Questions? Comments? Text Us!

A piece of music, a friendship, a moment in nature, a struggle with suffering, a quiet stretch of contemplation, or a remark made almost in passing can become a point of contact with something larger than ourselves.

In this special episode, Jerry L. Martin considers theology as an inquiry into divine or ultimate reality. Particles are ultimate in physics. Leibniz had his monads. Jerry is interested in the kind of ultimate reality that has, or ought to have, a gravitational pull on our lives.

Religious traditions offer rich glimpses of that reality, alongside philosophy, literature, depth psychology, art, music, love, friendship, suffering, and the demands that arise unexpectedly in the course of a life. A calling may be one of those moments. So may a clue, a nudge, or something said by a friend at exactly the right time.

Spiritual discernment means learning to notice those glimmers and take them seriously without losing the ability to question them. Jerry considers projection, fantasy, groupthink, and the assumptions we bring to our own experience, while also asking what can be missed when doubt becomes the starting point for everything.

His “epistemics of trust” offers another possibility: an open mind, an open heart, and a willingness to let experience teach us. No one can take in everything. The task is more personal than that: to recognize the breadcrumbs along your own path and follow them as faithfully as you can.

Jerry L. Martin is the founder of Theology Without Walls, a cooperative, constructive, trans-religious theological project devoted to understanding ultimate reality as fully as possible. Its premise is that revelation, enlightenment, and insight into the divine are not confined to a single tradition, so theology should be willing to learn from the insights found across religious traditions.

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

***

Continue the conversation with Ultimate Questions on calling, divine guidance, and how we recognize what is ours to do:

https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

***

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Ultimate Questions Substack
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

For the 300th episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, Scott Langdon returns to the first 44 episodes and asks three questions that reach to the heart of the entire series: Who are we to God? What are we to God? And why are we to God?

The episode begins with Jerry L. Martin’s unexpected relationship with God. A lifelong agnostic and philosopher, Jerry never set out looking for God, but after praying in gratitude, he received an answer in words. From there, his conversations with God opened into questions about divine presence, human responsibility, creation, and the purpose of our lives.

Looking back at key moments from the original dramatic adaptation, Scott explores what it means when God tells Jerry that He wants to be “co-present and a co-participant” in ordinary life. The relationship is not passive or one-sided. Human response matters, and God describes His own development as being connected to the development and choices of human beings.

That leads to the second question: What are we to God? In one of the clearest answers from the book, Jerry is told that “human effort completes creation.” Our actions, relationships, choices, acts of love, failures, forgiveness, and attempts to repair what has been broken all become part of something larger. We are participants in creation, not simply observers of it.

The final question is the largest of all: Why are we to God? As Jerry wrestles with the scale of existence, God tells him that there is “a meaning to the whole.” That meaning points toward completeness, connectedness, and the movement of the many back into the one.

Episode 300 is not simply a look back. It is a return to the questions that have shaped God: An Autobiography, The Podcast from the beginning and continue to guide its exploration of God, human purpose, spiritual experience, and our place in the larger story of creation.

Related Episodes:

10. I Learn How God Reveals Himself To Humans | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher

18. God Explains Polytheism In A Way I Understand | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher

27. I Learn Human Effort Completes Creation | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher

39. Upset By God, I Stop Praying | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher

40. God Explains Infinite Worlds And Their Purpose | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

***Ultimate Questions***

Listen to the full episode and explore the question with a community of philosophers and seekers.

Join the Ultimate Questions conversation on calling and divine guidance: https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

Jerry was driving home from work when Jesus appeared to him.

What he remembers most is the love. It was so direct and overwhelming that his first reaction was resistance.

In this episode of Jerry and Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue, Jerry and Abigail talk about that encounter, what it means to receive love, and why being loved can sometimes feel exposing.

Abigail brings a very different perspective to Jesus. As a Jewish philosopher, she has never understood Jesus as necessary to a relationship with God. She talks about the difference between the historical Jesus and the Christian doctrines that came later, including Original Sin and the idea of Jesus as an intermediary.

They also take on Freud, Darwin, human nature, and the kinds of theories people absorb so deeply that they can start to feel more real than experience itself.

Abigail returns to the subject of evil, something she explored in A Good Look at Evil. She argues that evil cannot always be explained away as deprivation, misunderstanding, or psychological dysfunction. Sometimes it has to be recognized plainly for what it is.

