GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
149. The Life Wisdom Project | Spiritual Callings: Finding God, Peace And Creativity | Special Guest: Johan Herrenberg
In a curious alignment of fate, Johan Herrenberg, amidst crafting his acclaimed book Through the Eye of the Cyclone, discovers a parallel in Jerry's profound revelation from God Takes Me To A Place Of Peace. This captivating echo paints God as the tranquil eye within the storm of life's narrative, embodying a fusion of creativity, discipline, belief, and peace.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin engages in a profound discussion with Dutch novelist Johan Herrenberg in this illuminating episode of The Life Wisdom Project. Johan shares his transformative journey, his connection with spirituality, and the significant life lessons derived from seeking truth and following one's vision.
Johan's creative genius, guided by an unwavering sense of calling and faith, beautifully illustrates how he finds God in every moment and every carefully chosen word. His art is a testament to the divine presence that graces the canvas of life, a true revelation of faith finding expression in creativity.
The discourse unfolds into a remarkable revelation of love and divine presence intertwined with the delicate balance between belief and personal peace, highlighting the intricate aspects of human existence.
Join God: An Autobiography, The Podcast in this enlightening exploration of wisdom, delving into the essence of creativity, discipline, peace, and the spiritual realms that shape our lives. A path that will entice curious truth seekers, the spiritual, and the 'spiritual but not religious' with significant life lessons derived from seeking truth and following one's vision.
Relevant Episodes:
- [Dramatic Adaptation] God Takes Me To A Place Of Peace
Other Series:
- Life Wisdom Project-How to live a wiser, happier, and more meaningful life with special guests.
- From God To Jerry To You- a brand-new series calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.
- Two Philosophers Wrestle With God- sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have.
- What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series episodes.
- What's On Your Mind- What are readers and listeners saying? What is God saying?
Resources:
- READ: "It Sounded Like Orders From Above."
- THE LIFE WISDOM PROJECT PLAYLIST
Hashtags: #lifewisdomproject #godanautobiography #experiencegod
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Scott Langdon [00:00:17] 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 149.
Scott Langdon [00:01:19] Hello and welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm Scott Langdon, and this week I'm especially excited to share with you our latest edition of The Life Wisdom Project. In this episode, Jerry has a wonderful conversation with Dutch novelist Johan Herrenberg. The pair discuss Johan's thoughts on episode 11 of our podcast, titled God Takes Me To A Place Of Peace. Jerry's experience and the description of it was very striking to Johan, for reasons you're about to hear, and Johan's recounting of his own experience in this episode is something I'm very confident you're going to love. Here's Jerry to introduce you to Johan. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:02:04] Johan Herrenberg is the greatest living novelist in the Netherlands, probably the greatest novelist ever to write in the Dutch language. So I'm so pleased to have gotten to know him. His novel is entitled Through the Eye of the Cyclone. And if you listen to this episode that we will be discussing, where I am led into the mind of God and it's like the eye of a hurricane. When he read that, he was so struck by the parallelism that he contacted me and we've been friends ever since. And his novels became a second volume that's grown into a second volume sequel. And then just recently, a trilogy is emerging. So this is a monumental piece of literature that the world owes to Johan Herrenberg, and I owe the gratitude of being able to discuss this episode with him. Okay. Hello! It's been a long time.
Johan Herrenberg [00:03:16] Hello, a very long time ago. Good to see you. Yes.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:03:17] Yes. At some point, you know, I was looking at your life, the note you made, and I had to go up, this is kind of embarrassing, I didn't know where Suriname was. What a fascinating little country!
