Scott Langdon 00:17: This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. A 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. Episode 186. Hello and welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast.
Scott Langdon 01:11: I'm Scott Langdon and I'm very grateful to be here once again with Jerry Martin as the two of us bring you another edition of what we call What's On Your Mind. This week's email was written to us by Maxine, someone who has seen many highs and lows in her life and still continues to remain open to seeing God everywhere and in every situation. Her email leads to a discussion between Jerry and me about God's role in the world, why Lady Macbeth is definitely evil and what it means to be open to the stories of others, including the story of God. If you'd like to ask a question or share your story of God, please email us at questions@godanautobiography.com. Here now is What's On Your Mind. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Scott Langdon 02:00: Welcome back, friends, to another edition of What's On Your Mind, I'm Scott Langdon, and I'm here with Jerry Martin, and we are here to dig into the email bag as we do for these episodes, and this week we have a wonderful email from Maxine. Jerry, I think this is a terrific one really.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 02:18: Yeah, I like it in part because Maxine tells us her story in several stages of her life and what happens, so you get a real sense of, you might say, the drama of the spiritual life from Maxine's email.
Scott Langdon 02:33: Yes, we've been talking relatively recently, in the last several episodes, about story and how story plays into our existence, that we each have a story. You know your wife Abigail, when she was on in this Life Wisdom episode number 17, she talked about stories and you talked about happy endings, and so a lot of what we talk about are stories. In fact, God even is saying to you your assignment is, tell My story, is what God wants. So we communicate in these ways.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 03:05: Yeah, I was surprised at the time that God has a story? Because I thought God is eternal and changing. You know, what the standard theological view is, and whoa, no, God has a story. Hold on to your seats, you might say, because it's unfolding and still going on and we're part of God's story. So that's an awful lot of the excitement, you might say, of God: An Autobiography.
Scott Langdon 03:33: Maxine tells us her story in this email that she writes in to us, and I think it's a fascinating one of the many that we receive. As I was reading through them, this one popped out right away because of the way it starts, and so I'll just get into it right now and we'll read the whole thing, and then we'll break it down like we normally do. Maxine writes in and she says this:
A Letter From Maxine 03:55: This has been a fascinating experience, reading all the comments from these wonderful people that have had various walks with our Lord and life itself. It never ceases to amaze me that we serve a God that is always every day, day in and day out, allowing us to see His glory and His desire for us to accept Him, the creator that made us and knows us better than anybody on this earth. He knows the beginning to the end and everything in between; trying to guide us, talking to us, providing us with various situations to accept Him, never giving up, in order to deepen our faith and better help us understand His never ending love, His grace and mercy. His word says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” We, of course, have many trials and tribulations through this life; we are in a world of sin with satan nipping at our heels each day. It is a battle between “Good and Evil.” Who is going to win? It is our decision and only our decision. It is so very important to God, the most important decision we will ever make. It is the decision of life eternal with God and our loved ones OR eternal darkness. Yes, I have seen God do His wondrous works and He is still working on me, forgiving me each day.
A Letter From Maxine 05:21: I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 47. I knew God at the time, I was a believer. I experienced His presence on two occasions during this challenging time. While I was lying in the hospital bed and had already gone through three surgeries… I was in a private room, it was early in the morning around 2 a.m., my eyes opened to see the curtain open slightly to see an outline or figure, my arm was touched and a voice said, “You are going to be okay.” I truly believe when God speaks to you, you somehow know it is from Him. It’s hard to explain, but you just know it is Him… an experience you never forget. I had another experience while I was rehabbing at home… again I felt his His presence in the room, giving me a feeling of peace and comfort. I never questioned it, it was very clear to me.
