Then the first mystic seers appeared. In prayer, God explained,

Now people were coming to me—not in limited ways, praying and offering sacrifices and so forth—but in a kind of merger … they were entering into Me, and I was receiving them. That was a new experience.

“So You responded?”

It is hard to explain. It’s like suddenly finding that you are the natural home for these creatures … the bosom or womb or home or ocean that all return to. That is no more important a part of My nature than others we have discussed, but it is important …

And then another thing happened. Much more than before, these sages began to ponder My nature and (to) try to articulate their understanding of it.

And two changes occurred as a result. First, for the first time, I was an object, to be defined and analyzed. It is like your first experience with a psychologist who has a lot of boxes to put you in (introverted, repressed, etc.). As God, I had not pondered My own “nature.” I had no need to “define” Myself, but the effort of others to do so had an impact …

It came clearer that I was an object to others, a source of puzzlement, even mystery, to them. In fact, they would say that My nature was ineffable, beyond all language, all logical categories. They would describe Me in paradoxes—neither existent nor non-existent, and so forth.

And this has an impact. I did not feel ineffable. To be sure, I am hard to describe and human concepts are not adequate, but that is true of the physical universe as well.

“You say it has an impact?”

It creates a problem. It puts a barrier between Me and My creatures. How can they approach the ineffable? And even that mystical aspect leads them to regard Me as a pea-soup they want to dive into.

It did leave Me with a problem: how to break through the fog ….

“Then mystical union is not the goal? The purpose is to live the life you’re given? Is that right, Lord?”

Yes!

Told anew. I felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz swept up in the whirlwind.

“It is time for it to be told anew.”

December 14, 2022

I had been told,

I want you to tell My story.

Thinking of the Bible, I said, “Lord, hasn’t Your story already been told?”

Yes. It is time for it to be told anew, and not in the same way.

We are entering an unusual time in the history of the world. The old religions are coming apart. Yet there is a renewal of religious spirit. Many of the great religions rested on a relatively clear reception of messages from Me. The new spirituality does not. It is aimless, made-up, impressionistic, psychologized, sometimes flaky and even dangerous and demonic. Not all “spiritual” forces are from God. Some are evil or distorted. A purity of message must be regained.

There is gain here as well. The old revelations were limited. They fit the understanding of people at the time. The messages were sometimes garbled or misunderstood or distorted over time.

I have evolved since then. There is new information to impart.

There it is again: God evolves.

A long history, has not been chronicled, of My development.

I would like to tell you that story and perhaps have you publish it.

My message is evolving over time.

You will carry it forward. Do not credit this to your ego—it will be My voice. (Just) focus on the task. The world’s religions have spent themselves. They need renewal.

Believe the inspirations I send you. Do not worry about any other standards than communicating correctly what I reveal to you. It may seem crazy to others. It (revelation) always does. This is the courage of the messenger.

I felt like Dorothy swept up in the whirlwind. And poor Abigail, would she be swept up too?

Over dinner, I broke it to her. She just listened, unfazed.

“I felt submissive; it sounded like orders from Above. I thought: Jerry is clearly not making it up. What it means in my life is, of necessity, open-ended. To receive such a directive is to move to a realm or level not foreseeable. It is a blessing.”

_______

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.

________

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.

new Elijah, voice, Experience God: An Autobiography

“Are you going to take the voice seriously?”

November 10, 2022

“Are you going to take the voice seriously?”

The historian Paul Johnson writes in his spiritual memoir about having once called the prime minister’s office and, instead of getting the secretary’s secretary, the prime minister herself answered. “It happened to me once with a prime minister,” Johnson writes. “But with God it happens all the time.”

I don’t know if Johnson’s experience is like mine, but from that day on, when I prayed, I almost always received a verbal response, often with quite specific guidance. At first, it just seemed an oddity that went too much against my agnostic worldview to be taken seriously. Once my son had classical music playing in his ear all the time. It turned out to be an ear infection, causing buzzing signals that his brain skillfully translated into Mozart. Maybe my prayers were like that.

I would tell Abigail about these odd experiences. While I always disdained paranormal reports, near death experiences, and the like, she did not. I assumed she put the voice in that category. I didn’t really know because, usually, she just took in what I told her and didn’t say much. She explained to me later that she thought I was engaged in a sensitive communication and did not want to create static.

Then, one day, she did speak up. “Are you going to take the voice seriously, or is this just entertainment?”

She had put her finger on the contradiction I was living.

The voice was too real and benign and authoritative to ignore. Yet I could not imagine acting on it. Well, actually I could and did act on it, but without taking it seriously. I would be told to do this or that. Sometimes the guidance was about some matter facing me that day, and following the guidance usually worked out pretty well. Other times I received arbitrary directives which, since harmless, I followed. For example, one morning, Abigail and I had just sat down to breakfast when I was told,

Don’t eat.

So I just sat there for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.

You can eat now.

I always did as I was told, but it was still more like a game of Captain-may-I than a life imperative. I was not ready to answer Abigail’s question.

On a visit to Boulder, where I used to teach, I told a former colleague about my experiences. I was afraid he would think, “poor Jerry, he has gone daft.” But he listened with interest, and recommended that I read American philosopher William James’s classic essay, “The Will to Believe.” An influential British scientist had declared, as a principle of the ethics of belief, “It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” The scientist had religion in his crosshairs.

James responded that 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. You just have to decide which belief you would rather live with.

My situation seemed to be exactly what James was describing.

Facing a similar choice between belief and unbelief, the seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal, had seen 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 divine, what is the worst that can happen? Well, I would be a fool, maybe a laughingstock, and would say goodbye to an excellent career. But, if I decide not to follow the voice and it is divine, then I would have missed my purpose in this life. 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?

Another notable book by William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, helped answer this question.

The founder of pragmatism, the only distinctively American school of philosophy, James also taught physiology and psychology. He was a man of science but, for him, empiricism did not mean restricting our understanding to what science registers. He looked without prejudice at all kinds of human experience. He talks about famous people such as George Fox as well as ordinary people who have received answers to prayer or psychic intuitions or visitations from recently-departed family members.

Many people have had moments of divine or non-natural awareness, probably more than feel comfortable talking about them publicly.

Duke English professor Reynolds Price writes about his own battle with cancer. During the course of his treatment, he had an encounter with Jesus in a vision or, as it seemed to him, in another dimension. After he published his story, he received letters from many people with similar experiences—experiences that they had never told anyone. My experience was not as out-of-line as I had thought.
I decided to follow the voice and see where it would lead me.