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Stop Being Simple-Minded

May 9, 2024

“That still doesn’t mean you can do anything.”

Give Me an example.

I started to describe the case of a woman I know who has very strong convictions and great force of will, and yet often fails to achieve her goals.

No, (give Me an instance) from your own life.

“Just winning a tennis game, for example.”

Give me a break. (A) You always have mixed thoughts in those situations and (B) I said you can’t alter physical laws. If you completely wanted to win at tennis and believed you could, you would practice, exercise, and so forth. When I say you can do anything, I don’t mean that you don’t have to take the necessary steps. Napoleon was charismatic but he still had to train troops, plan logistics, and so on. Stop being simple-minded. You are fixating on a single meaning of “you can do anything” and trying to rebut it. Instead, think about what meaning could be true. It certainly does not mean wish-fulfillment. Think about it.

Do It as An Organic Flow

May 2, 2024

Organic flow:

“Lord, I know I should try to live each day in response to Your purposes.”

That is right. Not just to do it mechanically, like a soldier following orders, but to do it as an organic flow, wishing to be in touch with Me and to live in accord with My will, My love.

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 Am Also Much More Than a Person.”

April 18, 2024

I wanted to know whether the world is separate from God or, in some sense, is God.

Neither is an adequate formulation. It would be ridiculous to say that everything—the bruise on your toe—just is God. I am the principle of life, the telos and end of all activity in the universe. So I am neither removed as a thing apart nor simply identical with the things in the universe.

Later I learned that there is a theological view with a respected tradition called panentheism. This view holds that God is both in the world and more than the world, both immanent and transcendent. This is distinct from pantheism, which holds that God is entirely within the world.

But, if God was, in some sense, the world—the physical universe—how could He also be a Person? “But, Lord, You are also a Person.”

Yes and No. I come to you—but not to raindrops—as a Person, and therefore I am a Person. One cannot be a Person in some modes without being a Person.

But I am also much more than a Person. Just because I seem so familiar to you—we talk just as persons do—should not mislead you into thinking I am “just a guy.” It is true that I have many of the attributes of a person—desires and a history, for example. But again do not assume that desire and history mean just the same for Me as they do for human beings. Keep in mind that I am definitely not a human being.

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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 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.

What Are We to You?

March 28, 2024

Like others before me, I wondered how a Supreme Being could possibly care about us human beings. Job asks (7:17-18): “What is man, that you make much of him, that you fix your attention upon him—inspect him every morning, examine him every minute?”

“Lord, what are we to You?”

You are my face onto the world. And onto each other—you, whom I love. I want you to love each other. Christ’s two commandments …

Matthew 22:37-39: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

… are right. They are rooted in the Old Testament. It is hard for Me to love people directly (hard on them, that is). I need people to do it for Me.

It seems that we open the world to God. He experiences the world through us. I remembered French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s argument that, since perception is essentially perspectival—from a vantage point—there is literally no God’s-eye point of view. We are his eyes and ears

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.

“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.