A Letter From Maxine 06:21: I am now 73 years old and so many situations have come and gone and my faith has been strengthened with each one. My prayer is today, regarding any and all situations, that the end results will be His will only. I have lost a child. I have had many deaths in my family. My husband has recently had open heart surgery. I've been rich and I have been poor. I'm a normal person, living, loving and praying until my life is over on this earth. I have full and complete assurance that when I die, my next life will be made perfect, without sickness, without tears or death. Why? Because he has told me so. That was from Maxine.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 07:13: Well, isn't that a precious communication that Maxine sent us, so grateful for comments like Maxine's that are sent in. People telling so truly and sincerely their own life stories, what they've been through and how it is they have some connection with God. But anyway, here's what I wrote to Maxine at the time, my reply: Dr. Jerry L. Martin 07:33:Thank you for your moving testimonial. It is uncanny that, when God speaks to us or is palpably present, we somehow know that it is God. As a philosopher, trained to doubt everything, I find this an extraordinary fact. I would not have believed it, if it had not happened to me personally. Maxine, as a cancer survivor and as a parent who has lost a child, you have come through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. God has been by your side even, perhaps especially, in the suffering. And you have had the wisdom not to turn away from the divine presence. Be well, my friend.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 08:29: Well, there's a lot more to be said about this and I was just wondering, Scott, those were the things that you might say struck me, in a generic way, as I've mentioned before, these responses are brief because I don't know the person, don't know their life situation beyond just what they've sent in, and so I always keep in mind to not enter the situation in my comment more than I'm equipped to do, mainly to not do any harm. I don't want to go muck around with people, but just listen with an appreciative ear to what they have to tell. But anyway, it's a wonderful communication and wonderful that she seemed to be inspired by reading the comments of others, because she mentions that right at the beginning- these wonderful people she calls them.
Scott Langdon 09:22: Yeah, that was one of the things that struck me first as well as I was reading it. The idea that she was just so excited about these other comments that she was reading where people were sharing their walks with the Lord and about life itself and their journeys. And that's what we always encourage folks to do is to tell their stories of experiences with God or things that they put down to being experiences of God. So these are things that she's going through in her life and we're all going through our lives and trying to make meaning out of things, and so it's very interesting to me that stories like this catch me anyway at a different level, at sort of a heart level. You know somebody who's willing to listen and interested by and growing from stories from somebody else and then having the courage to kind of go through things herself and write this email out. I mean the fact that she took the time to write it and share this is a wonderful blessing for us, I think.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 10:23: Yeah, one of the ways God comes to us is through other people. You know, that time God told me, I asked God, give me Your love for this, it was something that seemed strange that He asked me to do, and He said feel My love, it will come through Abigail, feel it through her. Okay, that often happens and these comments are a way of sharing your love. You know, each person's story is precious and part of what you learn. Sometimes, especially if you're in a particular religious group or something, a church or something, you think your story is the whole story.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 11:01: But one of the things amazing when we receive these comments is everyone has a different story and they interpret it in different ways. And that's fine, because there are multiple valid perspectives and there are many stories. We don't all live the same story, right, that'd be kind of boring, but we live many different stories and they each have their own kind of truth, and to explore what that truth is is fascinating. And also just to give, you speak of heart, Scott, to give one's warm, heartfelt support to each one. Maxine deserves our warm, heartfelt support, doesn't she? And so do the other amazing people that we hear from.
Scott Langdon 11:51: We have several emails of folks just trying to sort out the confusion. We've talked before, some emails about folks who feel like they're just screaming into a void, that there is no answer. Where is God? Where, you know? And it's different for everyone, the silences, you know we perceive them differently, so it's very interesting to be able to read an email from somebody like Maxine, who is open not only to sharing her own story, but open to learning and rejoicing with others in their stories, whatever they might be, whatever they hold.
