43. The Role Of Love Amongst Evil | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher [Part 43]

“The ultimate triumph over evil and incompleteness is to be in tune with the God inside you and to express that divine love to others.”

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

Scott Langdon [00:00:04] This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. A dramatic adaptation 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 43.

Dramatic Adaptation 

Jerry L. Martin - voiced by Scott Langdon

The Voice of God - voiced by Jerry L. Martin, who heard the voice

Jerry L. Martin [00:01:15] Meyer likens the Kingdom of God to a field of force. 

Voice of God [00:01:22] Yes, that is good- apt. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:01:29] I thought you said it had to do with divine presence. 

Voice of God [00:01:33] It is presence of a particular kind, the presence of divine authority. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:01:47] I expected you to say something more dynamic like force or energy. 

Voice of God [00:01:53] The divine look is itself force. I see how everything is and relate to it in terms of its rightness or fittingness or fulfillment or lack thereof. And I am most fully present if it is right and less so if it is not. This is what divine judgment is. You might call it my authoritative smile or frown. Like a king's smile or frown at court, My presence has authority and force, not the force of making people react in a certain way, but the ontological force of divine presence. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:02:39] Ontological here seems to mean not a causal relation of A making B happen, but the force of redefining a situation or state of being. Creating, as Meyer put it, a new field of force. I find this difficult to track, Lord. Everything that matters, suffering the struggle of right against wrong, the teleology, the fulfillment occur on the historical or horizontal plane of before and after. But they are also present in the vertical dimension where everything is now?

Voice of God [00:03:14] I didn't say it was all now. The concept of now belongs to the horizontal sequence. But there is another respect, another angle of vision in which they are all simultaneous, therefore accessible at any given moment. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:03:33] So the action is still temporal and that is real. 

Voice of God [00:03:37] Surely. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:03:39] So there is some sense in which moments of our lives seen from above in the vertical perspective are pointing upward or reaching toward. If it's not a reaching to merge, it must be a reaching for the divine presence. 

Voice of God [00:03:53] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:03:55] It sounds as if the connection comes more from below, as if we first have to show our faces to God. 

Voice of God [00:04:01] Okay. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:04:03] Like the little flower Saint Therese. It's as if we have to turn toward God and soak up His presence, like a flower receiving the sun. 

Voice of God [00:04:13] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:04:15] And the main challenge is to let God in. 

Voice of God [00:04:18] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:04:37] We experience our lives in the horizontal dimension, but you see our lives in the simultaneity of it's all happening at once like a great chorus and somehow are being fulfilled. 

Voice of God [00:04:49] The fulfillment is the drawing upward. There is not some perfect moment hidden there that makes it all okay. The symphony of everything reaching up toward my glowing presence is the fulfillment. The triumph over evil, over negativity, over the void. Can you relate to that? What makes a symphony great or a great novel or drama? It is not one perfect moment, even less is it the ending? It is the totality making a masterful hold. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:05:26] I'm afraid that all this leads to the idea that evil is an essential part of the whole. The way dissonance is in music and Lady Macbeth is in the play. For me, that is a world turned upside down. 

Voice of God [00:05:39] Yes, I know-- and I sympathize with why you are uncomfortable-- but it is not that God is beyond good and evil. We have already discussed that I have to cope with my own dark or incomplete side. The fight for good over evil in the world and in the heart of each individual is crucial. That is the plane of action. It is the pivot on which turns the saving or healing or fulfillment of the world and of me. And for this, as I have said, I need human partners. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:06:17] Why does the world have to be healed? Why didn't you make it perfect? 

Voice of God [00:06:22] Because to be a world is to be material, and to be material is to be flawed and resistant. And to be a person is to be an actual personality, an individual with a history with particular characteristics, and to have strengths and weaknesses. That is precisely the drama of life, the basic ontological process of the world. That is what it is all about. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:06:54] Doesn't that mean that evil is actually a part of your overall plan? 

