GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast

166. What's On Your Mind- Divine Direction | Exploring Spiritual Attunement

• Jerry L. Martin, Scott Langdon

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Join Scott Langdon and Dr. Jerry L. Martin in this thought-provoking What's on Your Mind as they explore divine direction and communication.

Through the personal narratives of Kent and Pam, Scott and Jerry investigate the impact of perceived divine messages on the courses of lives and the discernment necessary to distinguish divine messages from inner monologue.

Each letter offers valuable insights into the profound connections between spirituality and everyday life, from Kent's inquiry about following divine direction to Pam's heartfelt reflection on experiencing God's love. Explore how individuals experience and interpret divine messages through these insightful discussions and captivating letters.

Scott and Jerry also discuss the importance of self-scrutiny, recognizing spiritual attunement in others, and seeking guidance amidst life's challenges. 

Explore divine communication in various forms and how recognizing spiritual guidance enriches life. Join us for an enlightening conversation on contemplating the presence of God. This episode invites you to witness a spiritual journey, offering practical wisdom, guidance, and inspiration.

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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 166 Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. 

Scott Langdon 01:05: I'm Scott Langdon and this week Jerry and I dip into the email bag as we ask once again: What's On Your Mind? We have two very interesting emails this week, both concerned with the question: what do you choose to believe? It can sometimes be difficult to discern if we're on the right path, so to speak, and both of these emails ask us to consider what our first writer calls divine direction. What do these two words mean in our everyday lives, and how can we know for sure if we're picking up on the right signals along the way? We're always so grateful for such thought-provoking emails and if you'd like to ask a question or share your story of God, please drop us an email at questions@godanautobiography.com. We really do love hearing from you. Here now is What's On Your Mind? I hope you enjoy the episode. Welcome back everyone to another edition of What's On Your Mind. This is the 22nd edition of this series that we're doing. I'm Scott Langdon. I'm here with Jerry Martin. Jerry, I'm really glad to do this again. This is fun. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 02:12: Yeah, I think we've got some interesting emails to discuss. 

Scott Langdon 02:16: Yeah, we do. Now this What's On Your Mind series is where Jerry and I take some emails that have been sent in to us by readers of the book, listeners of this podcast, and we talk about them and talk about how others' experiences of God and our experiences of God give us a rich or a more full, perhaps understanding of what it means to be a human, what it means to live a spiritual life, and in this case, the discussion of your book it’s what God is up to in that relationship between us and what is more than us. God is very active as a person would be active with another person in that life for each of us. So having people write in and talk about those experiences always thrills me to death. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 03:07: Well, one of the things we learn is how many different ways God comes to people, and comes to people differently- that itself would be a whole topic- comes to people differently probably for a variety of reasons. The people are different, their situations are different, their needs may be different and what they need to hear. Every good teacher, you've been a teacher and I have too, and you don't tell one student the identical thing you say to another student, because students have different learning and intellectual and life needs at a given time. So you try to tailor whatever you're talking about. It might be a novel by Dickens or something, but you somewhat tailor it to where the student is, and God kindly does that to us, I think. 

Scott Langdon 03:56: Collectively, I think, over time, with groups, your tribe, your religious affiliation, but also with each person. I think we talked about that, how it's happening, both collectively but also individually, right down to the personal, which is what a lot of your work now is about the radically personal nature of this God- of God. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 04:22: Exactly. In God: An Autobiography we're told, I'm told, that God comes to each culture in terms God speaks through whole cultures and institutions, not just through individuals, and comes to each culture in terms of that culture's special capacity to kind of realize and actualize some aspect of the divine, or in terms of that culture's needs, capacity to understand what it has a capacity to act on. You know, to live out. And that carries right down to the individual level. And that God kindly comes to each of us in the way that seems to fit that situation or what we're up to at that time, and sometimes frustrating for us, sometimes seems like just what we needed. But it's always puzzling at our end to figure out what God's up to and indeed when it's actually God rather than our own thoughts, our own subconscious speaking. 