Scott Langdon 13:01: I'm fascinated also about the way that she talks about this life as being a battle between good and evil, essentially. She says we have many trials and tribulations through this life and we're in a world of sin, with Satan nipping at our heels each day. You know those kinds of ways of talking about difficult parts of life, Satan, good, evil. We wrestle with them in our fiction stories. We talk about things like that. I find that way of talking about life interesting, but also a little disturbing- the battle between good and evil. What do you think about that?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 13:50: I think it's really true. I mean, that's what I'm told. You know, there are parts I'm frustrated, my conversation with God about Lady Macbeth, because at one point God is saying for the world to be real, it had to have these rough terrains. God says He doesn't actually create the laws of nature. You know there are boundary conditions on life and any real world has to be a material world and any material world has to have bumps in the road and organic life involves growth, maturation, aging, death, sickness along the way, because you're organic and vulnerable. Anyway, all of these were elements necessary to reality, including people who are making their own decisions have character, with flaws, right, but virtues and vices. And I found that disturbing because it's that you know any real world is going to have evil in it. That's just how it is, folks. And I complained to God that God sounds if you're saying Lady Macbeth is okay, you know, because the world needs a Lady Macbeth, and God keeps saying no, that's not what I'm saying. And He said you're not listening to Me.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 15:04: What I'm saying, Lady Macbeth is still evil and you've got to counter Lady Macbeth. You've got to fight Hitler and you've got to fight your own evil urges, your own evil impulses, the moments of resentment or envy and so forth. You've got to not let those run amok. And that, in some sense, God tells me, is the most important thing. You go into the world to do a job. The world is incomplete. God is incomplete. God is developing. The world is developing. God doesn't manage everything. We have to manage our world. We manage our own lives and our own loves and our own relations to others and our community and our nation. So all of that is up to us and we can't do God's work down here. He needs us to do divine work down here and that includes supporting the good and fighting the evil, as I say, the evil outside us, the evil inside us. So this seems natural and not disturbing to me. But let's hear, Scott, why you find it disturbing. I mean, there's probably, I assume there's an insight behind that disturbance.
Scott Langdon 16:27: I think what disturbs me about the idea of good and evil is outside of what you were saying a moment ago, I completely see that and agree with that, and I guess what tricks me up sometimes is, is this an illusion. Is it? I'm not sure how we could describe it, but the possibility seems to exist that evil will triumph over good, if you will. There's always this, and that is the device by which we are motivated to fight evil, you know for good to fight evil because there's a possibility that evil could win, and yet our faith is, the victory is already there, that God is all of it, that God is- that good and evil exists and goes at it within God. So, I guess I'm a little bit confused about why the push or the pressure, or why we seem to feel consumed often with- evil could win.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 17:31: Yeah, because it sounds as if God is everything evil couldn't win, the assumption being that, well, God is good. But of course I'm told, well, God is becoming good. It doesn't start off... God is not a perfect being and doesn't have perfect control, either of those things. Those tend to be premises for the kind of puzzlement you're raising, Scott.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 17:59: In the Hindu tradition, for example, brahman is kind of all good, or beyond good and evil. These are in the play of images in the world, but that's not the view of God: An Autobiography. In fact, Hinduism is something which is much appreciated in God: An Autobiography and what God tells me. Hinduism is also criticized for somewhat levitating off the earth. Not being in connection with things and you've got to live in the world and to do our work in the world. Our jobs, of being a good parent, a good next-door neighbor, helping the neighbor when he's got car trouble, you know all these things that make up daily life. That's the real world. Some of it does involve making sure that horrible people, Al Capone goes to jail and so forth. A lot of it does involve holding back, policing even those forces, but creating structures of order and tranquility that are barriers against these forces of evil.
Scott Langdon 19:16: In our modern day, in our present day, you know, especially in American politics, there are two sides, and both sides will say that they are on the side of righteousness and that the other side is evil. And we have to police and all the things that you just mentioned. And it feels like, if we look back throughout history, there's those two groups going at it in every kingdom, somewhere, you know that, whoever's in power, and then there's the people who want to be in power, and so there's this play back and forth and I guess, well, it's just tricky because both sides feel like God is directing them in the way of righteousness, and so sometimes it feels like it's very difficult to sort through all of that and actually get to what God's will is.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 20:13: Well, it is difficult, Scott, there's no question about that. That's one reason you and I often talk about spiritual discernment. And there's also moral discernment. There are many discernments. There's aesthetic discernment, you know, and the fact that discernment is difficult doesn't mean that there's nothing to discern, and it just behooves us to do our most conscientious job of that. And the job has to be somewhat open-hearted and open-minded. Or we're going to just try to crush people who happen to disagree with us or have a different lifestyle, or something like that. We just don't like those people. Some complaints about immigrants moving into the neighborhood. The neighborhood doesn't smell the same anymore, so we got to crush that smell.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 21:07: And it's easy for us to be narrow-minded in our worldview and in our values, because values do need to be rooted somewhere. They don't just float in the air, but they come out of living, communities and interactions. But it then behooves us to say, oh well, you always have to, for any belief system or value system or even emotional system, you need some capacity to step an inch outside it and look back at it and say, okay, well, I really believe these things. But if I step outside, is it so convincing and what might I see the limits of this view to be, and those tend to give one a bit of tolerance, right?
