God and humans Archives -

“These moments were not empty suffering”

April 13, 2023

Empty suffering:

Any person who believes in God has to confront the problem of human suffering. Why does God permit it?

“Lord, does suffering have any purpose or meaning?”

Of course, suffering is what makes life serious. Imagine a world in which actions never resulted in suffering. Imagine a world without the pain of regret, without feeling bad about doing something wrong (or) shameful.

“But disease serves no moral purpose.”

Now you are fencing with Me on “the problem of pain.” Just listen. You will never learn from fencing.

Disease, disaster, aging, death are essential aspects of suffering. “We” live in a physically vulnerable world. That is the essential condition that makes life serious.

“All that’s rather abstract, Lord. What exactly does disease do for us?” I thought of Job’s boils.

Suffering is the test of your humanity. There is no greater test than pain—how one copes with it. It is easy to be nice, faithful, and such, when things are great, but very hard under adversity.

“But, Lord, that just seems perverse—or cruel.”

No, that’s not so. Think about your own times of physical suffering—in the hospital, for example—the shots, the clumsy aide, the itch, the nurse about urinating, those were full of growth.

Those examples brought back memories.

A couple of years before these prayers began, I suffered a mild heart attack and was rushed to the intensive care unit. They took blood tests, day and night. There are a limited number of places from which blood can be drawn, and the same spot cannot be used again right away. The wrists are ideal, but mine are sensitive and a needle there smarts.

One does not have much power as a patient, but safeguarding my wrists became my prime imperative.

One after another blood drawer would come, and I would plead, argue, wheedle, and insist they find some other place to puncture me. Each resisted, then managed to find a spot.

I was transferred to another hospital for the surgical procedure. I was met by a technician who said his name and stuck out his hand—while looking the other way and standing on my oxygen tube. When it was time to go into the operating room, he snatched away my blanket with so violent a jerk it would have ripped out the intravenous insertion if I had not by now been on high alert.

Once in the operating room, I was placed on a slab with my arms flat at my side.

Medical equipment loomed above, posing an impressive threat. “Don’t move!” I was told. My nose chose that moment to itch. The itch grew intense, then more intense, dreadfully intense, until nothing existed but me and that itch. Then I understood. I can’t fight it…just have to live with it, until the procedure is over. I don’t know if the itch went away or what—I forgot all about it.

The procedure went smoothly.

I watched the monitor as the surgeon snaked a catheter through an incision in my groin up to a major coronary artery where a stent had to be placed.

Opening an artery is a very serious matter. Bleeding can be life-threatening. The patient has to lie flat and immobile for twenty-four hours. Nurses at my first hospital had been angels in white, but here I was attended by Nurse Ratched’s less charming twin.

She seemed to resent patients needing her help.

Finding it difficult to manage the bedpan flat on my back, I asked for assistance. She acted as if it were a dirty-minded request and responded by threatening me, “If you can’t manage the bedpan, we will catheterize you!” Finally, I did manage, and it was time to close up the artery. Another patient had told me the closing could be dangerous as well as painful.

“Who is to perform this delicate operation?”

Nurse Ratched gave me the grim news: young Mr. Sizzorhands, the technician whose previous efforts to hurt me had been foiled, would now have another shot. I asked for someone else. “He is the only technician available.”

“I am not going to let that guy lay another hand on me.”

She made it a battle of wills. We went back and forth. Finally I said, “Let me speak to the doctor.”

She said she would see what she could do and, after a time, she returned with a young Asian-American attendant. He had magical hands. I didn’t feel a thing.

My body was recovering nicely, but the whole experience—starting with “indigestion” in the night (I didn’t know that was a heart symptom), calling the office the next morning to find out what nearby doctor was covered by my health plan, driving myself (fool that I was) to the doctor’s office, filling out forms and waiting for some time before going up and telling the receptionist, “I may be having a heart attack,” the quick examination and discovery that I was at that very moment in the throes of an incipient attack, an emergency medical team rushing to my side trying to head it off, being shoveled into an ambulance, the sirens, intensive care, the surgery, the whole ordeal—left me feeling fragile, as if I were made of spun glass. A sharp tap and I would shatter.

