Category: Featured

Does God Still Speak to Us?

July 18, 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.

 

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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, 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.

You Are Both Other and Same as Me.

July 18, 2024

The living reality of God was already more than I was comfortable with.  As I got into the frame of mind to pray, I would feel as if His Spirit was coming into me, like the infusion of a spiritual presence—as if we were, if not one, at least overlapping.  That made me uneasy.

“Lord, what is the purpose of those experiences in which You seem to fill my soul and body with Your Spirit?”

Those moments are infusions of energy, focused versions of the energy you draw on all the time.

“Am I merging with You at those moments?”

Yes, that is a good (acceptable) way to put it.  When you open yourself sufficiently, I can enter.

“Do You get something out of it as well?”

Yes, I benefit from the in-dwelling of the Spirit in a body.  My nature is essentially spiritual—it both benefits and suffers from not being embodied.  Your spirit is embodied.  By entering your spirit or soul, I enter your body as well.

God is limited by not being embodied?  That seemed strange to me.  “Why do You need that?”

Spirit is diffuse—it is valuable to energize it.  Spirit has no sensory apparatus.  I am enriched by participating in yours.

You are both other and same (as Me).  I need you to be other so that I may encounter another self.  I am a Person and, like other persons, define Myself by responding to other persons, and being responded to (by them).

But I also need union, not distance—just as other persons do.  You and Abigail are both other and same.  You need to be different people—love is a bridge between differences.  You also merge spirits at certain moments, though not totally.  That is also a kind of completion or fulfillment.  Life, including My life, is the dialectic, as you might call it, of same and other, confrontation and union.

 

I am the Innermost Being of Man and of Matter

July 11, 2024

Later I learned that there are some interpretations of quantum mechanics that use the notion of a universal consciousness to explain how an electron in one part of the universe can be in perfect synch with an electron in another part of the universe without any physical interaction between them.  I was not aware of that at the time, but I had just read about dark matter and dark energy, “dark” because they cannot be seen but only inferred from gravitational and other effects.  The mass of these previously unsuspected components are now thought to far exceed the total visible mass in the universe.

Yes, you should look into those.  Think of it—most of what is in the universe is unnoticed.  It is inferred from gross phenomena, but it is inferred as force.  Think of the human body.  It is moved by the mind.  How?  Where is the mind?  The mind is throughout the body.  Its actions are registered, but it is not noticed.  I am not noticed.  But in fact I am seen everywhere, and I am in the innermost being of man and in the innermost being of matter.  Do not have contempt for matter.  It is not the inert stuff of certain old theories.  It is vital and alive and a part of Me.  The interaction of mind and matter is part of Me, and I am the vehicle through which it takes place.

 

“I Am Enacting the Plan.”

June 27, 2024

“Lord, do I understand this correctly:  You are emerging, self-creating perhaps, out of Nothing?”

This is correct.  It is not quite right to say that I “always” existed.  I did come into being, and before Me, there was only Nothing, and there is a sense in which I was present in the Nothing.  There was no time, in the usual sense, then.  There was no matter, no energy, no events.

As I emerged, I had to figure out Who I Was, and What Was to Happen.  You (human beings) talk about God’s plan, but I am enacting the Plan, a Plan binding on Me and not just made up by Me.  The Plan is the scheme, as I have figured it out, of how things should be.  My role is less (that) of (an) organizer than of (the) goal or telos.

Telos is the Greek word for aim, purpose, or function, as in “teleological.”

I   draw things in the right direction, like flowers to the sun. 

 

“Putting Me first Rather than Last.”

June 12, 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.

“They Were Naked and Knew No Shame.”

June 6, 2024

God continued telling me about the truth behind the Garden of Eden story.

I had also underestimated the power of love.  First, I created Adam and I could see that he was alone, as I had once been, and this was not good.  He did not see it because he did not know anything different.  But, as he tried to befriend various animals, he would quickly reach the limit of those relationships and be frustrated and unfulfilled.  So I created woman and made her lovely in his eyes.  They were naked and knew no shame.  And their sexuality was intense and profound.

And, frankly, I felt left out.  I had no such consort.  And, while obedient, man loved woman more than Me.  Though understandable in light of the human nature I had given them, it was not right.  And they knew it was not right and began to disobey Me.  They hid their nakedness, which is to say, they hid their creativity and sexuality from Me, detached it from My purpose and used it solely for their own pleasure and intimacy—innocently enough, as children might do, but still wrong.  And so, with regret, I expelled them to a life of hardship.  Detached sexuality, hiding from God, has its own intrinsic price, the loss of the full bounty and blessing of God.

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.