Nietzsche, skepticism, self-trust, and cultural fashion all come into the picture as Jerry and Abigail ask what helps us stay connected to reality instead of getting lost in theories about it.

Throughout the episode, love keeps coming back as something more demanding than a feeling. It means paying attention, using judgment, taking responsibility, and trying to do right by the people in front of you.

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Confessions of a Young Philosopher

A Good Look at Evil

***Ultimate Questions***

Listen to the full episode and explore the question with a community of philosophers and seekers.

Join the Ultimate Questions conversation on calling and divine guidance: https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, A Good Look at Evil

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

What happens when love is offered, but part of you still feels unworthy of receiving it?

In this episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, Jerry L. Martin shares a deeply personal encounter with Jesus that challenged his resistance to love. Reflecting on childhood shame, fear of being seen, and the feeling that there are parts of ourselves that make us undeserving, Jerry recounts Jesus telling him to let down his defenses and accept a love that is “full, unreserved, unrelenting.”

Jerry explores why accepting love can sometimes be harder than giving it, how shame can shape the way we see ourselves, and what it might mean to believe that divine love does not depend on perfection. Rather than offering simple reassurance, the experience becomes a continuing challenge: to stop guarding against love and allow God’s love to reach the places we are most inclined to hide.

A moving reflection on Jesus, shame, self-worth, vulnerability, and learning to receive unconditional love.

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

***

Continue the conversation with Ultimate Questions on calling, divine guidance, and how we recognize what is ours to do:

https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

***

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Ultimate Questions Substack
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

Scott shares a story about his brother Lee, a simple text message, and a dream that made the timing feel almost impossible to ignore.

In this episode of What’s On Our Mind, Jerry L. Martin and Scott Langdon talk about signs, coincidences, and divine guidance in everyday life. They reflect on the ways God may come to us through other people, intuition, prayer, art, and unexpected moments that seem to carry a meaning of their own.

Scott also talks about the anxiety that can come with trying too hard to figure out what God wants, while Jerry considers the importance of becoming quiet enough to listen and notice what is already in front of us.

Are some coincidences more than coincidence? And how do we know when a passing moment, a sudden nudge, or an unexpected connection might be pointing us toward something more?

Related Episodes:

296. What's Your Spiritual Story? The Search for Truth with Alex Woollends

295. God’s Reason for Being - Radically Personal Finale

294. Romantic Love, God’s Love, and What Makes Love Real | Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue

293. Feeling God’s Love Through Other People- From God to Jerry to You

288. You’re Not Alone: How God Speaks Through Other People- From God to Jerry to You

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

***Ultimate Questions***

Listen to the full episode and explore the question with a community of philosophers and seekers.

Join the Ultimate Questions conversation on calling and divine guidance: https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

What happens when the search for truth becomes a search for God?

In this episode of What’s Your Spiritual Story?, philosopher Alex Woollends joins Jerry L. Martin to share an intellectual and deeply personal journey shaped by conscience, philosophy, spiritual discernment, and the desire to become a better person.

Alex describes growing up around religious belief while struggling with explanations that did not satisfy his questions. His search led him through libertarianism, ethical intuitionism, philosophical idealism, and the work of thinkers including Eric Voegelin, Michael Oakeshott, George Berkeley, Plato, Carl Jung, Michael Huemer, Gene Callahan, and J. Budziszewski.

Along the way, Alex began to see conscience not merely as a feeling, but as a genuine source of moral knowledge. He came to question ideology itself, explore the spiritual nature of reality, and consider whether truth must ultimately be discovered through lived experience.

That journey eventually brought him to God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. In its account of divine reality, interconnectedness, transformation, and human participation in God’s ongoing action, Alex encountered ideas that closely reflected the path he had already been following.

Together, Jerry and Alex explore the relationship between philosophy and religion, the meaning of conscience, the limits of ideology, the nature of ultimate mind, the significance of Jesus, and the possibility that becoming a better person can help make the world itself better.

This is a thoughtful conversation for anyone searching for truth, wrestling with belief, questioning inherited religion, or wondering how philosophy can become a lived spiritual path.

Join the conversation on the Ultimate Questions Substack: Does each of us have a personal calling that responds to something beyond ourselves?