They (these moments) were not empty suffering; they even had to do with leading you to Me.

“How so, Lord?”

They focused your attention on your mortality, which (led) you to open your heart fully to Abigail because you realized how precious this love was. And it led to your prayer to serve God.

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.

________

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.

“This is not a renunciation”

February 16, 2023

I want you to model the spiritual life. Live it deeply. Theology is not just an intellectual exercise. It must be grounded in an intimate relationship with Me, an intimate openness to My Word.

“Aren’t I already open, Lord?”

Yes, but you turn away. You know the problem. You hold Me at arm’s length and listen to Me only part of the time, and only partially, not as a whole person. You need to draw Me into yourself totally—live through Me—and let Me guide you totally.

“But that sounds miserable. I couldn’t have fun and enjoy life any more.”

No, it doesn’t mean that. You will find life perfectly pleasant. This is not a renunciation. It is an affirmation, a growing in a certain direction, in a certain domain.

This reminded me of saying a sad farewell, before getting married, to all I would be giving up—having my apartment as messy as I wanted, living on pizza, watching the Late Late Show. It’s amazing what a bachelor can cherish as the good life.

“Lord, what do You want me to do?”

Nothing dramatic. Just pause in the course of the day to take Me in. It doesn’t mean you have to interrupt other things you’re doing. But I will be co-present and a co-participant. Try that now, as you eat your lunch.

“Okay, Lord.” I drew Him in and unwrapped my sandwich. “Let me share this with You, Lord.”

Good.

That day I ate lunch “with God.” But most days I do not.

Told anew. I felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz swept up in the whirlwind.

“It is time for it to be told anew.”

December 14, 2022

I had been told,

I want you to tell My story.

Thinking of the Bible, I said, “Lord, hasn’t Your story already been told?”

Yes. It is time for it to be told anew, and not in the same way.

We are entering an unusual time in the history of the world. The old religions are coming apart. Yet there is a renewal of religious spirit. Many of the great religions rested on a relatively clear reception of messages from Me. The new spirituality does not. It is aimless, made-up, impressionistic, psychologized, sometimes flaky and even dangerous and demonic. Not all “spiritual” forces are from God. Some are evil or distorted. A purity of message must be regained.

There is gain here as well. The old revelations were limited. They fit the understanding of people at the time. The messages were sometimes garbled or misunderstood or distorted over time.

I have evolved since then. There is new information to impart.

There it is again: God evolves.

A long history, has not been chronicled, of My development.

I would like to tell you that story and perhaps have you publish it.

My message is evolving over time.

You will carry it forward. Do not credit this to your ego—it will be My voice. (Just) focus on the task. The world’s religions have spent themselves. They need renewal.

Believe the inspirations I send you. Do not worry about any other standards than communicating correctly what I reveal to you. It may seem crazy to others. It (revelation) always does. This is the courage of the messenger.

I felt like Dorothy swept up in the whirlwind. And poor Abigail, would she be swept up too?

Over dinner, I broke it to her. She just listened, unfazed.

“I felt submissive; it sounded like orders from Above. I thought: Jerry is clearly not making it up. What it means in my life is, of necessity, open-ended. To receive such a directive is to move to a realm or level not foreseeable. It is a blessing.”

_______

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, autobiography and sparks of wisdom.

________

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.

“For the first time, humans mirror Me, look at me eyeball to eyeball.”

December 8, 2022

God and Humans

I wondered how God interacted with these first humans. “Did You communicate with them verbally?”

In a sense. Early on, they do not have what can properly be called a language.

They have sounds and gestures (and) live in a very short time-horizon—no signifiers for things distant in time or space. I communicate in grunts and such like, in their inner ears, to give them a sense of awe and My presence. Of course, their consciousness is still very undifferentiated.