Johan Herrenberg [00:03:35] It is. It is. Yeah. Well, my father came from there.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:03:39] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:03:40] He was born in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, in 1928. He came to my country, 1948, when he was 19 years old, to build a life for himself. And he met my mother a few years later in 1952, in Amsterdam, where he lived. And that's a story in itself. They found each other and they liked each other, and he knew immediately that she would be his wife. He said to his friends, "This will be my wife," the first time he saw her.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:04:08] Yeah. Isn't that amazing? That's an amazing phenomenon. You know, I thought of you for episode 11, as I explained in an email, because the first time I remember ever hearing from you, I think the book had not been published yet, but we were--
Johan Herrenberg [00:04:23] No, I was busy writing it. I was still busy on the first part of it, and I had started in 1996. So when we met up, when I saw your book or knew about you, I was still working very hard on it. But the title was always there: Through the Eye of the Cyclone.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:04:42] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:04:42] That title had been there since 1996. So when I saw you entering the Heart of God and getting a sense of this is the eye of the hurricane, really, that was quite amazing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:04:55] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:04:55] That was amazing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:04:56] Yes. Yes. These are what I used to think of as coincidences, tell you a lot about the divine prompts in life that things are brought to one's attention. And I thought this would be a good place to begin, because, of course, there are a lot of theological implications here. But our emphasis today is on life lessons. You know, what advice one can get more or less for anybody, not just the core spiritual and religious people, but just anyone trying to live life with wisdom, you might say. And I thought a good place began to focus on these passages. I'm told, by God, "I want you to enter My heart." And as happens with these things over and over in the book, I have no idea- what does that mean to you? I just try to, you know, relax and lend myself to it. I find it scary. I think of it as like out-of-body travel or something. And then I think of God as scary, you know, too powerful.
Johan Herrenberg [00:06:04] Too powerful. Yeah.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:06:05] And so I ask, you know, strengthen me and so forth. God's, "I will." And then I describe the experience in this way: “He took my hand, as it were, and led me into the "heart of God." I had expected it to be an overpowering, perhaps terrifying experience. But it was more like the eye of a hurricane. I was at the center of something vast and powerful, but here it was quiet, calm, and peaceful. I surveyed the things I feared… and in that calm that is God, each concern disappeared.” And so, you know what can we draw from that, Johan, in terms of, you might say how to live better, how to live more wisely, how to confront the challenges of life, the things one fears and so forth.
Johan Herrenberg [00:07:05] Well, I must tell you that I have had a conversion that is a very important fact in my life. My father was the son of a minister, so Christianity was always there. So I knew my Bible. I read a children's Bible when I was young. So Christ and the stories of the Bible always were with me. I always empathized with Joseph, the dreamer. I was a dreamer myself. So when I read the story about Joseph being in a well, etc., and then sent to Egypt, I had a feeling that could be me because I was also very good at school and some people didn't like me for that I was so bright. So, I always thought--
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:07:46] Oh, they hated that!
Johan Herrenberg [00:07:47] Yeah. I had a sort of brothers who hated me for the fact that I was so favored, etc. So the Bible was always there, but Christ was not yet central. He was a sort of problem which I had to solve, but I always knew he was the biggest character, the biggest person in history. I always had that sense.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:08:07] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:08:08] Long story short, I had a conversion and that is a story in itself which is too far flung, etc. It's very difficult to explain and to tell within the scope of what we are now discussing. But what I have been through since my conversion in 2014 is that calm. I was always a sort of tumultuous person. There was always something going on in my head. There was conflict, there was anger, all kinds of dark emotions. There was fear. There was also hatred. All those things were with me, but I knew that they could only be solved in a certain way. So that conversion helped me to enter a sort of peace. So what you describe of entering God has been with me ever since. And people notice. People who have known me for 50 years or more, they can spot the difference. They can see you really have changed. But because there is such a calm, I am not as judgmental as I was. I am a very critical man, very critical and not very-- there is a softness in me, but also a harshness. Well, the point is that the harsher sides of my being are gone. So there is an inner peace. There is a sense of only worrying about things that perhaps need worrying. But there is a sort of confidence, a certainty, which I always had even before I turned to God. I had a sense of something carrying me through life, something protecting me, that there was a sort of basic safety, that nothing could go wrong for one reason or another, if I stay true to my vision, to the things I wanted to do, often in the teeth of persons who knew better. You're not wise to do that because you will be poor, etc. You're so good at learning, so you must be a professor and not a writer with no penny, etc. But I chose that path I had to follow. But before I met God, before I turned to God, it was fraught. There was conflict there. There was also envy of those persons more successful than me who arrived at success with works that were less interesting than what I was in great difficulty forging in many years, sometimes without seeing a hand in the darkness. I couldn't see one meter in front of me because it was dark, but I knew the direction in which I was going. But it was very dark and very difficult to get a sense of, to master my craft and to master myself. Well, and those things all came together when I converted. I became a master of my craft and I had mastery over myself, and that is one of the lessons I have learned.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:11:17] How will we translate that into advice for someone who is not ready for conversion? I mean, conversion is a very special experience.