Scott Langdon 05:28: Yes, absolutely. That can be a very difficult thing, especially in our modern day and age when we know a lot more or a lot differently about how we know things and so we have, you know, methods, scientific method. A fact is a fact. What is it?  So there’s a whole lot of questions about that that I want to get into in a little bit, but I want to introduce these two emails today, because we have two wonderful emails. One is from Kent and the other is from Pam. And Kent is short and sweet and has a very poignant and very interesting question that has some deep levels to it that I can't wait to get into. And then Pam, her email is a little bit longer and she talks about her experience and how it's very similar to yours and how it's easier for her than most, and maybe even Kent, who knows, to, she says, believe you or believe your story. I'm really interested in that and we'll get to it soon. 

A Letter From Kent 06:31: But I want to start off with Kent. Kent writes in and his email says very quickly, very briefly but very poignantly this: “Do you fully believe that God's divine direction is what led you to write this book?” Just that very simple question. And I'll ask it again until we're clear. He asks, “Do you fully believe that God's divine direction is what led you to write this book?” God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher obviously we're referring to and your answer, I thought, was really just straight to the point and very there it is. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 07:08: Yeah, and it's a good question, because there could be various motivations. I could just feel my own personal inspiration, and then it could be semi-fictional and where I think, well, I think this is what God would want me to say, or this is what I would want God to say. You know some version like that, but no, mine is very straightforward and so I write back: “Yes, Kent, I was told directly in prayer that I was to publish this book. Even the title was given to me in prayer,” and I often explain, I added– the title seemed to me rather over the top– and so I added, As told to a Philosopher, to indicate we don't have God on a tape recording after all, telling God's story, God's autobiography. But we have my report based on what I was told. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 08:02: “I was extremely reluctant to take on the work.” It seemed too crazy to me and, as I explain in my writing to Kent, “I had a great career going in Washington DC and I could either keep drawing a handsome salary or I could do what God wanted. I went with God.” And for me, that was almost like Pascal has this famous wager. Are you going to believe or not believe? And the way he looks at it, well, if you believe and you're wrong, so what, you know, you haven't lost much. If you don't believe and that's wrong, then there's all hell to pay, almost perhaps literally. Mine wasn't that kind of either or, but it was a wager like either or. I can place my bets one side or the other of my career, and that's the best way to live my life, or doing what it seemed to me God wanted me to do, and that's make that the best way to live my life. So I placed given that wager, I placed my bets on God, or, more literally, on the God voice I was receiving. 

Scott Langdon 09:18: There are two words in Kent's question that make it fascinating to me with regard to what you just said. So you're given this experience, or you're aware of this experience, which is God talking to you. It appears that way, that's what you're taking it, you’re seeing it that way, and you talked about this in the book, and you and I have talked about this too, and we've talked about this with the team and things- is this initial feeling of am I crazy, asking people you know, is this so unusual, and you had some people that you admire say, you know, no, it's not actually unusual at all. In fact, take a look at, take a look into other people's experiences of these things, and nowadays we talk a lot about mental health. We want mental health, we want to look at mental health and talk about mental health. 

10:18 The two words that Kent in his sentence that popped out to me were divine direction. So my question to you would be and is: how did you know what the divine direction was and that it wasn't a mental health kind of situation? Because there have been plenty of people throughout history who have done horrendous things to other people and have said God told me to do this. God told me to kill these people or whatever. And we go oh that person's crazy and they belong in an institution or whatever. That's a mental health issue. But you say God told you to do this and you decided, you say you decided, that it was the thing to do and so you left your career and did this. You, as you said, you went with God. What was that divine direction and how do you know it was such a thing? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 11:16: Well, of course, in my case it was kind of easy, since God put it in a declarative or imperative sentence- do this. God often gave me instructions from the very beginning. What I say about the God voice at the beginning was the voice was too benign, and real, and authoritative for me really to doubt it. It was as real as I'm now talking to you, Scott, and I could say well, how do I know you're not a figment of my imagination, I could just be loony bins and there are many people who imagined talking to people who weren't there, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But in this case it was quite real, quite benign. It was a voice for openers, not telling me to go kill someone or to do something, go cheat on my wife or something like this. It was– there was nothing wrong. There was things that didn't quite make sense to me, but they weren't ethically wrong or immoral or vicious or anything like that. But although the voice was compelling in a way, I couldn't actually doubt it. 