This is not a criticism or insult. They are quite wonderful creatures.

Some respond in a very spiritual way. They catch the drift and are in awe, and feel the splendor of creation and My divine presence.

“Do you give them commands?”

Yes. Some “grunts” are warnings not to do something. They live on the edge of subsistence and can be very cruel.

Life is brutal and they are often brutal. They die young. But that does not keep them from responding spiritually.

“What does this mean for You, for Your life?”

For Me, it means the first spark of real interpersonal interaction, not just vague spiritual rapport.

From very early, humans—protohumans—have a sense of something more, something higher. (Their sense of) the divine is not just fear and wish-fulfillment, though there is plenty of that. There is a real sense of relating to Me as a Person, not just as the vague spirituality of nature.

It is hard to convey in retrospect but, at this point, I do not quite know I have a personality, an individual personhood.

Events pass through my consciousness. I have a sense of My intelligence pervading the world, of fulfilling a universal telos. I feel a spiritual rapport with life. But none of that constitutes a sense of personhood, of an I standing opposite a You. The protohumans gave Me that, or I developed it or became aware of it in relation to them.

For the first time, human beings mirror Me, look at Me eyeball to eyeball.

“Everything God has spoken, we will do.”

November 10, 2022

God Has Spoken:

One day, after breakfast at a little café in Alexandria, I was told,

Don’t go to work

It seemed to be a training in obedience.

“Lord, do you know we have to get that grant proposal in today?”

Of course.

My organization lived on grant money. But the voice said not to go in. What to do? Well, the sky is not going to fall if the proposal goes in the following day. I would go back to my apartment.

As I turned on the ignition, the voice spoke again.

You can go to work now.

I remember that incident because something was at stake, but usually I was told do something trivial, such as to listen to a different radio station or sit in a different chair. As these arbitrary commands continued—mounted as it seemed—Abigail expressed concern.

This sounded more like Boot Camp than spiritual guidance.

Maybe I shouldn’t do everything I was told. Maybe I should, as she put it, “use your intelligence.” I was puzzled. Was I supposed to second-guess God?

The next day I stopped at Border’s bookstore near Pentagon City. On the way out, I felt guided to move in a particular direction, like a dowser following his stick: first straight ahead, next to the right, then straight ahead, now stop. I was at the religion section. I felt guided down to the third shelf on the right, and finally to a particular book.

It was a book I never would have chosen on my own: John Calvin’s commentary on the Gospel of John.

I know that Calvin is one of the great theologians of the modern era, but I had an impression of him as stern and rigid. I picked up the book and it opened to John 8:28, where Jesus says, “I do nothing on my own.”

Calvin explains that “Christ wants to prove that he does nothing without the Father’s command … he depends entirely on his will and serves him sincerely … he does not just partially obey God, but is entirely and without exception devoted to his obedience.” It was a lesson in obedience.

Near the register, there was a display with another book I never would have bought on my own: The Ten Commandments, by Dr. Laura Schlesinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel. Many people like Doctor Laura but the few times I had heard her on the radio, she seemed harsh rather than loving. I believe in tough love, but she just sounded tough. However, I opened it and my eyes fell on a line bold-faced in the text. It is where the people of Israel accept the covenant: “Everything that God has spoken we will do!” Another example of total obedience.

I had been led to one other passage in Calvin’s commentary. John 9:4 says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.” Calvin comments, “as soon as God enlightens us by calling us, we must not delay, in case the opportunity is lost.”

The note of urgency reminded me of the story a village chief in eastern Brazilia told of his own encounter with a divine being.

He had encountered the being while out hunting, but was too scared to speak and the being left.

“At night while I was asleep he [the divine being] reappeared to me. … He led me some distance behind the house and there showed me a spot on the ground where, he said, something was lying in storage for me. Then he vanished. The next morning I immediately went there and touched the ground with the tip of my foot, perceiving something hard buried there. But others came to call me to go hunting. I was ashamed to stay behind and joined them. When we returned, I at once went back to the site he had shown me, but did not find anything any more.”

