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. Welcome to Episode 179 of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm Scott Langdon.
Scott Langdon 01:10: This week on the podcast we give you some preparation for next week's Life Wisdom Project episode, which will feature the one and only Abigail Rosenthal. If you're not familiar with Abigail, then I would highly recommend you start with episode one of this podcast, and you'll see very soon how Jerry's journey with God is inextricably tied to Abigail and their life together as husband and wife. Their topic of discussion will be episode 17, called I Learn What Really Happened With Adam And Eve. This episode is a thrilling conversation between God and Jerry, as God explains how human beings and God have developed together over time. And so this week we revisit episode 17 to prepare you for next week's Life Wisdom Project conversation with Jerry and his very special guest, Abigail Rosenthal. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Episode 17. I Learn What Really Happened with Adam and Eve
Jerry Martin - voiced by Scott Langdon
The Voice of God - voiced by Jerry L. Martin, who heard the voice
Jerry Martin 02:26: And so, Lord, You call forth the first human beings?
The Voice of God 02:30: Yes, the first inklings.
Jerry Martin 02:32: But they evolved?
The Voice of God 02:34: The transition to early man is both slow and sudden. At first, you couldn't tell them from animals, but I could see their potential. They didn't have language, but their sounds and marks had representative purposes. They could connect one thing to another, one thought to another. They could remember their past and replay it in their minds. They slowly developed a sense of the future. They have symbolic capacity.
Jerry Martin 03:05: And this made a difference.
Voice of God 03:08:Take the symbolic system of counting--keeping records of the number of cattle or bushels of wheat. The first step in this is letting a single mark or object stand for something else. A stone might stand for a head of cattle, for example. Symbolic capacity makes everything different. Events, bodily motions, things no longer just are; they have a meaning. Before, a stone was just a stone; scratches on a clay tablet were just scratches. Now they may stand for cattle, for the king, or for past and future events, or for the deity.
Jerry Martin 03:56: And this helped them to think about those things?
The Voice of God 03:58: For the first time, thought can be detached from objects. Plans can become abstract, long-term. The response to other creatures can be evaluative, normative. It becomes possible to notice that a particular action falls short of the best or right action, that a particular human being falls short of the ideal human being. Beauty also becomes possible, as you see in prehistoric cave paintings. Creatures from a very low level enjoy and appreciate sensory stimulation. But true appreciation of beauty is seeing an ideal form in something material. What they are drawing on cave walls are ideal bulls.
Jerry Martin 04:59: I found a very fine collection of cave paintings and other prehistoric art in "Images of the Ice Age," by Paul G. Bahn and Jean Vertut. There is a breathtaking simplicity and grace to many of the paintings. The authors report, "The fluid, effortlessly drawn and well-proportioned animal figures...suggests that the artists carried everything in their mind's eye...They never took a measurement--they projected onto the rock an inner vision of the animal."
Voice of God 05:36: Study the cave paintings and other artifacts. They respond to, reflect, how I was presenting Myself to them. You will be able to see or infer what My experience was like, what I was trying to do.
Jerry Martin 05:49: Lord, these cave paintings also have an aura of holiness.
Voice of God 05:56: That is right. My first approach is to give humans the sense that nature is special, sacred, that there is something more than trees and clumps of grass, that there is also a spiritual presence.
Jerry Martin 06:10: What does this mean for You, for Your life?
Voice of God 06:13: 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, and 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 become aware of it in relation to them. For the first time, human beings mirror Me, look at Me eyeball to eyeball. And I try to draw them forward, to be more evolved, more fully human and fully spiritual.
Jerry Martin 07:29: So the emergence of human beings was a surprise?
The Voice of God 07:34: Yes. Even though I saw the unfolding of life and understood its trajectory, there is a discontinuity between animal life and human life that's surprising. People are not just smarter animals. It is not just that they have souls--animals have a kind of soul too--it is that they are creative, free, self-reflective, open-ended, have a yearning to go beyond themselves. Now, I can send dreams, give intuitions, stir love, frighten if necessary. I began to develop My arsenal of ways to deal with human beings. But I too am primitive and undeveloped. I know little about how to be effective in bringing them forward.
Jerry Martin 08:31: Scholars believe that there was a cultural, creative explosion in the late Paleolithic period over thirty-thousand years ago. The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe calls it the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, "a major watershed in cultural development." According to the Oxford History, DNA studies "point to the conclusion that all of the present-day populations throughout the world were most probably derived from a single common ancestor, within the span of the past 200,000 years." Is this the same as Adam and Eve? Lord?
The Voice of God 09:14: Don't be too mythological. That is, they were not in a Garden of Eden, and so on. But the Garden story captures with great precision the prototypical experience of human innocence, and of Divine innocence and awkwardness. The story of Adam and Eve portrays the first kind of experience I had with human beings. I created them in My image. As essentially creative force, I gave them creative force, the power of sexuality and the ability to create other human beings. I gave them objects of beauty, in nature and in each other, and pleasure in eating, moving about, and enjoyment of each other. I had been all alone and I enjoyed the company.
Jerry Martin 10:19: And so you were no longer alone.
The Voice of God 10:21: At first I imagined I could walk among humans and enjoy their company. This required that they obey Me, while not being in awe of Me, and that they retain a certain innocence. This was my first experience discovering that humans cannot interact with God in the simple, direct way they interact with one another. Like children not separated from their mother, at first they had little individuality or purpose. They enjoyed the good things I had given them and did not understand the power of good and evil or the power and complexity of their own sexuality.
Jerry Martin 11:00: And this led to problems.
The Voice of God 11:15: First, I created Adam and I could see 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.
The Voice of God 11:50: How did this affect you, Lord?
Voice of God 11:52: 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.
Jerry Martin 12:28: Do You need the world for completion or does the world new You?
Voice of God 12:33: Both. Neither of us is complete or perfect in ourselves. I can only develop a self-consciousness and hence become a Person by interacting with the world and with people.
Jerry Martin 12:46: For the first time, the dim outline of and overall story was emerging. If we and God develop together, in interaction with one another, then the drama of history and of individual lives begins to make sense. We are not standing still; we are moving forward together. “Lord, is there an aim like perfecting the world or uniting us all into the Godhead?”
Voice of God 13:14: No, not exactly. There is a purpose but not an end-point. The notion of an end-point derives from the model of the human will and its desires, getting what it wants. The purpose of singing a song is not to get to the end.
Jerry Martin 13:32: So history comes to nothing? I found this answer distressing, and Abigail was even more upset. One of the Jew's gifts to the world is the very idea of history, not as a series of endless episodes or cycles, but as a progress, with a Beginning—the Creation—and a Grand Finale: the coming of the Messiah. Abigail doesn't even like movies without happy endings. And we weren't talking about movies. We were talking about whether life had any meaning or purpose at all. This was a concern neither of us would let go.
Scott Langdon 14:30: 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.