12:33: I'm a philosopher, we're trained in questioning things. That's what got Socrates in trouble. He'd go to the judge and say what is justice? The judge would mumble some conventional thing and then oh, that doesn't stand up to analysis, pummel him with further questions, further questions that the judge couldn't answer. That's the philosophical temperament, is to question things. That's a– questioning things is one way you rise to a higher level of understanding. You come oh well, that answer wasn't adequate. Maybe this answer is better. This is a more comprehensive way of looking at a phenomenon or situation. 

13:17: What I did, what the lawyers would call due diligence, I called a friend who I thought might know, is there any literature on how you can tell whether a divine voice– because a diving voice is very dramatic and not just a kind of sense of God urging you in a certain direction, but it sounds more hallucinatory– any way to tell. And he said oh, there's literature on spiritual discernment. Most famous is by St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and the key is turns out to be your character. If you think, oh, I'm hearing from God, now, this makes me boss of the world, then it almost surely is not God. If God is giving you that sense of yourself, the number one trait is humility. If you look back in Genesis, you wouldn't naturally think of Moses as a humble guy, because he does all this leadership, but he's praised for his humility. And so I thought well, I'm not someone who's inclined to think I'm boss of the world. 

14:31: And so you go through your own self-scrutiny and you ask your friends do I still seem sane to you? I was sane before I heard the voice of God. Do I still seem sane? Yeah, you seem like the same old Jerry Martin, they would say. So, that's part of how I resolve these questions. You have to self-scrutinize. You do listen to friends. You ask, I've got some guy wanting advice from me and I thought well, I don't know your situation well enough, go to the wisest person of your acquaintance you know and put this problem before them. We need to help each other with these things, you need to seek. It's one reason parents want kids to have good friends rather than bad friends, because that helps you be your own best self. That's one thing friends do for one another.

Scott Langdon 15:23: To ask those questions, to scrutinize, to put it into the light. I think about it kind of in that way, like I would imagine that you know the killer who said God told me to kill everyone here and I heard this voice and it told me to do that, God told me to do that. I doubt whether or not that person went to his close friends and said God wants me to kill people. Do you think I should do that? Or went to his doctor and said or so forth. I mean you can see how that easily falls apart, right? And we all seem to know that. To put that example just now that I just said to the test, it falls apart so quickly. 

16:05: Now I'm thinking that that has to do with this divine direction that Kent is talking about. I often talk about it like that moving sidewalk in an airport that is going in this direction, that you're free to turn around and walk the other way, of course, but there's all the problems and the things you know we've talked about that before but that there is this movement in a direction. I don't know how else to talk about it. What does that mean to you? Divine direction? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 16:41: Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way. I took the word direction to mean like a divine order, but your point of direction also means which way is the river flowing? 

Scott Langdon 16:53: A way to go. Yes, what is God's way? God's will, God's direction is how I say synonymously. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 17:01: There’s this blessing, and I don't know if it's a real Chinese blessing or one of these things people make up, but it's, the blessing is: May you always ride in the direction in which the horse is going. Well, a lot of life has that character, doesn't it? And that doesn't mean go along with the crowd, but it means pay attention to the flow around you, and you've got to, in some sense or other, be in concert with that flow of events, insights, whatever it is, might be music around you, and so there is that sense of direction. That's right.

