GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
205. Special Episode | Revisiting I Learn How God Communicates
How does God communicate with humanity across cultures and ages? Uncover the unique ways divine messages have been tailored to the character and readiness of different cultures in this profound episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. Philosopher Jerry L. Martin explores a dialogue with God that reveals how humanity plays a vital role in a cosmic dance, collaborating with the divine to bring forth harmony, higher possibilities, and spiritual growth.
From the Chinese affinity for balance and the moral codes of ancient Israel to the transcendental focus of India, God explains the "division of labor" in His revelations, showing how each culture contributes to the broader divine story. This episode invites you to reflect on the subtle yet powerful ways God communicates- through nature, intuition, and the quiet whispers of the heart- and challenges us to listen with openness and attunement.
Join us for this rich exploration of divine communication and stay tuned for an upcoming The Life Wisdom Project episode with Ajit Das, where he and Jerry go deeper into the art of listening to God.
Other Series:
The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:
- The 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 "A Self Requires Another Self"
- DRAMATIC ADAPTATION PLAYLIST
Would you like to be featured on the show or have questions about spirituality or divine communication? Share your story or experience with God!
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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 205. Hello and welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm Scott Langdon and this is episode number 205.
Scott Langdon 01:20: Next week on the podcast, we're rejoined once again by our wonderful friend Ajit Das, who sits down with Jerry for our 22nd Life Wisdom Project episode. The pair will discuss a true favorite episode of mine episode 22. I Learn How God Communicates. I believe that communication is at the heart of all relationships and in episode 22, God explains to Jerry just how important it is to God, who communicates to us in every way imaginable. So here now is episode 22. I Learn how God Communicates. I hope you enjoy the episode. Episode 22.
DRAMATIC ADAPTATION: I Learn How God Communicates
Jerry Martin - voiced by Scott Langdon
The Voice of God - voiced by Jerry L. Martin, who heard the voice
Jerry Martin [02:10]: Lord, I have prayed about various cultures, and I don't see how they fit together.
Voice of God: Look at the broad sweep for a moment. What do you see?
Jerry Martin [02:19]: From prehistoric times, you are dealing with people through nature and their own intuitions, aesthetic appreciation, emerging moral sense.
Voice of God [02:26]: Yes.
Jerry Martin And perhaps through each person's own development, self-awareness, and awareness of the other.
Voice of God [02:30]: Yes.
Jerry Martin: That starts getting articulated as the Way by the Chinese and as the cosmic order in Mesopotamia and perhaps in India in the idea of Rta—the primeval Indian term for right order.
Voice of God [02:42]: Yes.
Jerry Martin: and You are seen in natural phenomena—in particular, plants and animals, in geographical structures such as rivers and mountains, and in larger forces such as life, death, fate, and famine. I gather these are all ways in which You are manifesting Yourself.
Voice of God [03:16]: Not just manifesting Myself, but communicating through them.
Jerry Martin [03:26]: Communicating what, Lord?
Voice of God [03:29]: Go back to the Way. I communicated to the Chinese, who have an affinity for this, the sense of harmony. The "cosmic order" can mean many things, including a Newtonian rational system or a moral order enforced by the gods or by Divine Justice. Because of the Chinese affinity, I communicated the fine sense of balance and harmony and right proportions—not as weighing things on a scale, which is how the Greeks heard Me—but in something like a moral aesthetic sense. Aesthetic in a larger sense that encompasses the moral and spiritual: that right balance and sense of center, working with the natural flow and understanding oneself rightly in order to contribute correctly to the social and natural harmony, and understanding each thing by its right name and nature and place in the scheme of things.
Jerry Martin [04:33]: This Chinese understanding was important, Lord?
Voice of God [04:40]: Since in an ontologically rich sense all nature is Me. This communication to the Chinese was crucial. It is something people in other cultures can learn from. It is an essential part of My story.
Jerry Martin [04:53]: Why is it important to You personally?
Voice of God [04:57]: The universe is something like My body, but it has ethereal as well as gross aspects, just as the human body does. If people misbehave and throw it out of balance—and I am not just talking about ecology here, but more subtle ways of acting out of harmony with the natural order or the Way—then you might say that I get a stomach upset. I am, among other things, the source of cosmic order, both physical and more than physical. I need people to help.
Jerry Martin [05:29]: So people are important parts of the cosmic order.
Voice of God [05:35]: The world is better because people are in it. They actualize higher possibilities. They're able to articulate the moral order in action, the natural order in intellection, the aesthetic order in appreciation, and so on. They are My partners in this effort.
Jerry Martin [05:56]: I gather that You developed Yourself, moving from rather vague appreciations and understandings during the prehistoric period to the more articulated Chinese understanding.