Johan Herrenberg [00:11:25] It's a very special experience.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:11:26] And not everyone is called to convert.
Johan Herrenberg [00:11:29] No, not everyone is called. Well, in my case, I was always looking for the truth. I was always looking, I was always reading because I wanted to understand why the world is as it is. Why is it as bad as it is very often? Why are people the way they are? What happened in history? How could it happen? What made it happen? All those questions. But I was looking for truth. I was searching for truth. Something to hold on to. Something to put my faith in that could be the basis for living on. And the point is, so, I read philosophers, I read about politics. So, all the systems of thought I read through them, but none of them was satisfactory. None of them could appeal to the whole of a human being. And that is what happens in conversion. That is the whole human being- body, soul, everything is involved. Because when you-- I was interested in Marxism, for instance, I read about Lenin, I read Trotsky, etc.. And for a time I thought I was a marxist, even, at the start of this millennium. But it didn't-- it wasn't enough, because it's only material. It's only about power and only about money. But we are much more than money and power. And just the same for philosophers, every philosopher and there are great philosophers, but only mind, a certain part of reality, and then they find their own jargon and their own followers. And it's all systematized sometimes, or not systematized. And that is a sort of basis for their system, that they are not systematic. But it wasn't enough for me. There was always a sort of-- it was always finite and not infinite. And that's the point of God, religion, and also of art in its own way. By the way, art also opens the portals to the infinite in its own way. Philosophy can do it, too. But faith and God- God is the infinite. So when you have a conversion, you'll become part of that infinity, which is personal.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:13:45] Yes. And what's striking me is that the goal isn't to have the intellectual insight that God is the infinite, and we're finite. Finite means the infinite, you know, that's played in various ways, in various systems. But one has to find oneself and relate oneself to whatever is higher, more truthful, more important, more ideal than one's self. And as you stressed earlier, it can't just be part of yourself.
Johan Herrenberg [00:14:19] No.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:14:20] Some of the political ideologies are appealing to your resentment as a member of a group or--
Johan Herrenberg [00:14:25] For instance--
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:14:26] That's part of you. It's not the whole of you.
Johan Herrenberg [00:14:30] It's not the whole. No.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:14:31] And that's not the whole. And I guess I would take the implication to be if we're to put it in a kind of, you know, articulate it is a lesson, you know, for teaching or something, it'll follow what looks to you most important in life, because there is, as you and I would tend to think of it, as a kind of divine lure. There is a telos, an end in view that's drawing you. So, it's not quite in view, as you say you can't see beyond a foot ahead of yourself. But you have the sense of direction. And so follow that, trust that. You've got to kind of be realistic in the sense of taking your whole self into account and responding to the lure, your own sense of what am I supposed to be doing, and follow that path?
Johan Herrenberg [00:15:26] Well, I have always had a strong sense of calling. I always had a vocation. There was always something calling to me, and I had to answer. And I had that in my early teens, already in my early teens, when people said what I was doing, I said, "I have a calling." I really said it like that as a teenager.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:15:45] Really? Amazing.
Johan Herrenberg [00:15:46] In the 1970s, that was not a word you heard very often at school. So I had, really, a vocation, really a calling I felt called to do. To be a writer.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:15:57] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:15:57] Was a calling.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:15:58] And that came upon you early, right?
Johan Herrenberg [00:16:02] Very early. Well, when I--
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:16:03] That you were to be a writer.
Johan Herrenberg [00:16:04] Yeah, well, when I was 14, I knew for certain that I wanted to be a writer and that I would put all my efforts in trying to become a great writer because I felt something great in me. And for that greatness to come about in literary form, I had to inform myself about as much as possible to get a grasp of reality. What is this world? So, and then I started to read, and really my mother was always very worried about me because she said, "You're missing out. You're always sitting in your study, you're always reading, you're not going out, not to a discotheque." This is the 1970s, there's all those songs, etc., you go out and you have a good time. My good time was had in my study, reading books, listening to Brukner and following along in a score, etc. That was my ecstasy. That was my fulfillment, but it was completely at odds with my contemporaries. But I had and I will always see that as God's providence too, God always provides, and He has always done that in my life. There were always people who understood me. I was never misunderstood. I was never alone. I had a cousin of mine who was of the same interests as me, so we could talk about the same things. And he started to read me. When I started writing, he was my first critic and my first fan, so we had, really, we had a conversation going for 50 years already. 50 years.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:17:36] Wow. Wow. And you're not that old.