Scott Langdon 18:11: Our second email this week comes from Pam. This is such an interesting one and as I was reading it to prepare for this week's episode, I realized there was a lot. There were a lot of things that I have in common with Pam, as she explains a lot of the things that she has in common with you and your experience. Pam writes this: 

A Letter From Pam 18:33: “I can believe what you say because that has happened to me and I kept quiet about it. I do tell people about my experiences of God if they ask, but as I can't prove my experience of God I know for a fact, they can't prove me wrong either. The God I know and love is of love and His character is consistent. He has been faithful to me for many years and helped me in very hard circumstances. Over the years I've got to know His character and He is true to what the Bible says. But, unlike a lot, doesn't fit into a mold that people would have Him fit into. I expected some pious man looking down his nose at me as if everything and everyone smelled disgusting with a BBC accent. The God I met was truly loving and compassionate and not at all proud, in fact rather ordinary.”

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 19:32: I love that BBC accent. A lot of people, God seems so distant and absurdly superior, you might say. You know infinite perfection. You know all this kind of stuff like the biblical language and the language of ancient texts of multiple cultures, a lot of the praise of God, or the divine, the gods, is the language of praise of the ruler. It's that same kind of language of praise of Almighty and all knowing and so forth King of kings all of the worlds. 

Scott Langdon 20:09: King of Kings, Lord of Lords.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 20:11: That's how you address the Pharaoh or the, you know whatever. And so you do end up with something of- God's up there, we're down here, God's perfect, we're woefully imperfect. And so God must really look down His nose as if something smells bad and then speak with this kind of BBC official accent you know which we don't command, we just talk ordinary, you might say. And I think it's wonderful how Pam says no, that's not the God I lived with. The God was loving and compassionate and helped me in very hard circumstances. It'd be very interesting if she had said what these circumstances are. You know, how does God help in very hard circumstances? That would be a whole nother rich and interesting topic to examine, with some cases, you know, having put here. But anyway, her experience is that consistently, God is loving and compassionate, and I rather like rather ordinary. 

21:18: That's my experience of God. I did not– I did not fall over when God spoke to me and God never did oh, theatrics, like the movies you know of lightning and thunder and who knows what it's always been you know, person to person, shoulder to shoulder- direct talk. And I could ask questions and God would answer them, and not everybody has that experience. Of course that's rather unusual, but a lot of, I think, people's experiences are you just pray for insight or help me be a better person or help me get through this, and God kind of helps you. You know responds. You have that feeling well, God is kind of on my side here, I think. Or God is sort of guiding me in what you're calling a direction. You know, picking up that sense of Kent’s email, that God is kind of helping me along in some way or inspiring me in some way, infusing me with a sense of direction perhaps. And that's our, that's people's experience, and it's not maniacal and all of that stuff that atheists tend to dwell on. 

Scott Langdon 22:35: You said in the last What's On Our Mind episode that we did together that you know we were talking about the idea that in a lot of the newer age talk about what is, a lot of talk about nothingness, and what God is, and that there isn't God, or that kind of talk, that a lot of the conventional wisdom is you really can't know anything about God. Once we start to talk about God, we really aren't talking about God. We're talking about a concept, All of that kind of language, and you said there's quite a bit we can know about God and most of it's true, which I loved that line, I thought it's a great line, but much of it is true. That goes to when I look at this sentence that she says, Pam says, “The God I know and love is of love and his character is consistent.”

23:41: When we talk about this divine direction and if we're talking about a way to go God's way, God's will, that's always consistent. That love always shows up as love it may not have, you know. It's like oh, what are you doing? You're telling me this or you know confronting me with that or what, but really, when we're quiet and the ego is out of it, we know that God's love is consistent and God's direction is consistent, and so when we ask God to show us the way to go, God's never going to lead us to, oh, kill people. It's always this consistent movement in a direction toward love? I feel that's been my experience. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 24:27: Yeah, yeah, I think that's you know God says about love at some point- Why shouldn't love be the whole story of the universe? You know, you want to know what's the big picture, what's the final explanation, what's the unmoved mover, as Aristotle put it, you know the first cause of the ultimate? Well, it's love, folks. It's love. And again, it is rather ordinary, it's just love. 