Voice of God [06:07]: That’s correct. I have inspired them but learned in turn as they articulated those inspirations. To some extent, human beings are My pen and pencil—or ink brush—as you are.
Jerry Martin [06:16]: But I still don’t understand why You reveal one set of ideas to one people, another set to another, and they all contradict one another.
Voice of God [06:30]: The contradictions are more apparent than real. Nevertheless, your observation that they differ from one another is correct. There are several reasons for this difference. The first is that, just as when I communicate with you, it is in your own voice and in your own language and in your own vocabulary, using your own knowledge and concepts. That is how I communicate with all people.
Jerry Martin [06:56]: Yes, I see.
Voice of God [06:58]: The second follows from the first. Each culture has, at a particular time, certain human, institutional, and conceptual resources. Each also has certain traits or talents I work with. Just as a writing instructor might tell one young writer to write more simply and another to complexify, I tell different cultures what they are prepared to hear and to understand and to act on.
Jerry Martin [07:25]: Yes, that makes sense from my experience as a teacher.
Voice of God [07:29]: Third, the total revelation would be more than any single individual or culture could bear or well act on. So, there’s a kind of division of labor. For example, I told the ancient people of Israel to act in history and to keep My covenant and abide by a set of religious and moral rules. That was task enough for them. I told the ancient people of India to develop the inner life and to get in touch with the transcendental Atman, the Self beyond the self. Both were and remain valid tasks.
Jerry Martin [08:15]: And today, Lord, what is our task?
Voice of God [08:26]: One reason I’m telling My story now is that today it is time for mankind to begin to sort out what is true and not so true in the various religions and other sources of insight, and to piece them together into something more adequate.
Jerry Martin [08:54]: And the religions of the world provide sources for piecing the whole story together?
Voice of God [09:00]: I’ve communicated over the millennia with human beings and other creatures in myriad ways. Do not attend only to the canonical revelations enshrined by the different religions. I have communicated through the many myths and stories and legends that have been collected. Some are directly from Me, some are invented by people, most are a mix of the two. All are communicated in terms of the capacity and vocabulary of the listeners.
Jerry Martin [09:30]: From what You’ve told me, it seems You communicate in multiple ways.
Voice of God [09:34]: I communicate through prayer, through dreams, through insights that seem like one’s own thoughts, through hunches and intimations and intuitions. I am present in the human heart and speak to people directly. Directly does not mean simply or literally or in a loud voice. People must learn to listen, to heed. That requires openness of heart and sensitive attunement to My voice, to My urgings.
Jerry Martin [10:18]: How does this relate to Your story, Lord?
Voice of God [10:25]: Telling My story involves what it is like to be a Being who communicates with those whom I love and whose actions mean everything to Me, and what it is like to do so in this indirect and typically unheard or unheeded way. That is what My revelation to the ancient Jews is about. I am a God who whispers. It is not difficult to hear Me. It is not, as some say, that I am hidden. Far from it. I am not in hiding. I am everywhere, right in front of their eyes. But they have to choose to see, to hear, to heed. People’s hearts are usually closed. The Old Testament, for example, is replete with cases of individuals resisting hearing My word, My instructions.
Jerry Martin [11:22]: It sounds as if You end up rather alone again.
Voice of God [11:26]: Can you imagine the anguish, the suffering in such a God? If I did not care about human beings, it would be nothing to Me that they did not listen. If I were the detached, “perfect,” self-sufficient God many theologians write about, it would not matter to Me. But I am not such a God. I care about human beings. I care about each and every human being infinitely, in a direct and total way. You can only begin to imagine. I care what human beings do. And I am sorrowful when they do wrong, when they do not meet their historical moment in the right way. I long to be close to human beings, for them to be in harmony and attunement with Me. It would be wrong for Me to be close to them on any other, more false terms. I am a suffering God. If you miss that, you miss everything. Suffering is at the heart of the universe. It is not incidental, an accident, something preventable. It is at the core of what it is to relate to an Other in a loving way. Otherness requires separateness, distance, alienation, independence, freedom, and a certain amount of friction.
Jerry Martin [12:57]: So, in part at least, You suffer from loving us. We often disappoint You. Is that the main problem, Lord?
Voice of God [13:07]: It is not only creatures who are imperfect. I am too. I need this development in order to become more perfect, more fulfilled. I need it, and human beings do as well. In all these different ways of communication, My experience is one of love, of reaching out, of trying to catch a person's attention, of satisfaction when heard—because then I and the Cosmos are moving forward—and of frustration, endless, unrelenting, bitter frustration when not heard. Of acute pain when not heeded. Of anger when double-crossed. And of tremendous suffering, like the suffering of a mother or father who watches a son or daughter go bad. There is no anguish like it.
Scott Langdon 14:26: 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.