Voice of God [00:06:59] You need to relax your preconceptions of this subject. The fact that evil has a place in the world is not the same as saying it does not matter or is an illusion or anything like that. In fact, in a sense, nothing else does matter. Everything, even loving me or my loving you has this struggle and its right outcome as a reference point. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:07:26] But it sounds as if Lady Macbeth is to be praised when she talks her husband into murder because she is fulfilling the divine purpose. 

Voice of God [00:07:34] No, it's as if you're not listening to me. It is necessary to defeat or overcome Lady Macbeth and one's own murderous instincts. That's what life -- the whole world -- is about. But it is also necessary to live in a world and with a self in which murderous instincts are a force and being a force sometimes prevail. To conclude that murder is part of God's plan is to confuse the two different levels of analysis. I explained this already. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:08:09] So you would condemn Lady Macbeth? 

Voice of God [00:08:12] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:08:13] But still love her? 

Voice of God [00:08:15] Of course. When to condemn and when to love are two different questions. Sometimes the evil that bothers you the most is that perpetrated by someone you love. All evil is like that for me. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:09:02] Suddenly the pieces of the impossible puzzle snapped into place. I was reading Jewish scholar Jon Levenson's book, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, based on his reading of the Old Testament. Lord, the things he says fit exactly what you've been telling me. 

Voice of God [00:09:32] Yes, that's right. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:09:34] 1. Acts of obedience to the commandments, Mitzvot, make the eschaton, the fulfillment, in New Testament language the Kingdom of God, happen right now? 

Voice of God [00:09:45] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:09:47] 2. The struggle of order versus chaos, good versus evil, occurs up and down the levels of the cosmos. 

Voice of God [00:09:55] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:09:57] 3. There is a negative or incomplete side to God. 

Voice of God [00:10:01] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:10:03] 4. Human effort or partnership is essential to, or at least a key part of, the overcoming of incompleteness. 

Voice of God [00:10:11] Yes, it is. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:10:14] 5. Faith in God means faith in His ultimate, not proximate goodness. At the end time or in the vertical dimension, or just in the final analysis, God is good and the evil is conquered. But at the present time, or in the horizontal dimension, or looking at less than the full picture, God and the world are both works in progress. 

Voice of God [00:10:41] Correct. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:10:42] 6. From the vertical view, both the struggle and the victory are present now. 

Voice of God [00:10:48] The last is okay if you remember that those time words can be misleading.

Jerry L. Martin [00:10:53] In a similar way, both the battle and the final victory are present throughout the entire vertical spire of all times seen from above or from God's perspective. 

Voice of God [00:11:05] Yes, that's right. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:11:07] It's like a point of view. You can look at events or time slices horizontally or vertically, and neither displaces or is superior to the other. 

Voice of God [00:11:18] Yes, that's important. Just because there is a vertical or simultaneous dimension does not make the horizontal, the temporal, less real or less important. Look at Jesus again in this light. The Kingdom of God is here, and while Jesus has a cosmic role, he is not just present in first century Palestine. His presence is a cosmic event. He was and is more fully me than any other human being has ever been. So he represents -- is -- My full presence in and to the world. And it's a loving presence. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:12:04] So by being fully God, Jesus brings God's full presence into the world. And bringing God's full presence into the world is a cosmic event connected with the arrival of the Kingdom of God. And it's a loving presence. Is it also a fighting presence? 

Voice of God [00:12:25] Very much so. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:12:27] Do love and the conflict with evil, inner and outer, go together?

Voice of God [00:12:33] Of course. You do not love the world unless you fight the evil in it. And love is itself an instrument in that fight. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:12:44] And Jesus?

Voice of God [00:12:46] What do you take his mission to be? 

Jerry L. Martin [00:12:49] There, I'm quite puzzled. To bring a message of love. To embody love. 

Voice of God [00:12:55] And the kingdom.

Jerry L. Martin [00:12:57] The kingdom of love. 

Voice of God [00:12:59] Just love?

Jerry L. Martin [00:13:01] Well, of divine love. As well as the divine in us loving one another. 