Scott Langdon 21:57: Going back to Maxine's letter, when she talks about being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 47, she says I knew God at the time, I was a believer, I had experienced His presence on two occasions during this challenging time.
Scott Langdon 22:35: And then she goes on to describe the experiences and says, and joyfully talks about how you know when it's God and when it's not God, these voices or this presence that has come in to comfort you, or whatever it might be the way she describes these two situations. She felt very, very secure in saying that's God. That was God more present than in other places, and we've talked a few times about the idea that God says, and it is kind of confusing to us, I am everything and everywhere and I'm also more present in certain situations: funerals, newborn babies, these moments that seem extra special. That's what's going on. God says and it's interesting when you can take a moment to be aware that you're noticing that. That experience for me has been wonderful on several occasions to go, wait a minute, stop here. This feels like God is more present than other times and just sitting in it and being with it really does something to your insides, to your perspective, to everything. It changes when you stop and go. Ah, there's more of a presence here in this situation.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 24:11: Yeah, that's just a real human experience. And when God spoke to me it puzzled me because you know I'm a lifelong epistemologist. We doubt all knowledge and everything. That's our specialty. It's almost the job description. And I certainly didn't believe in certainty. I didn't believe in certainty in mathematics. I didn't believe in some people think if you're in pain, you know you're in pain. I didn't quite believe that. So I had no concept of certainty. And yet when I had the experience of God speaking to me, I could not actually doubt it. The voice was too real and benign and authoritative for me really to doubt it. And yet I'm a philosopher, I step one inch outside the experience. And I thought I turned to myself and say, Jerry, are you crazy? Because I was a 21st century American living in the modern world in a mainly secular environment. I didn't—I'd long left long behind the childhood religion that really didn't answer the kinds of questions that I had as a young person.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 25:25: And I did due diligence. I talked to a philosopher friend who teaches philosophy of religion, somebody who would like to believe but can't quite because his critical intelligence is way more active than his trusting, you might say, intelligence. But anyway, so a good person to talk to and I read literature, called somebody at a religious college a philosopher I knew taught at a religious college and I thought maybe, he's got insight, found there's a literature on spiritual discernment, and went through a whole process of thinking that through and evaluating it and some point along the way changed my epistemology from an epistemology of doubt to an epistemics of trust that all knowledge actually bends in trust. You couldn't learn anything from your experience if you didn't kind of trust it first. You correct it as you go along, and same with math you trust that you're doing the sums right, but though you know you're fallible, you can make a mistake, but you go back and check it later and so forth. And so with every kind of knowledge, including moral intuitions and so forth. This was a strange phenomenon.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 26:40: But then I started—I hadn't paid much attention to religion, but I started reading people writing about religion, people within various religious communities who are thoughtful about it, and reporting their experiences. And over and over I saw people knew that it was God and they'll often say, mine was a voice that seemed like outside, but they often use the expression God spoke to me in my mind. So that's one of the many ways God communicates. But God also comes to people in various kinds of presence, and here it was a figure first, kind of indistinct for Maxine in the corner. She knew it was God. She knew it was God and darn, that's just how it is.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 27:29: Again, there's spiritual discernment because you can be kind of, you know, maybe you've had drugs or something, something is disturbing your system, or you're obsessive as a personality type or whatever. You've got to go check yourself out. It's kind of like instruments give strange readings. You check out the instruments- your thermometer is this working? And so you check out your system and see are all your cognitive faculties, your emotional balance, are all these in order? Yeah, pretty much. Well, I'm sorry, if you think it's God, it's God.
Scott Langdon 28:08: I'm more interested in, I'll say it this way, I'm less interested in the factuality of was it God, and more interested in what the results of the encounter are. So, for example, going back here to Maxine, it's very possible that the figure that was kind of reaching through the curtain was an overnight nurse that was taking a shift for somebody else and so maybe she had never seen this person. It seemed strange, but that particular touch and that voice and you're going to be okay, it doesn't have to be an angel quote unquote how we would think of an angel in a situation but that was an angelic thing to do and then the encounter resulted in peace and presence and that person was being an instrument if it was a nurse, let's say, an instrument of God's expressing to Maxine you're going to be okay.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 29:14: God could be present through other people. God can be present through other people, right, and it could be present through the nurse. So, in a way, it's not a question is it nurse or God? It's both. We don't have to be, you know, divide everything down into neat categories. It's both. That's the nature of the divine reality. It's a little different from our physical object reality, and it could easily be a nurse coming through to Maxine as God, because it is a divine presence via the nurse.