Johan Herrenberg [00:17:38] Well, I'm 62.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:17:41] That's a lot of your life. Oh you are? Okay.
Johan Herrenberg [00:17:43] Iam 62. Yeah. But I also met in high school, I met two boys then, they were 13 years old, I was 14, who also liked classical music, who were interested in art. So one could draw very well. The other was, he played the piano, and I was the writer. So all the arts were present in our little group. So we were a sort of trio. I called it a triumvirate, as I called it, the triumvirate. In Dutch, driemanschap, is what you say in Dutch- driemanschap, triumvirate. And so we got along really extraordinarily well, and they are still friends with me. I still have contact with them. And my book event coming Saturday, they will be there and they have always known I wanted to write, to become a great writer. They will be there, coming Saturday, Saturday to see me being the fulfilled writer that I am and that I fulfilled my promise, and I did what I already said I would do when I was 15 years old. Stay true to your vision. That is really a lesson: stay true to your vision.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:18:45] Yes. Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:18:46] Follow through. Follow through. What I found very striking was when God said that you had to enter into His heart, you thought that it meant love, the love of God. And then God says, "No, I'm giving you My love through Abigail."
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:19:49] Yes. Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:19:50] That is fascinating for me, because something has happened a few days ago that-- in the last two weeks, something has happened, which bears a striking similarity with your story, and Abigail, that I have found someone who is amazingly right for me. In the past two weeks, like a sort of firestorm of a spiraling out of control into something that we are together.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:20:19] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:20:20] And that is really-- and I said, I have to do this call, etc., but this is so-- when I read that I think God is giving me love through this woman. The fact that I, in this stage of my life, that I find someone after 14 years of living alone, I've been alone since 2009 after my divorce, so that I now find someone, not that I had lost all faith that it could happen. I always said, I'll meet someone. That was what I always said. I'll meet someone.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:20:52] Yes. Good attitude.
Johan Herrenberg [00:20:54] And now I have met her. I wasn't dating. I thought if she is there, I'll find her and I'll meet her, but I can wait. I've been patient, and now she is there, and I am sitting in her house at the moment.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:21:05] Is that right?
Johan Herrenberg [00:21:07] In her house because where I live is a very noisy neighborhood with a bar and live music, which started an hour ago. So I thought, I can't be there because then you would hear all kinds of noises, etc. And then she said, "Why don't you come to me?" So, I am now in her house at this moment. So--
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:21:25] That's just wonderful, Johan. I am so glad to hear that as I was divorced for many years. You have a first marriage to find out what the mistakes are.
Johan Herrenberg [00:21:38] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:21:40] And then, as you know, I fell in love with my wife, who called on the phone one day.
Johan Herrenberg [00:21:46] Exactly. I know the story. It's a wonderful story, by the way.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:21:49] Yeah. And so it was through love. And I read the experts and they all discounted love. You know, it's projection, blah, blah, blah. And so I had to go find. I found a volume of love letters by writers, great writers, that someone had anthologized. And I thought, "Ah, these people understand love." Not the psychologist and so on, but the writers themselves, because they take the experience in and you can't understand it from the outside as if you're studying behavior or frogs or something, you understand it from the inside. So much of life is like that.
Johan Herrenberg [00:22:26] That's the only way. That's the only way.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:22:28] Yes. Yes. And so that's a wonderful gift. And, and you've got, well, everything that love gives, including, you know, God feels very distant often and to be loved, have God's love come to you through a flesh and blood human being...
Johan Herrenberg [00:22:49] Yeah. It's wonderful.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:22:51] With the full dimensions of life.
Johan Herrenberg [00:22:52] Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:22:54] That's a wonderful thing, and to be open to that and to be, and you were probably like this as I was, I was not interested in a warm body, you know? Being with someone.
Johan Herrenberg [00:23:07] No, no.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:23:08] But when true love calls me on the phone, oh, okay! And that's how you are with the woman you met.