He had missed his moment. I did not want to miss mine.

Ask Yourself What I Am Looking For

July 20, 2020

Looking for God:

One day I learned more about God’s story when I asked simply, “Where should I begin today, Lord?”

Ask yourself what I am looking for.

“Love?”

Well, yes, but what is that love?

“Interaction, communication, understanding?”

Yes! I long to be recognized, to be understood, and then to be taken in.

I wondered why a great being like God would need to be loved by mere mortals. “Why does that matter to You, Lord? You’ve got it all, just being God.”

That is silly. This is what I am. I am like a function looking for a variable…only half the equation.

I looked for a humbler analogy. “Like cement looking for bricks to hold together?”

Okay.

“Is that connection only what You need or is it also what the world needs?”

Both, obviously. In your analogy, the world is like the bricks that need to be held together.

“But, Lord, I sense that Your yearning is not just a factual incompleteness, like needing a pair of gloves.”

Yes, it is a deep internal dynamic that drives Me forward to do the things I do. I unfurl the world and call forth life and send signals to people. Listen, and feel.

“The feeling that comes to me is Your desire to call into being a corresponding being. It seems a lot like the dialectic of self and other in Hegel. Subjectivity desires to objectify itself, as it does in artifacts, and to subjectivize the surrounding world, as it does in interpretation, and, even higher, to encounter another subjectivity.”

I am a Person, searching for …

“That’s what I wonder, Lord. I can’t quite imagine what You are searching for. Just interaction? That seems too limited and, in a sense, too easy.”

It is not just looking for company. Perhaps speaking of loneliness is misleading. Why does a human being look for love?

It is not just for company. That is companionship, not love. You want to pour yourself, your concern, your destiny into another person. And you want them to respond in kind, to understand and recognize and sympathize with and care about you, (and) to share your life story, so that I becomes we.

And the result is not just good feelings or good times; it is ontological, it is virtually molecular. You know that, because you have experienced it. Imagine how puny your love is (not to belittle it, but just for comparison) compared to Mine.

What is barely ontological or molecular in your case is fully so in Mine.

The constitution of the universe is altered by My love and My being loved.

You can’t just say “God so loved the world …” Love is a two-way street. Anything unilateral is merely an effort at love, not its fulfillment, not its achievement.

You could tell My story, one version of it at least, through the history of love.

What has love meant and been over time? From Abraham’s love for his wife and his son and his God, through the Ramayana and the compassionate Buddha and Jesus and Plato’s philosophy as eros toward wisdom, to Christian chivalry and Buber’s I-Thou—these are stages that reflect My development and My interaction with human beings.

________

Looking for God?

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 is, in some sense, all. And all is very multiplex indeed.”

June 25, 2018

God is All:

I had been told that God comes different ways to different cultures.

“So any single conception of God will grasp only one of Your aspects?”

Yes, you see the problem. My nature is quite variegated. People see one aspect and not another.

“Lord, are there multiple levels of Being or something along those lines?”

Yes, but don’t interrupt. The story is much more complex.

God is not mind or matter, or even mind and matter. God is, in some sense, all. And all is very multiplex indeed. Even physics has not been able to produce a universe of “atoms in the void.” There are forces, elements, patterns – you need to know more to go on – that go beyond them.

Then add the kind of stuff the morphic fields’ guy talks about …

Rupert Sheldrake, author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, performs scientifically controlled experiments to test different explanations of the uncanny ability of some animals to know what is happening far away.

He found, for example, that even if the owner came home at randomized times, the dog was always waiting expectantly about a half hour in advance. He found that the dog responded as soon as the owner formed the intention to return home.

Sheldrake compares the results of these experiments to studies of how birds and other animals can find their way home.

Since standard explanations fail, he advances the idea that these communications travel by way of morphic fields, using an analogy with gravitational and magnetic fields to explain the “action at a distance” that is a feature of these situations.

