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

209. What's On Our Mind- The Divine Conversation: God’s Desire for Relationship and the Power of Empathy in Small Moments

• Jerry L. Martin, Scott Langdon

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In this What's On Our Mind, Jerry L. Martin and Scott Langdon discuss how God seeks a close and personal connection with humanity. They reveal how divine communication often happens through intuition, quiet moments, and acts of kindness—rather than dramatic revelations.

The conversation explores the transformative power of empathy. It shows how small gestures of compassion and presence create sacred connections that reflect God’s love.

These ordinary moments carry extraordinary spiritual significance, offering glimpses of God’s longing for relationship and our shared human desire for connection.

Discover inspiring insights into the meaning of life, the spiritual depth of empathy, and how intentional living can bring us closer to God and each other.

Follow along with future episodes and get your copy of God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher here. Get the newest book,Two Philosophers Wrestle with God- A Dialogue here.

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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. 

Scott Langdon 01:12: Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm your host Scott Langdon, this is episode 209 and our thirtieth edition of What's On Our Mind. On this week's episode Jerry and I dig deeply into the profound truth that God desires a relationship with humanity. We talk about the complexities of divine communication and how it transforms both God and humans through shared experiences. We also reflect on the power of empathy and communication recognizing that the art of just being there for someone is a profound form of help that resonates with the divine presence itself. Thanks for spending this time with us. Here's whats on our mind. I hope you enjoy the episode.   

Scott Langdon 02:02: Welcome back, everybody, to another edition of What's On Our Mind. Jerry's back with me. I'm Scott Langdon. Jerry, it's really good to see you this week.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 02:09: Well, good to see you, Scott, and I think we've got some interesting things to talk about here.