Johan Herrenberg [00:23:16] Exactly.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:23:17] And knew right away.
Johan Herrenberg [00:23:18] I knew it. Yeah. And she knew it, too. So it is very interesting how it all happened, but that's another other story.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:23:25] Yeah, that's no doubt a long story. Those are wonderful stories. I love hearing them, in fact, because they're quite remarkable in their impact and dimensions in how they came about, the drama of the situations and so on. But one needs to be open to that.
Johan Herrenberg [00:23:42] And I was open and I took steps too, which was a first for me because I never approached women. I only once approached a woman, a young lady when I was 23, and she was only 21 at a concert of Beethoven's string quartets. And I saw her and I found her very interesting. She was reading Machiavelli in the interval. So I thought, "Well, this is a very intellectual young woman," and that I found very attractive, so I didn't want to have a relationship with her, but I found her very interesting. So, I went up to her and I said, "Are you a person of spirit?" That was my first question--
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:24:22] Oh, wow.
Johan Herrenberg [00:24:22] Are you a person of spirit? I had forgotten that I said that to her, but later on she said, "That was what you said to me. You asked me, are you a person of spirit." And then she said, "Yes." And when I got that answer, we were friends.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:24:36] Okay. So it wasn't a love made, but it was a great friendship.
Johan Herrenberg [00:24:41] A great friendship. Still going strong since 1985. So, it was a long time ago.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:24:46] Yes, that's a wonderful find. And yeah, I have felt this was my own experience. I don't think I ever met anybody of interest when I went to a place to "meet women."
Johan Herrenberg [00:24:58] No.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:24:58] Every woman of interest in my life has been someone I met in the course of living, as is true with Abigail. Met them in the course of whatever else I was doing. And I guess I think that's good, you might say good advice to people, don't go looking. Be open. So, pay attention so that when the person of interest does come around, you're noticing it and you're trusting it when you feel.
Johan Herrenberg [00:25:29] Because when you want it too much, you won't get it. You must have a sort of openness, be receptive to a surprise. That's the whole point.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:25:40] That's right. That's a good point, because if you have some very precise idea of what you want, you know, in a partner, that's rather narrow, isn't it? You know.
Johan Herrenberg [00:25:54] And you might miss that person who would fit the bill and you wouldn't know because you had a whole list of things she would-- which would be right, but perhaps you had a certain trait, a characteristic, which would be just the thing you needed and you wouldn't know it because you were only fixated on that list.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:26:13] Exactly.
Johan Herrenberg [00:26:14] So be open. Be open.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:26:15] Yeah. Openness, trust and sticking to your vision. Because there too, you and I both had a kind of vision, not a template, a set of criteria, but we had some sense of what the longing was for, what the desire was for. And so we were open to that and recognized it immediately. In your case, I don't know, I think it might have took longer, but it often is immediate.
Johan Herrenberg [00:26:48] Yeah.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:26:49] And in a way, we need to-- what God had said was -- I ask, you know, give me your love for this scary experience. And He says, "Let Abigail love you. You will feel My love through her." That was--
Johan Herrenberg [00:27:03] Exactly. Exactly. I find it very, very striking. Yeah, very striking.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:27:08] And it's part of, I think, what we need to think about what we offer people, not just our love partner, but people in general that, you know, you should let the divine love for people show through you.
Johan Herrenberg [00:27:26] Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:27:27] In treating them well and appreciating their differences and what they offer. Different people offer different things. Different people have different callings, strengths and weaknesses. But, you know, God loves the weaknesses too.
Johan Herrenberg [00:27:44] Particularly. Particularly. He loves them particularly.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:27:48] Yes, particularly. God's going to be telling me things as part of God's story. And this, He says, is the new revelation aspect. But He says, God says to me, "Nothing overly dramatic there. We think of revelation with a capital R and drum rolls and thunder. Nothing overly dramatic there. I reveal myself all the time."
Johan Herrenberg [00:28:37] Yeah.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:28:39] And at first, I found this totally puzzling because I didn't find God anywhere. At one point I was told earlier than this stage, I ask God, you know, somewhat angrily, "Why are you so hidden?" God saying, "It's crucial that I be known." That's almost the essence of My being is to be known, be in this relation. And then I say, "Why then are you so hidden?" And God's reply was, "I'm not hidden. You see me all the time."
