Judaism, Christianity, Jews, Jesus—all this upset me, so, for a time, I concentrated on day to day matters.  One morning I started to ask some trivial question and was interrupted.

Did I tell you to ask a question?  Just listen.  You stopped asking about Me because some of the answers disturbed you.  They shook your faith.

That was true.  When answers upset me, I would start thinking that, surely, this was not the voice of God.  “Lord, why is faith like that?  Why is Your interaction with us so tenuous and subject to doubt?”

First, it is not.  During most times, people have not had trouble believing.  Believing in Me or in some gods was—is—the most natural thing in the world. 

Second, my “invisibility” has to do with the kind of Being I am.  It’s like asking why we can’t see neutrinos.  Nobody can see your “mind.”  You believe in “other minds” with no greater “evidence.”

God was alluding to the topic of my doctoral dissertation.  One of the great philosophical puzzles concerns skepticism with regard to knowledge of other minds.  The problem arises from the fact that we do not have direct access to other people’s thoughts and feelings.  We only observe their outer behavior.  In fact, we do not have any proof that others really have inner thoughts and feelings at all.  Yet it is reasonable to believe they do.  Is God any more elusive than minds?  Well, He certainly seems so.

Although the voice was always palpably real and authoritative, I continued to experience resistance.  My agnostic worldview really did not have room for these encounters.  I was always walking a tightrope with unbelief just one misstep away.  I had decided to follow the voice, but this decision would be tested.

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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 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.

________

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.

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

An Evolving God-

I entered college a Christian and left an agnostic.  I had no desire whatever to be “washed in the blood” again.  The question I had been avoiding was, Do You want me to become a Christian?

No, I don’t want you to join any denomination.

“Is it okay for me to read about Jesus?”  I asked about Jesus rather than Christ.  Jesus is an historical person, who certainly existed, but whether he was the Christ, the Messiah, is a religious question.  I did not want my question to prejudge the answer.

Yes, but reading through the Old Testament first is a good approach.

“The God of the Old Testament seems terrifying.  You do not seem terrifying, Lord.”

I was young then.  I had not had much experience with people.  I am an evolving God.

God was young then?  He is evolving?  I thought God was supposed to be perfect, eternal, and unchanging.  I had been an agnostic, but I thought I had a clear idea of what I was agnostic about.  I was often disturbed when I was told something that did not fit with what I had been taught growing up; however, this bit of news, while puzzling, did not upset me.  The God who spoke to me was very much a personal God.  It was surprising but not out of character if, like other persons, He changes over time.  Later I would learn that this is why God wanted to talk to me.