God Archives

Being facing Being

April 4, 2014

I wondered what it could mean for “Being as such” to be a Person, a Thou, as surely, from my own experience, God is. Then it struck me that this rushing Stuff, this force of Being, is also the being of me. And I am a person. So why shouldn’t the rushing Stuff, the Being of—of what?—the World, of Being itself, be a Person writ large? I don’t mean the World merely in a physical sense, since my own being is not merely that of my body. Similarly, the Being that animates everything could be a Person.

Looking out the window at the passing trees, it struck me that their very leaves are full of Being as such, the Being that is also a Person, and that it made sense for them to be a Thou for me. And, more remarkably, for me to be a Thou for them. I felt that Being facing Being, not necessarily speaking but simply facing, is what personhood is.

The edge of infinity

March 24, 2014

That recollection rekindled my curiosity about Buber.

I started reading Maurice Friedman’s highly-praised biography of Buber on weekend trips to see Abigail, who was still teaching in New York. Buber’s first philosophical awakening occurred during adolescence, prompted by “the fourteen-year-old’s terror before the infinity of the universe.”

Buber writes:

“A necessity I could not understand swept over me. I had to try again and again to imagine the edge of space, or its edgelessness, time with a beginning and an end or a time without beginning or end, and both were equally impossible, equally hopeless. Under an irresistible compulsion I reeled from one to the other, at times so closely threatened with the danger of madness that I seriously thought of avoiding it by suicide.”

I stopped reading for a moment and, as the train rumbled on, I pondered the “edge of infinity.”

Being taken over by a powerful image that was both visual and visceral. And felt and saw space at its outer edges, rushing. Expanding outward, unfurling itself with vast force and at almost instantaneous speed. Without stop, neither a completed infinity nor merely finite. The vision had a tremendous feeling of life-force, of Being unfurled, bursting forth at a reckless speed.

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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.

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.

One needs a hard reality to work against.

December 18, 2013

One needs a hard reality to work against.

Martin Luther said that God punishes us through intermediaries like Satan, and I had asked about that.

Now to the other part of your question, why (are people punished) through the world and Satan? Immersion in the world—with its causal networks, its guilty resistance—is necessary for growth. One needs a hard reality to work against that conditions one’s actions and experience and decisions. Otherwise, nothing would be serious.

Ritualism and creeds have been overemphasized

August 7, 2013

Ritualism and creeds have been overemphasized.

Ritualism and creeds have been overemphasized, and I am Myself partly to blame, since at one point those were the most important thing in the world to Me. I am hoping I can open their hearts to something new, without unduly disturbing their good and faithful practices.

Einstein’s theory is child’s play.

July 29, 2013

Einstein’s theory is child’s play.

My nature, the true nature of the universe, of Being, and My relation to human beings, to their role and destiny, is complex. Einstein’s theory of relativity is child’s play by comparison. An adequate understanding cuts across some of the categories human beings find most natural, though they are really profoundly “unnatural” (and I mean that in the eerie sense). They are warped; they often represent disorders of the soul, distortions of Being.

What it is like to be God.

June 20, 2013

Abigail’s train had still not arrived. I paced back and forth, no longer seeing the other people in the station. What to think? What to feel? Finally, I forced a deep breath and, with irritation mitigated by resignation, asked, “Lord, what exactly do You want of me?”

I want you to describe the inner life of God, what it is like to be God.

The inner life of God? What it is like to be God? I didn’t know what this could possibly mean, but I forged on. “Lord, why is that important for us to know?”

Mankind sees God only from the outside and that leads to distortions in its view of God (as it would of anyone)—too distant, awesome, oppressive, Other. Even mystics are very one-sided. They experience oneness but that is not the same as empathizing with My subjective experiences.

Okay, I could see that, if God is too distant, it would be hard to relate to Him. But there was still a problem. “Lord, we think of God as being so infinite and ethereal that ‘subjective experience’ doesn’t even make sense.”

Exactly—that’s one of the distortions.

Although I am much more than a Person, I am a Person, a soul, like you. You—people—cannot relate properly, constructively, to Me unless you understand that. (Take) love, for example. My love comes across as impersonal, generic, oceanic wallowing, but (in fact) it is quite specific, concrete, with feeling, with response to the particulars of your being, of your life.

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God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher – is the true story of a philosopher’s conversations with the Divine. 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.