Voice of God [00:13:07] Yes. Now you're getting somewhere. The contrast is not love versus war, both are necessary. The ultimate triumph over evil and incompleteness is to be in tune with the God inside you and to express that divine love to others. That is not incompatible with your having to fight them. These are two separate issues. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:13:57] What about Jesus's overall role? Is it for his time and place only or for the whole world and all times? 

Voice of God [00:14:06] What do you think? 

Jerry L. Martin [00:14:08] Well, maybe the contrast is not valid. Perhaps every action by every person is for both. One is moving one's own scene and also contributing to the divine turning or redemption of the whole vertical spire. 

Voice of God [00:14:23] Yes, exactly. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:14:26] Lord, it's still puzzling. If God is in everything and is everything, then how can some people like Jesus be more God filled than others? It occurs to me, Lord, that I have a case study of the question in myself. The difference between my God filled moments when I am in God or God is in me, and other moments when I am less close to God. 

Voice of God [00:14:54] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:14:56] The analogy that comes to mind is when a person is more himself or more herself. I was thinking of the evening before our wedding. Abigail was apprehensive about losing the autonomy and identity she had as a single professional, indeed professorial woman, and becoming Mrs. Somebody-Else. Who will I be? It was as much accusation as question. "You will be more yourself than ever," I replied. I somehow knew that, and I think today she would agree. In my experience of Jesus, his role is mainly that of a spiritual helper trying to open my heart to love and to God. But he also seems to stand in for God. For example, I can pray to him, and supposedly it's as good as praying to God. 

Voice of God [00:16:08] Of course, you can pray to anyone with the right spirit and I will hear your prayer. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:16:15] One of the Hindu texts says that if you address a sincere prayer to the wrong God, it will automatically go to the appropriate God. So Jesus's impact is not ontological, but more like the master, teacher and guide. 

Voice of God [00:16:33] It is both. He is like the master switch. He does not just point you toward contact with me. He achieves it, embodies it. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:16:45] In addition to being God filled. Jesus had a particular function, a saving function?

Voice of God [00:16:52] Don't lapse into standard Christian language. It will just entangle or confuse you. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:16:57] Well, Lord, I'm getting nowhere. 

Voice of God [00:17:00] No, you're getting somewhere. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:02] I can understand the way in which any good person contributes to the order of the world and reflects or interacts with your divinity. But--

Voice of God [00:17:11] If you can understand that, you can understand Jesus. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:16] He is in some way a connector, or the connector. 

Voice of God [00:17:20] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:22] Is it that he transmits divine energy? 

Voice of God [00:17:26] Not so much that. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:27] A conduit? 

Voice of God [00:17:29] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:30] A high conductivity conduit. 

Voice of God [00:17:33] Yes, that's right. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:35] He is a superconducting medium, means, or intermediary for people to relate to God. 

Voice of God [00:17:42] Yes. Not just people, but the world. Remember, I relate to everything, including the atoms. He helps connect me to it all. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:54] Yes, I see. Jesus as conduit is cosmic, ontological and simultaneous, and connects to the whole across all times. 

Voice of God [00:18:05] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:18:06] Well, then, back to the difference between the respect in which you are the world and the respect in which you need to connect to the world. 

Voice of God [00:18:15] Don't you see the side of me that is self needs to connect to the side of me that is other. These are real differences, self and other, not just an illusion. The difference needs to be real and to remain real, hence without merging. But the two sides also need to be related, connected. In human beings, the connection is through love. For matter, it is through something analogous to love. Forces. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:18:59] So Jesus is a, or the, conduit or connector to the Victory Level, to the Kingdom of God. 

Voice of God [00:19:11] Yes. 

Scott Langdon [00:19:22] Thank you for listening to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. The words of God are spoken by Jerry L. Martin, who heard the voice. He can be reached at godanautobiography.com. The narration and dialogue of Mr. Martin are spoken by Scott Langdon, who also edited, mixed and engineered this episode. He can be reached at thescottlangdon.com. You can read the original true story in the book from which this podcast was adapted God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin, available now at amazon.com, and always at godanautobiography.com. Pick up your own copy today.