Rippling Waters

“I Breathe Life Into Matter.”

April 11, 2024

 

God continued,

I breathe life into matter, and matter starts responding.  As one translation of Genesis puts it, I “flutter over the waters” and nurture, incubate life.  And I am filled with joy.  It is like a child picking up a harp and being surprised to find that strumming it makes beautiful sounds—and delightedly playing with it.

At the beginning, the cosmos was My playpen, My garden of delights.  It was beautiful, dazzling.  I could play it like a vast organ, but one attached to laser shows and fireworks.

Does God Still Speak to Us?

April 11, 2024

 

 

 

Did revelation end a long time ago?

Philosopher Jerry L. Martin explains that God continues to speak to us, with new messages that we need to hear now.

 

Watch my other Videos – HERE or on my YouTube Channel.

 

 

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 point of view

I Am the Point of Interaction Between Man and the World.

April 4, 2024

I read about the great scientific debate of the eighteenth century:  is space absolute or relative?  Today, the standard view is that science and religion are opposites.  But it was his theology that led Newton to regard space, “the sensorium of God,” as absolute; and a different theology that led Leibniz to uphold relativity, two hundred years before Einstein.

“Lord, what does this reading have to do with my assignment?”

The history of science is My story.

“Do you mean the history of the physical world?”

No, the history of man’s efforts to understand the world is the history of man’s relation to Me.

“Then You are the world?”

No, I am the point of interaction between man and the world.

Evil is a Power of Its Own.

March 22, 2024

As for Satan, that is the symbolism for the evil that is loose in the world. I do not “inflict” it on people. It is just part of the structure of reality. “Satan” represents the fact that there is (an actual) force for evil. That evil is a power of its own, a temptation, and fault-line in human nature, not just the accidental byproduct of (natural) human desires unrestrained.

 

 

Pure being is not an abstraction but a living force.

March 7, 2024

To the philosophers and theologians, feelings, along with other affects, are weaknesses.  So God is regarded as passionless, so passionless that it is difficult to see how He can love.  St. Anselm puzzles over how a passionless God can be com-passionate.  His solution is that “we experience the effect of compassion, but Thou dost not experience the feeling.”  You can see the logical puzzle: we experience God’s love, but God feels no love for us.  For the philosophers, even to speak of a personal God is at best a metaphor or analogy.  But, in my experience, God is not a metaphor.  He is a Person to whom we can pray, who can give us guidance about our lives.  However, I was told,

They have some aspects of Me right.

“What do they have right?”

They understand that I am pure Being, Being unto itself.  They understand My metaphysical essence.  They do not understand My dynamic existence, a force …

“A Person?”

… yes, and a Person.  They use these categories in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, but they are not.  Pure Being is not an abstraction but a living force, focused personally.  Do not avoid metaphysics, but always listen to Me or you will go on the wrong track.

The Consequences of Actions Are What They Are

February 22, 2024

Like a slick lawyer, I shifted my line of questioning.  “Lord, are You saying that, if someone really believed that he or she could do something, like jumping over the moon, they could do it even if it violated the laws of nature?”

No, even I operate under the constraint of physical laws.  This talk about what other physical laws I might have decreed is wrong-headed.  The consequences of actions are what they are—I don’t make them up.  The relations of matter and energy, the speed of light, etc., are fixed.  In that sense, there are no other possible worlds.  Every world would have these same relations of act to consequence.

 

Putting Me First Rather Than Last

February 15, 2024

 

I had now accepted the assignment, but God wanted more.  He wanted me to “purify” myself.

You need purification.  Transformation is a good word.  It is obedience, which at its fullest is transformation.

“What does that involve, Lord?”

Putting Me first rather than last.  Living every moment, making every decision, in response to My call.

“How do I go about doing that?”

You know this—start every day with prayer and let prayer guide you through the day.

God is the world, metaphysics, creation

“The World is All Part of Me.”

February 10, 2024

“Is this connected with the idea of Nature as the Body of God?”

Yes, but it is a clumsy metaphysics.  What is valid is the respect in which the world is all part of Me.  But (it is) not correct to say, (in a) reductionist (way), that I am merely the physical world.  There are levels of mind and spirit not apparent in the (physical) world.