… and those who talk about organized information and the like – primitive though they may be – and you begin to get an inkling.

I found that organized information and complexity are increasingly important concepts, particularly in biology, but also in cosmology and the social sciences. Traditional science is reductionist, always trying to explain the whole from the action of the parts.

It is also deterministic, seeing one state of affairs as fully predictable from the previous state. It was widely assumed that this model, which has been particularly successful in chemistry and mechanics, could be used to explain all natural phenomena.

The new theories of organization, information, and complexity challenge this assumption.

The whole—whether a cell, an organism, an ecology, or a universe—has some qualities that the parts do not have and cannot explain. New phenomena, such as life and consciousness, are emergent properties that cannot be understood in terms of inorganic elements.

In some cases, such as why the organs of the body have the size and location that they have, the whole can explain the parts better than the other way around. The self-organization of complex systems, their creative responses to their environment, and their emergent qualities are neither fully predictable nor fully explainable by their constituent elements or prior states.

I had been told that God is all, and that all is very multiplex indeed.

These concepts could provide the basis for understanding this multiplexity.

________

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 want you to tell My story.”

January 6, 2018

Tell My story:

Abigail’s train was late. I had been waiting at Union Station for over an hour and stood to stretch my legs. Some now-forgotten images passed before my eyes, and then,

I want you to be My new Elijah.

“Your new Elijah?” I did not know whether to feel flattered, or overwhelmed, or just crazy. I protested, “Lord, I am not worthy.”

I will decide who is worthy.

I didn’t know what a new Elijah was supposed to be but I knew I did not want the job. “Lord, I don’t have faith enough.”

You have more faith than you know.

“Who is Elijah?”

He is the prophet.

“What is he to me?”

He is you.

I didn’t think that meant that I was literally a reappearance of Elijah, but still I objected, “No, Lord, this is just crazy.”

He is you.

I remembered Abraham Lincoln’s story about the man who was tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing,” the man said, “I would rather have walked.” And I had seen the war movies, “You will have the honor of leading the assault.” Some honors aren’t worth it.

I did feel the honor. God was about to put His seal on this role for me, a role more suitable for a real Elijah. I felt a swell of pride, as I was being told this, and immediately the line went dead. Ego had broken the connection.

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 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.

I want you to tell My story.

________

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 have given you some clues . . .

August 11, 2016

Clues to Creation:

I had received visions of the explosive expansions of time and space, and of divine energy rushing up through all levels of reality. Were these intimations of Creation? I was told,

The work I want you to begin involves reading and writing about My nature. Start with the Creation. I have given you some clues already. Follow up on them.

One day, in quiet reflection, I was taken deep into the Self, taken back, it seemed, to the Beginning. Here is how I described it right afterwards:

“There was a sense of things shattering, like crockery breaking, or like the shell of an egg breaking. (I think of Kabbalah and its image of Creation as divine vessels breaking.) Then there is a river, or milk, flowing out from amidst the shards. The river is clouded in mist and flows a long way down canyons of shards or rocks. Until it settles in a pool below.”

“Tranquil waters. This is when Life begins. Cool, calm but rippling waters.”

All this was taking place on a flight to California to visit my ninety-year-old father. Sitting beside me was a nine-year-old girl, traveling alone. She kept looking at me, wondering what I was up to. Ignoring her was unkind, so I stopped praying and chatted with her.

After that, I returned to my own meditations and received a stream of visual images:

A vision: the sun cracking up, solar flares that zoomed out into the reaches of space. I then saw, through the mist, an ethereal caravan of camels and their riders, coming up a valley, their long line stretching behind, down a winding road into the distance.

I followed the road back to the source.

I came upon vast winds, like a monsoon, then a world exploding—and then the vision abruptly stopped. The caravan seemed to represent the long course of human history, traced backward, all the way to the beginning, and then nothing.

I had received hints about the moment of Creation. Then, one day, He told me more. This is where God’s story really begins.

______

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.