7. I Ask What God Is Like | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher [Part 7]

“There are many sides to God.”  

Welcome to 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.

Read God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher.

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Transcript

GOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY - THE PODCAST

JLM -       Narrator (Jerry L. Martin) - voiced by Scott Langdon
Jerry -     Jerry Martin - voiced by Scott Langdon
GOD -    The Voice of God - voiced by Jerry L. Martin, who heard the voice

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EPISODE SEVEN: Where I ask what God is like

JERRY

Lord, are you infinite?

GOD

I am boundless.

JERRY

Are you omniscient?

GOD

I know everything that is important.

JERRY

Are you omnipotent?

GOD

I can do everything I want (care) to do. 

JLM

God had just contradicted every key attribute in the conventional definition of God. He is not exactly infinite, not exactly omniscient, and not exactly omnipotent. All this was so new, I just didn't know what to think, but I was beginning to sense that one reason God spoke to me was to clear up some misunderstandings.

JERRY

Lord, Philosophers have conceived of God as Being, the very ground of reality. Are they right?

GOD

Being, pure Being, Being itself, and the like, are not quite right. You need to keep reading and thinking about this. 

(Music)

JLM

The great Catholic philosopher St Thomas Aquinas defined God as that being whose very essence is to be, to exist. 

JERRY

Lord, is *to be* --the esse of Thomas Aquinas--right?

GOD

Close but not quite right.

JERRY

Why the guessing game? Why don't you just put the answers in my head?

GOD

That isn't the way the human mind works. 

JERRY

That makes sense to me, as a teacher. Learning is an active process. Lord, do any of the gods of the world's religions fit you correctly?

GOD

Some--many--come pretty close. 

JERRY

Is the god of the Old Testament one of the accurate depictions?

GOD

Yes, that is certainly me.  That is what I was like at that time. I led you to the Miles book because that is something he got right. 

JLM

I had read and liked Jack Miles' award-winning book, "God: A Biography." Though a trained theologian, Miles reads the Bible like a novel in which God is the main character. That may sound as if it would fail to do justice to scripture, but it avoids the worries that theologians and historians usually bring to it. He just lets the text--and the character of God--speak for itself. 

The God who speaks to me is personal, and in human experience, persons are either male or female. The voice I heard was definitely a masculine voice but sometimes, in some indefinable way, also had a feminine aspect. I had a very basic question and, to my surprise, God's answer came in a female voice. 

GOD

There are many sides to God, some of which you might call feminine. 

JLM

One day I had an experience that felt like the feminine presence of God--like a powdery shower, perfumed talc sprinkled over my whole being. 

JERRY

Lord is there a special meaning to the feminine presence?

GOD

You need both (masculine and feminine). What you call the masculine presence gives you strength and energy. It is a bonding in my service. The so-called feminine gives you grace and peace. It is a healing between you and me.

JLM

A woman I know recently took a boat trip up the Amazon. One night, she awakened when everyone else was fast asleep and went up to the deck. The entire galaxy was splayed across the sky. She was enveloped by the dark sights and murmuring sounds of the jungle, teeming with life in the midst of tranquility. It was an immersion in the universe itself. 

She did not call the experience mystical or even religious, but it was certainly an epiphany, a moment of intimate connection with the Whole, full of awe, wonder, and reverence. 

Abigail asked if I had ever had any spiritual experiences before. I said, no, but I had forgotten two events early in my life. Well, not forgotten. Set aside, is more accurate. 

The first occurred when I was just a kid. One of my chores was watering the lawn. I had run water in the shrubs and bent down to turn off the faucet. I don't know why I lingered for a moment, crouching down, looking at the tap, but as I did, a last drop of water slowly formed on the bottom edge and hung there. I looked at that drop of water in a way I had never looked at anything before. I saw it--how to describe it?--in its full presence, its suchness, its integrity as an independent existent in the community of being. 

When I later read about encountering Nature as Thou, this experience came to mind. It was not as if the drop of water had a mind or a soul or was looking back at me or anything like that. Yet I no longer saw it as merely an *it,* merely an item in the inventory of the universe. I saw the drop of water as, in a sense, a member of what Immanuel Kant called the Kingdom of Ends--the community of all beings who should be respected as ends-in-themselves, not just as means for the use of others. This is, of course, language I now use. I don't know how I would have described it at the time. I was just a kid, after all, and it didn't seem worth telling. 

JLM

The other experience was more arresting and consequential. It was a balmy evening during my senior year at Riverside Poly High School. We used to go downtown to one of those old-style, elegant movie theaters. My friends and I were outside, standing around and joking, waiting for others to arrive. Suddenly, I was in a world of my own, enveloped by concentric circles swirling around a center, like a small spiral galaxy. Just as suddenly, the experience was over. It would have been hard to describe even then, but its meaning was crystal clear. Time had disclosed its essence to me. I did not mention it to my friends, who had not noticed my "absence." I did not tell anyone--whatever understanding I retained I could not have articulated even to myself--but the moment left an imprint. 

(End)