Scott Langdon 02:14: I do too. This unit of episodes that we've been talking on, centers around episode 22. And this episode we've titled I Learn how God Communicates, and I'm so fascinated by this chapter, going back and listening to it again and preparing it to be used for episode 25 this time, which was a replay of this episode to get us ready for Ajit Das's Life Wisdom Project was the episode that you and he talked about, and in this episode, I Learn How God Communicates, it seems so important to me because what you always talk about is the relationship aspect, and there really isn't, it seems to me, anything else in relationship but communication. If you have otherness, there is communication. Without otherness, there is no communication. So there's something about God to me wanting to create otherness that creates communication and the need for it, and it's so interesting to maybe, as you've mentioned to me before, this chapter might encapsulate a lot of what God is trying to communicate to you about the whole book.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 03:26: Yeah, that's right. You remember, at the very beginning, I was told the first time God put me on this project, “I want you to tell My story.” And I didn't even know God had a story, you might say. But I asked, of course, what does that involve?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 3:46: And one of the key things God says, the story is always told from the human side and I want people to understand what it is like for Me, what it's like for God, to engage in this long creation, then interaction with human beings and, of course, other elements of the universe, but particularly with human beings. And again, at the time I didn't know there was anything, what it's like to be God, you know. But there is something. That is that question, and it was taking my mind to the very end of the book which, at the time it happened, I thought, well, it didn't seem to end with a bang, but as I went back and reread it and I'll just share that again, you know where does it end and it's really what's the point of the whole thing? And I'm trying to sum it up, trying to figure out what's our connection to God, and I say, “Is this right, Lord, that what one knows when one knows God is not an inert fact. Oh, here I am. There's a God, not an inert fact, it is a living reality that places demands on us and transforms us”. God says yes, and then I go on, “as if this were Your sole reason for being.” Yes, that's where the book ends, and it was only after rereading that I thought God has just given an explanation for why there's a world at all. And it's not a causal explanation, but it's what they call a teleological explanation. In terms of the purpose. What was the purpose of there being a world? Well, God is telling me here it's so that God can have this relationship to human beings, to us, and we are God's reason for being. And what does that involve? As you just said, Scott, it involves, like any relationship, communication, because you got, you know, just, here's one person, here's another person, think of a friend, for example. You're two different people. Well, what's the connecter? You've got to have a connector between you, and that's communication.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 06:19: And so God having created this world and of course we learn early in God: An Autobiography, in the early episodes, that there it's presented as if it feels to me, as I'm sort of sensing God, as if God is sort of like lonely. Well, in those early eons, you know, God doesn't have the opportunity to relate to human beings yet, and so God is almost tapping the– God, remember, doesn't know the future, not in any definitive way in the account God gives me, but is following developments and following developments. And then it's kind of wonderful because animal life starts coming along and human life and God starts interacting with people and God learns from that interaction. God's coming into being the way we all coming into being in relation to other people. I'm told at one point, the personal is interpersonal. That's how you become a person. It's by relating to other people, and so God is going through that process. But it's a strange process because I don't know if there are any plays like this, Scott, but it's as if the main character in the play never appears on stage but is sending signals in some indirect way to the players on the stage. And that's us. We're the players on the stage. And how do these signals come? And of course they're not normally like telegram arrive. There's a telegram from God.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 07:58: The scriptures can be presented that way, can be understood as divine communication. So that's important. The scriptures were originally, of course, individual experiences of the divine or the ultimate. My experience of God is the personal side, but God is bigger than that and there's a divine reality that includes a kind of transpersonal aspect that is more explored often by the Eastern traditions. And so there are these multiple ways God is making God self-evident to us, and yet we don't notice that. And yet a part of the value for each and every one of us of this episode is that God lays out one way He communicates, after another, after another, after another, after another, and those include the Eastern ways meditation, taking in what I think of as an almost aesthetic mode, reality just as it presents itself, as it is, without trying to either make use of it or theorize about it, put it into categories, but just connecting with it, and, in my experience, through prayer, and a lot of what God is doing is trying to get you to do something or to not do something.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 09:23: The voice of conscience is one of the many ways God communicates, and we're all somewhat aware of that. We often don't think well, that's God and you don't need to think that it's God. If it's got some sense of right and wrong, then that's going to be helpful to you in living a better human life. And then there are these other ways just through contemplation and God putting a task in your path and some other things we've talked about at other times. But just pause there for a moment, because it is quite a diversity of arrays and it's a mistake that some religious people make of thinking there's one and only one way.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 10:07: I know there are groups you know I hear a voice and there are people who think, oh, I want to hear a voice, I want to hear a voice.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 10:14: You don't need to hear a voice, let God communicate with you however God comes to you. It was helpful for me for God to talk to me because God wanted me to write a book. But if God doesn't want you to write a book, why does God need to do that? Why isn't it enough for God just to put a task in your path and you kind of recognize oh, I think this is for me, this is a kind of calling. You know I'm supposed to pick up this thread and follow it and why isn't that enough? Or just those deep urges you feel in your deep pits of your stomach or wherever it is your chest, that, oh, this is right, this is what I should do, or, uh-oh, this is wrong. Often, if temptations come your way, there's some you're very drawn to it, but there's some deeper feeling that, uh-oh, I'm about to go astray here, I'm about to make a mistake. And so there's a wide array. Does that strike you, Scott this tremendous array of the ways God manifests God's self to us?

Scott Langdon 11:26: Yes, and God says to you when you ask him is in the Hindu tradition, the idea that everything is essentially God? Is that right? And God just says yes, that's right. And yet building on that. So if we started there, then the possibility that everything and anything could be a communication from God is a possibility. It's possible. And God lists to you the myriad ways God communicates Intuition, other people, a voice, sometimes an algorithm in a YouTube thing. Oh, should I watch this? Like the urge, the impulse to, should I follow this way or that way? This seems to be the way, that is a communication from God.

Scott Langdon 12:17: I am really interested in terms of the communication, about two parts that are involved in communication.