24:56: And what I get is not– that God really loves us, it's not just a metaphor or analogy or something as the high theology tends to present it, but God actually loves us- well, in God's own way. God is not a human being, but it's very much like the way we love one another, the love of the people we love. Except God doesn't have problems with ego and then, oh, ambition and rivalry and pet peeves and all this kind of thing. But it's a fairly ordinary experience and the consistency point I take to be what you know about any person you get to know well, especially if it's a reliable person. I know one Reynolds Price, an interesting spiritual writer who is also a novelist, calls God– his definition of God is a kind of reliable presence. 

25:57: Reliable presence. Could have been in the background. It's not vivid like mine, not highly interactive, but it's a reliable presence. And somebody you know well, who's trustworthy, somebody you can count on, is going to be consistent. That's why you go to the wisest person you know, because whether or not infallible, yet, they always try to say something intelligent, pertinent, high-minded, that points you in that direction, that kind of upward direction, and they've got a good discerning eye for what the difference between upward and downward in human life. And that's a very important thing to have and we don't have it perfectly, but some people are rather good at it. And especially, you know, we're trapped in our own struggles often, and one reason for talking to a friend is just they have a view that isn't trapped in our own struggles. They may have their own, but viewing our own situation, they can view it with some degree of objectivity and detachment and therefore insight and balance. 

Scott Langdon 27:10: And there is God's answer in those things. It's the inside and the outside part working together. So the inside part is you know, what am I thinking? Is this the way to go? What should I do? Oh, I should maybe talk to my wife about this. I should talk to my best friend about this. That's the inside part working. And I say, if I give it to God, I say you know, “God, I don't know what to do. Please help me with direction, help me to figure out what to do.”

27:41: The impulse might be the beginning of the answer, which is talk to your best friend about it. Hmm, okay, all right, call my best friend, listen to my best friend and really listen. That answer, whatever it is, is the outside part. That very well could be God's answer, and if I take it as such, then I take it in and I work with God again, like God, is this the right answer? And that feeling that I'm going to call this the divine direction reveals itself step by step. If I say you know, oh, I get this feeling I want to kill people and I think I should talk to my best friend. Oh, no, he's not going to, he'll talk me out of it. Well, there you go. Like you know, there's your answer right there. That divine direction keeps us, keeps us on board. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 28:37: Yeah, it's like a steering mechanism or something like you know, that keeps the car or the plane or whatever from going, you know, off kilter and crashing. And you're right, the answer comes from the asking of the question. That's a wonderful point, Scott, that you're already both in the divine groove, you might say, responding to the divine presence in you. And then you follow on through, taking the steps. And one of the things I'm told is one of the many ways God communicates with human beings is through what other people say and do with regard to us. And so you listen to those other voices and there's a challenge of discernment there. 

29:29: Well, which ones are on track, wise, high-minded, spiritually attuned themselves, and you pay a special lot of attention to them. I know when I first started going to this group, the Eric Voegelin Society, I would pick a lot of brilliant people there, learned people, but which one seems spiritually attuned? And the one from listening to all the speakers at one year, I thought, oh, I think she's the most spiritually attuned of all these people. When we all went out to dinner I made a point of sitting by her and she has been a kind of spiritual counselor to me ever since. But these things always require pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. 

30:18: I had the capacity, which is itself divinely given, to recognize her spiritual attunement, and then her spiritual attunement then as a third person looking at me was very helpful in providing advice and so forth, especially since she knows a rich literature about things like spiritual discernment that I did not know. But the main key is not that she knows X, y, z, but that she's spiritually attuned. She herself pays attention to the direction If we continue using that term or to the divine presence. I often use the concept of just divine presence in a situation. She can tell if there's divine presence and how you might say how you tap into that, relate to it. 

Scott Langdon 31:13: Well, thank you, Kent and Pam, for writing in to us these wonderful emails. We always love to receive emails here at the program, and if you'd like to tell us your experience of God, please drop us an email at questions@godanautobiography.com. We love to hear from you. Jerry, this is always great, a lot of fun. Can't wait till we do it again. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 31:34: Yeah, you be well and all of our listeners be well. 

Scott Langdon 31:48: 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.