Johan Herrenberg [00:29:09] Yeah.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:29:13] You know, I test these things. I don't just get His holy writ or something, I missed it. And I'm not seeing God anywhere, and I kept kind of working on that, and seeing if I could make sense of it. And I think a lot of the sense I've made is a theme we've been alluding to, which is, you know, all you need to be open enough to kind of see the divine glimmer. It may be a divine glimmer or whisper or a word, just a tiny nuance of a key to an experience that's the divine element, and you need to be open to that and again, not have the prior template that it has to be a drum roll experience.
Johan Herrenberg [00:29:56] No.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:29:56] Or something on the high Himalayas.
Johan Herrenberg [00:29:58] No. In the Old Testament, God is a breeze. So he's not--.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:30:02] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:30:02] It's not nothing spectacular. He is the breeze.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:30:04] Yes, that's right. That's right.
Johan Herrenberg [00:30:07] A whispering sounds like a breeze, that is God.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:30:11] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:30:11] So, He is not in all the spectacular things of nature. He's in the smallest things. So when God says, "You see Me everywhere." Yeah, you can see God everywhere. You can see Him in a child's face. You can see Him in everything- in a flower- He is every-- He is omnipresent.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:30:31] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:30:31] But not in human form, perhaps. Not in the way that I could accost Him and talk to Him. But His fingerprint is on everything, is in everything. It can be revealed in art, in the experience of beauty. God is everywhere. So if you are open to that, you can get that transcendent experience of experiencing God.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:30:53] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:30:53] So when God says, "I am everywhere," you can see, of course you see Him everywhere. But people are so used to the miracle of life, they think that is something, of course that is natural, that it is there. So it is there, it has always been there, and it will always be there. But they cannot understand that there was a time it wasn't there. It is there because there is someone.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:31:17] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:31:18] Because there is someone manifesting Himself through the things we are seeing and manifesting Himself in the fact that we have life at all. So that I am now talking, that my blood is flowing, my heart is pumping, etc. There is a force that drives it. So, God is always present. He is present while we are talking now.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:31:38] Yes.
Johan Herrenberg [00:31:39] He is always there. But you must be receptive to that. And you must not be so blasé about living.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:31:47] Yes. Yes. Yes, you're exactly right, Johan. We take it for granted that the world is the way it is, but the world is a miracle. You know, we're always looking for miracles. Was this a miracle? That a miracle? We have got to have the proof of miracles. But the fact that you're breathing, that you and I have minds that can think about things--
Johan Herrenberg [00:32:10] It's a miracle in itself. It's a miracle in itself.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:32:12] Life itself is a miracle.
Johan Herrenberg [00:32:14] But the funny thing is that people accept it as a given. But it isn't a given. And once you start seeing that it isn't a given, you can experience God.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:32:25] Yes. Yes. Aristotle, of course, says, who had an odd kind of God, you might say a philosopher's God in his system, but says, "Philosophy begins in wonder."
Johan Herrenberg [00:32:40] In wonder- exactly.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:32:40] And almost everything really interesting begins in wonder.
Johan Herrenberg [00:32:45] In wonder.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:32:45] Or something like wonder. You know, "Wow, wow. Look at this." You know, what is awe? Awe is, "Wow. Look at that." You don't- it's not taking things for granted. Thinking, wait a minute. It didn't have to be this way. There's that whole metaphysical question, why is there something rather than nothing?
Johan Herrenberg [00:33:05] Rather than nothing. Exactly.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:33:06] And that goes into arguments for the existence of God and so forth. I take it more as an experiential level. Wow, there is-- there are things rather than nothing. Nothing would have been way easier. Right? But there are things rather than nothing. And more amazingly, many of them are living. There's organic reality and then there's an intelligent, organic reality.
Johan Herrenberg [00:33:29] Developing, developing, etc., it's fascinating.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:33:33] Yes, yes. Well, thank you, Johan. This has been a very helpful discussion from my point of view.
Johan Herrenberg [00:33:40] I hope so.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:33:42] It's wonderful to see you.
Johan Herrenberg [00:33:44] Jerry, it was good talking to you.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [00:33:46] Be well.
Johan Herrenberg [00:33:47] Yeah. Bye bye.
Scott Langdon [00:34:01] 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.