Scott Langdon 12:35: One is well, when I think about it broadly and I think about myself in terms of communication with someone else, there is a desire to be understood. And number two, there's a desire to understand, and often I find myself, if I get kind of caught up or if there's trouble in communication, I often find that my desire to be understood is out front. It leads. It leads me, and what's behind that, coming in a distant second, often is my desire to understand the other. In God we have both of those things going on. God says to you what I want more than anything is to be understood and taken in, and I feel that desire, as I said, one of my, it's the one that leads often, but we often, God sets up his relationship with you with the single word listen, to me, demonstrating that, in order to have communication, start from the listening place, start from the place of seeking to understand first, and perhaps the communication might go smoothly.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 13:56: Well, yeah, you want to talk to another person, you want to be understood by a person, but that means it's not just understood by a robot, you might say, but understood by someone you understand. You know that if you have no kind of empathy, no sense of that person, what life is like for them and what their interest might be in you, you know why are you talking? Do you share a goal? Is it enjoyment? I've heard a good joke and so you share a good joke. There are all many reasons for communicating, but you need to have some sense of what are we doing together. It's not a solo thing of sending out bottles to sea. You know, hey, understand me, you want that, but you want them to send some bottles to sea that arrive on your island, right, and you're taking in, and then that's a full relationship.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 14:54: I know, I'm told in the context of love, God says any one-way love is incomplete and sort of a failure, the way a one-way communication would be if nobody's listening, well, it's not a communication at all. And love, well, you can be loving somebody, but you've got to connect with them or you don't have a love relationship, and so that's part of God's experience. God's trying to have, you might call it a love relationship. It's not just woozy like that, but it's a working relationship also, trying to have a relationship with us so that we can take God in. And God already has a great sense of us. But I'm told at one point, I don't read your minds. That's why you need to pray. Tell me how it is with you. And in the Old Testament, God heard the cries of the people in Egypt and remembered his covenant, and so God, oh, responds to that. People cry out, God responds. We need to cry out or say whatever else we have to say.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 16:04: My experience with God really began with expressing gratitude. Okay, and I didn't believe in a God, but it just seemed I had an experience for which I was grateful and it seemed the right thing to do to express that, because it came to my life from who knows where, and so, however, this came to my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you, what one writer called just thanking your lucky stars. You know, sometimes it can be that, but you express how it is with you and then God is trying to have you take in that partnership, the other side of that relationship, and that, I'm told, is God's reason for being, and that's how we both grow. That's how God grows, how we grow.

Scott Langdon 17:35: You know it's interesting. You were talking about empathy and how that relates to communication and suffering, and it just reminded me of this situation that happened to me last week. I went to my doctor's office and the woman behind the counter checking me in and doing all that, I could tell she was in severe pain, had to do something with her leg. But if she had to kind of get up out of the chair, oh man, the wince on her face and oh, it was just all over her and I could just tell she was suffering so much. And I was standing there, it was just her on the other side of the counter and me, no one else in the waiting room or anything. And I was trying to think of the right thing to say. I was trying to think of you know, oh, you know, how are you? Or do you like the weather, something? And what I realized was and this was something that came to me was this God giving me a nudge, perhaps, but it was don't worry about yourself and how this will make you feel. Focus on her. And what I said was I'm so sorry you're in such pain. And she looked up at me and that was the first time we actually connected in the eyes and she smiled with pain behind it. But a thank you, she just said, and then that was it. I couldn't do anything more for her.
Scott Langdon 19:13: And this urge to be the helper, this urge to, I realized that would make me feel good. But I, but there was more to it. I was like, oh, I want to get beyond that. I really do want to connect with this person who seems to be in such deep pain. What can I do to help, to be the helper, to make it better? And this sense came to me. Nothing except tell her how you see her. You see her, you're taking her in, and in a sense that communication, that's all that was needed.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 19:46: Yes, yes, we underestimate the value of simple presence. You know we're always trying to solve problems and that's a great thing to do if you have a solution and you're right, Scott, that often makes the doer feel better. But the first task, even before trying to solve the problem, is recognize the person as a person, show empathy, show some awareness of what they might be going through. You don't have to give a diagnostic. If you misinterpret it, it's right, maybe she's shifting around, but it's actually she's about to go through a difficult divorce. It doesn't matter whether you correctly identify, just show your presence. And that's a lot of the message that God has told me. What is God's help in the world? And God says I'm not a rescue helicopter and you weren't a rescue helicopter for that woman and you knew it. You knew it and God knows it. God is not a rescue helicopter, but the divine presence, God tells me, is itself the help. And that sounds so little. It sounds so little, but we know from our own daily experience that that is not little.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 21:02: I know when I had my first heart problem and was at home afterwards, just a friend calling How's it going? Just lifted my spirits unbelievably, couldn't cure my heart problem. I mean the doctors had taken care of that, you might say. But it's an enormous value and that's why I always like these bumper stickers that say practice random acts of kindness, just to be kind to a person, even congenial, nice to a person in the checkout at the grocery store. For God's side of this, since God's whole reason for being is this relationship and living lives of drama with us, you know it's not just a gazing in each other's eyes sort of relationship. You then move on in the world. There's a lot to be done in the world and we're God's partners in that.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 21:56: But God says the anguish of being ignored and of people often willfully ignoring, you know, kind of plugging their ears and going yana, yana, yana or something. You know I'm not going to listen, not going to listen and often don't want to listen because I don't want to live better than I'm living now. You know I like you might say my crummy life because it's full of things I understand and enjoy. But God said there's no anguish like it. It's like the anguish of a parent who watches their kids go bad. The parent is just torn up. Nothing the parent can do. They're living their own lives.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 22:46: As a parent, your whole reason for being is being defeated. One of the things you try to do is create good, happy kids, right? Equipped to deal with adult life and have their own mental equipment together and emotional equipment together, with some integration and integrity and competence and so forth and ability to face life with good spirits and take in fully what it has to offer, the best that it has to offer, and to live that out and have successful personal relationships themselves and so on. Those are all the things you want. That's the reason for being of a parent. Well, that's God's reason for being.