Scott Langdon 29:46: Right, I feel like sometimes we get caught up in the if it wasn't some kind of supernatural ghost or presence that's not there, that, oh, it's only a nurse. Oh, it's only a human. You know that we miss what the intention is, which is to give comfort and so God is working through that scene, if you will, through that story, and to put more gravitas or more importance on it being some kind of mysterious ghost presence or something gives short shrift to the practice of human beings loving one another.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 30:23: Well, maybe, I guess I don't think it does that, I don't think it's weird or makes it supernatural, even. You know, God's in the world, God's all around. So, through the God to in this differential way that sometimes God is more present, for God to be specially present, you might say, in that nurse touching her when she's, you know, somewhat sleepy-headed and she's taking it to be God, well, she's perceiving something I would would think that's real. But of course your point, Scott, is quite right and important, that, well, okay, let's not just talk about did God visit me, right or wrong, yes or no, as if that's the whole story or the only thing that matters. What's the consequence of this? Because often, in many ways, the meaning of experience is what it leads to, what happens as a result of it, and you want to make sure we don't overlook that, isn't that right, Scott?
Scott Langdon 31:30: I think that's right, you know, to say God was with me because it was an extra special presence that's not there normally, and then to spend the rest of the time… Let's say that happens 0.1% of your day. Well, all the other time you're waiting for it, looking for it, God's not here. I guess that goes to my sort of deep-seated feeling and difficult way of thinking about God being somewhere else. You know how I have such a difficult time with that. So I am with you. I agree that God is always there. God is everything, and also this more personal, more present in some places than others, and yet I just I don't want to get into the mindset of God is gone when God is not more present here. Does that make sense?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 32:23: Yeah, sure, yeah, well then that's itself part of spiritual discernment. What are we looking for? And you know, we talked about the person we heard from who just can't find God anywhere. Looked here, not there, not there, not here, not here. Looks in the closet, as it were, just empty, and you said, well, God was in the empty closet.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 32:51: But we look for God in terms of the conception we have of God, and that's one specific version of a general problem in life is we look for certain outcomes, as we are defining them in advance, what the good outcome would be. And you have to relax in life and let the outcome that's right for you, you might say, come to you without your previously saying no, not this, not that, not the other thing, because you're not recognizing. Maybe you're looking for a woman to love and you have an extremely precise template. Dating services might be open to this problem. You have an extremely precise description, template for what this woman must be like and the woman who might be right by your side in the whole thing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 33:53: You know you're not noticing. Oh, this is the right one for me. Something like that happens to David Copperfield. I believe that he's always longing for someone who isn't there and overlooking the wonderful until the very end of the novel, overlooking the wonderful woman he's known all along. And of course, the reader has seen wow isn't he- why isn't he noticing this? Why isn't he noticing? So we have to not allow our own little boundaries to define the reality that's available to us.
Scott Langdon 34:29: I want to thank Maxine for writing in, and if you have a story that you would like to share with us, we would love to hear it. Please drop us an email at questions@godanautobiography.com, and share your story, share your experience with God with us. We'd love to hear from you, Jerry, it's always so great to talk to you. Thank you for being with us.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 34:48: Yes, and thank you Scott, thank Maxine, thank whoever's listening today, because they're part of a great journey that we're all taking together in the divine presence.
Scott Langdon 35:15: Thank you for listening to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. Subscribe for free today wherever you listen to your podcasts and hear a new episode every week. You can hear the complete dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin by beginning with episode one of our podcast and listening through its conclusion with Episode 44. You can read the original true story in the book from which this podcast is adapted, God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher, available now at amazon.com, and always at godanautobiography.com. Pick up your own copy today. If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please email us at questions@godanautobiography.com, and experience the world from God's perspective as it was told to a philosopher. This is Scott Langdon. I'll see you next time.
