2. I Worry What My Wife Will Say | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher [Part 2]

“Listen to me, even when I whisper.”  

Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. A dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

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

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Transcript

GOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY - THE PODCAST

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

__________

EPISODE TWO - Where I worry, what will my wife say?

JLM

The historian Paul Johnson writes in his spiritual memoir about having once called the prime minister's office when, instead of getting the secretary's secretary, the prime minister herself answered. "It happened to me once with a prime minister," Johnson writes. "But with God it happens all the time."

JLM

I don't know if Johnson's experience is like mine, but from the day God spoke to me, when I prayed, I almost always received a verbal response, often with significant guidance. At first, it just seemed an oddity that went too much against my agnostic worldview to be taken seriously. 

I would tell Abigail about these odd experiences. While I always disdained paranormal reports, near-death experiences and the like, she did not. I assumed she put the voice in that category. I didn't really know, because usually she just took in what I told her and didn't say much. 

ABIGAIL

I thought you were engaged in a sensitive communication,

JLM

she would later explain, 

ABIGAIL

and I did not want to create static.

JLM

Then, one day, she did speak up. 

ABIGAIL

Are you going to take the voice seriously, or is this just entertainment?

JLM

She had put her finger on the contradiction I was living. The voice was too real and benign and authoritative to ignore. Yet I could not imagine acting on it. Well, actually, I could and did act on it, but without taking it seriously. I would be told to do this or that. Sometimes that guidance was about some matter facing me that day, and following the guidance usually worked out pretty well.

Other times I received arbitrary directives which, since harmless, I followed. For example, one morning Abigail and I had just sat down to breakfast when I was told, 

GOD

Don't eat.

JLM

So I just sat there for maybe fifteen minutes or twenty minutes. 

GOD

You can eat now.

JLM

I always did as I was told, but it was still more like a game of Captain-may-I than a life imperative. I was not ready to answer Abigail's question.

JLM

I read American philosopher William James's classic essay "The Will to Believe." An influential British scientist had declared, as a principle of ethics of belief, "It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." The scientist had religion in his crosshairs. 

James responded that there are some beliefs that, if you accept them, will shape your whole life. And shape it in a different way if you do not. You cannot remain neutral.; yet evidence is inconclusive either way. You just have to decide which belief you would rather live your life with. 

Either I follow the voice or I don't. If I follow the voice and it is not divine, what is the worst that can happen? Well, I would be a fool, maybe a laughingstock, and would say goodbye to an excellent career. But if I decide not to follow the voice and it is divine, then I would have missed my purpose in this life. 

What if Moses had done that? Or George Fox, the founder of the Quakers? The Old Testament is filled with people called by God, who at first demur and only reluctantly heed the call. Even Moses worries ("Suppose they do not believe me") and feels inadequate to the task ("I have never been eloquent...I am slow of speech and slow of tongue").

I am not comparing myself to these great religious leaders, but all of us in our lives face moments when we have to decide whether to respond to a certain call--be it the call of duty or service or simply, as Joseph Campbell puts it, to "follow your bliss" -- rather than continue a more conventional or comfortable course. If I had to live with one worst-case scenario or the other, I could live with being a fool, if that's what it came to, but I could not live with having refused God's call. 

Making a decision to believe is not quite the same as accepting that belief in your bones. It is more like the first step toward believing. My philosophy still had no place for God--especially for a God who talks to  me. Outside the Bible, who talks to God? The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James helped answer this question.

James was a man of science but, for him, empiricism did not mean restricting our understanding to what science registers. He looked without prejudice at all kinds of human experience. He talked about famous people such as George Fox as well as ordinary people who had received answers to prayer or psychic intuitions or visitations from recently departed family members. My experience was not as out of line as I had thought. I decided to follow the voice and see where it would lead me. 

JLM

It seemed to be a training in obedience. One day, after breakfast at a little cafe in Alexandria, I was told, 

GOD

Don't go to work.

JERRY

Lord, do you know we have to get that grant proposal in today? 

GOD

Of course.

JLM

My organization lived on grant money. But the voice said not to go in. What to do? Well, the sky was not going to fall if the proposal went in the following day. I would go back to my apartment. As I turned on the ignition, the voice spoke again.

GOD

You can go to work now.

JLM

I remember that incident because something was at stake, but usually I was told to do something trivial, such as listen to a different radio station or sit in a different chair. As these arbitrary commands continued--mounted as it seemed--Abigail expressed concern. This sounded more like boot camp than spiritual guidance. 

ABIGAIL

Maybe you shouldn't do everything you’re told? Maybe you should use your intelligence.

JLM

I was puzzled. Was I supposed to second-guess God? 

The next day I stopped at a Borders bookstore near Pentagon City. On the way out, I felt guided to move in a particular direction, like a dowser following his stick: first straight ahead, next to the right, then straight ahead, now stop. I was at the religion section. I felt guided down to the third shelf on the right, and finally to a particular book. 

It was a book I never would have chosen on my own: John Calvin's commentary on the Gospel of John. I know that Calvin is one of the great theologians of the modern era, but I had an impression of him as stern and rigid.

I picked up the book and it opened to John 8:28, where Jesus says, "I do nothing on my own." Calvin explains that "Christ wants to prove that he does nothing without the Father's command...He depends entirely on his will and serves him sincerely... He does not just partially obey God, but is entirely and without exception devoted to his obedience." It was a lesson in obedience. 

I had been led to one other passage in Calvin's commentary. John 9:4 says, "We must work the work of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work." 

Calvin comments, "As soon as God enlightens us by calling us, we must not delay, in case the opportunity is lost."

JLM

I began to take the prayers more seriously and started writing some of them down. Sometimes the voice would speak to me even when I was not praying. 

One day I was driving to New York, running behind schedule. Along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, I kept hearing a faint sound, not much more than a gnat in the ear, and I kept trying to "brush it away." But it was persistent, and so I finally paid attention. It was the voice.

GOD

Listen to Me--even when I whisper. 

JLM

I looked around and tried to see Him, but nothing registered. I wondered why God is so irritatingly elusive. 

GOD

You see me all the time.

JLM

Martin Buber talks about saying Thou to nature, and that was about as close as I could get too seeing God. 

JERRY

If you want to be so coy, God, why do you bother to get our attention at all? How could our response possibly matter to you?

GOD

It is very important. It is at the heart of my being.

JLM

Human recognition is at the heart of God's being? I found that intriguing, but it only heightened the paradox of an invisible God who wants to been seen.

(The End)