Scott Langdon 23:33: We can understand that feeling and if God is communicating to you that this is a deep anguish for me, like a father seeing a child go wrong, go bad, when I think about my children who haven't gone bad, thank God by any stretch of the imagination. But when I think about when we are out of communication, my friend Scott and I talk about it as being in communication or out of communication, you know.

Scott Langdon 24:03: So if my son and I, for example, are out of communication, I find that I have some things that I feel like if I could only communicate this to him, he would get it and understand and that's from my perspective, that's my perception of the situation that if he would just heed this whether or not that's correct, I know that feeling.

Scott Langdon 24:38: Now, God obviously is God and knows God's will and knows what's best, and I can feel that what God wants for us is the right thing, it's God's will, and I don't always know what God's will is for my son, let's say. So I understand that I don't know the whole picture and all of that. At the same time, I feel like I can share, or at least understand, that feeling of wanting to communicate something that is not being heard, whether it's willfully or whether it's, and I always feel, even if it is willfully, that I still want to try something else that might work to get you to not be willfully ignoring me, or whatever. Maybe if I come at it with a story, or maybe if I come at it from your point of view, or I'm always trying to communicate something that I'm failing to communicate I have that desire and I can understand that God would have that.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 25:36: Yeah, and if the other person either isn't ready for this communication or willfully doesn't want it or whatever you know it can be many things it's not necessarily a failing, but generally in our relation with God, if we aren't paying attention that's a failing. This is part of what we need to do as human beings is to try to have some sense in one of these modes or other. And it can be just aesthetic contemplation. You kind of look out there and because an awful lot what you need is to get distractions out and your own willful urges and your own ego and all of that stuff, and just relax and let the divine flow in. You might say, and and then it doesn't have to be to big demands, but if you let the divine flow in, then you're in relationship, and sometimes that's what couples do, what families do. They just go to the beach and sit on the beach and enjoy each other's company. They aren't necessarily doing that much, but in that case they're often sharing, you might say, roughly speaking the same experience. They're all participating in the same event, having the same experience.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 26:55: Uh, you play, uh, tennis with your friend. You know that's not emotional communication per se, at least, although there may be overtones of that, but you're sharing an experience with each other and you're giving each other enjoyment, and afterwards you say good game, thank you.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin  27:16: Right? You know it's a successful experience and God is trying to have these various experiences with us and also, where there is necessary work to be done in the world, that you can make the world better or you can make it worse, and God is your partner in that and you need to be God's partner in that. Then you might say it's sort of urgent. You know there's an emergency, let's say, and God needs to get in touch with you. Well, you need to be opening your telegrams or answering your phone or your text messages or whatever, and responding. Our job is to respond in such cases and God will respond to us. We don't need to worry about God's end of this transaction, but we need to pay attention to our own. We need to be responding and trying to do as best we can discern what God would think is the best in this situation.

Scott Langdon 28:16: Often when I think about communication and a way to talk about completed communication and what that feels like is to talk about the theater and doing a play and being in the audience and that connection. In 2019, I was in Vero Beach, Florida, doing a production of Legally Blonde and a friend of mine passed away. It was very dear to me and I was grieving that unexpected news and trying to go to work at night and do this show. And in some of my off time I was looking on the computer and I saw this headline that Glenda Jackson, a great Academy award winner, English actress, was doing King Lear on Broadway. At the time she was playing King Lear in the role of King Lear and the New York Times came into her dressing room and was doing a little interview with her and that's what I was seeing on this little video and she said something about the theater that was just perfectly articulated what communication is like, and here's what she said. I wrote it down. She said, “When theater works, a group of strangers come on in the light and there is this other group of strangers sitting in the dark and energy goes from the light to the dark and, hopefully, is reinforced and sent back to you. If that happens, a perfect circle is formed and that is so unique.” And I've been thinking about that for these five years since I heard it, and every time I work as an actor I think about that and the idea that in that situation I would be the one on stage, you know, sending the energy out to the audience, that those strangers in the dark. But then also I've been in the audience and I've thought about it from the audience's point of view. How is it that I am participating in this situation here? These folks up here are sending this energy out to me and I'm receiving it. And how am I giving it back or not? And I've noticed lately I've been to several things lately and I've noticed that sometimes if I'm not feeling well or something, I'm maybe not able to focus as well, or I drift in and out or something, or maybe somebody is acting poorly in my opinion or whatever, it's just not hitting me, maybe fall asleep.

Scott Langdon 30:53: And then another show, a different performance, I'm riveted. Oh what's this? And I'm trying to pay attention to those things and wonder how available am I on both sides of things? When I'm performing obviously every performance isn't the same, it's different every time, and yet you strive to send that same kind of energy out there. But sometimes I might not be feeling as well as I am other nights, and so there are these other variants about communication, and so I often wonder how tuned, how, how ready am I to be tuned in to receive that energy from God as me being the audience member for it? Am I available as an audience member for God's communication, or am I always trying to be the communicator and try to tell God what to do? No, God, you're in the audience, I'm the one sending the light out. You know what I mean.

Scott Langdon 31:47: It's this how often am I available to know what role I'm playing? We talk about that a lot too. What if I'm a customer at, at the convenience store, or if I'm at the doctor's office, and here I am available to give this other person comfort and I'm concerned about is she going to take it the wrong way, or is she going to take it the right way? Am I going to be a weirdo or not, I don't know and then just quieting down and having the sense that just say you're sorry, she's in pain, just connect that way. So I often ask myself how available am I?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 32:23: An awful of the world, of life, is not writ large. You're not out there trying to save the world or something. It really consists often of these tiny moments, and they're tiny moments in part what you're describing, Scott. They're tiny moments where you're either paying attention to the other person as well as your own internal sense of what you're called to do in interaction with this person, and you just need to rise to the moment. The moment may be just a little moment of just saying thank you or something to the checkout person. That's a tiny moment. What could be tinier? But that's a tiny moment and yet it's not nothing. The world is made up of tiny moments.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 33:15: You might say the centuries and historical trends are made up of individual human gestures, one person to another, and then the response to those gestures. As that woman responded to you, she didn't just– One of the things I don't like is you give a compliment to a person and they discount the compliment. You know, oh no, I'm the worst, whatever. I had a friend who did that routinely. You couldn't say anything good about her though she did many good things because she would always discount it and I always thought that's a mistake. Someone says something good to you, whether you feel it's deserved or not, thank them. They've done a good thing and so you know you're right to focus on both sides of these interactions of understanding, being understood, paying attention, hopefully being paid attention to.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 34:17: Sometimes you have to demand attention If they're not paying attention. So you say to the waiter or somebody person seating people hey, we're next, oh, okay. So sometimes you have to demand attention. That's fine too. But you demand attention I guess you might put it in a loving way not to insult someone or be in your face or show dominance or superiority or something, but you do it in hey, hey, fella, we're next. You know, don't forget. And you can do it in a perfectly kind and loving way. So go to it, because that's the warp and woof of human life, is these relationships, the web of relationships, and you've got to keep them at, sometimes somebody says, like repairing spider webs with your fingers. I mean they're very subtle, the web of relationships. But if you pay attention you can repair, you can keep those little threads in good repair and vibrantly satisfying to both sides of the communication.

Scott Langdon 35:39: 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.