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

• Radically Personal: Reflections on lived experience, divine encounter, and personal vocation, drawing on a seeker-centered approach to spirituality in a new Axial Age.
• From God to Jerry to You: Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.
• Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue: Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.
• What’s Your Spiritual Story: Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.
• What’s On Our Mind: Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.
• Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.
• The Life Wisdom Project: Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.
• What’s On Your Mind: Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

Why does God seem hidden if God wants to be known?

In the ninth and final episode of Radically Personal, philosopher Jerry L. Martin concludes his exploration of what it means for God to know each person individually and invite us into a relationship that can transform how we understand ourselves, our lives, and the world.

Jerry examines the many ways God may communicate—not only through prayer, but through dreams, intuition, conscience, beauty, love, mystical experience, and quiet promptings that can feel like our own thoughts. He asks what kind of response God seeks and considers what it means to live in alignment with the divine rather than simply follow commands.

The episode then turns to the meaning of human life. Each life may be a unique test, exploration, and sacred improvisation in which our choices, failures, suffering, love, and growth genuinely matter. God is not presented as a distant observer, but as a partner who shares in every individual triumph and setback.

The series ends with its most extraordinary idea: our transformation may be God’s very reason for being.

Explore the full Radically Personal Series and Book

Get the books: Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age | God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

*********

We continue these spiritual and philosophical conversations through Ultimate Questions, a public discussion project of Theology Without Walls on Substack.

Join the conversation and share your perspective on life’s deepest questions:
 https://ultimatequestions.substack.com

*********

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

• Radically Personal: Reflections on lived experience, divine encounter, and personal vocation, drawing on a seeker-centered approach to spirituality in a new Axial Age.
• From God to Jerry to You: Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.
• Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue: Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.
• What’s Your Spiritual Story: Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.
• What’s On Our Mind: Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.
• Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.
• The Life Wisdom Project: Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.
• What’s On Your Mind: Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Ultimate Questions Substack
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

What makes romantic love feel more powerful than reason, safer choices, or even self-preservation? And what does it mean to experience God’s love through the person who loves you?

In this intimate dialogue, Jerry and Abigail return to God’s striking instruction: “Let Abigail love you. You will feel My love through her.” Jerry reflects on why God’s love might need to become tangible through another person, while Abigail considers what it means to embody that love through presence, touch, sacrifice, and a shared life.

Abigail reflects on falling in love as an overwhelming force that resisted every attempt to explain or contain it. Not psychology. Not philosophy. Not even Husserl’s phenomenology could give her enough distance from the pull of erotic and romantic love.

Their conversation moves through desire, sacrifice, feminism, sexuality, and the difference between casual sex and a love that asks something deeper of us. Abigail recalls leaving behind an ideal life in New York, not in search of comfort or happiness, but because love itself carried an authority she could not ignore.

From the Garden of Eden to Dante, Jane Austen, the Brontës, D. H. Lawrence, Hemingway, and Dickens, Jerry and Abigail ask what modern culture may have lost when sex became detached from romance, courtship, nobility, and risk.

Can erotic love still awaken courage, devotion, and sacrifice? And can the love between two people reveal something of God that cannot be felt any other way?

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Confessions of a Young Philosopher

A Good Look at Evil

***Ultimate Questions***

Listen to the full episode and explore the question with a community of philosophers and seekers.

Join the Ultimate Questions conversation on calling and divine guidance: https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, A Good Look at Evil

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

What does it mean to feel God’s love through another person?

In this episode of From God to Jerry to You, Jerry L. Martin reflects on an early moment in his relationship with God, when he was asked to “enter My heart.” 

The request frightened him, and when he asked for help, God answered: “Let Abigail love you. Feel My love through her.”

That experience leads Jerry to explore how divine love becomes real through romantic love, family love, friendship, intimacy, tenderness, and human connection. Jerry considers the transcendent quality of love, the presence of God within our closest relationships, and the possibility that loving others is one of the deepest ways we become partners with God.

Listen for a thoughtful reflection on God’s love, spiritual intimacy, and the sacred power of loving and being loved.

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

***

Continue the conversation with Ultimate Questions on calling, divine guidance, and how we recognize what is ours to do:

https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

***

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Ultimate Questions Substack
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Questions? Comments? Text Us!

Is God a person, and what does it mean to experience God through relationships, grief, and everyday life? 

In this episode of What's On Our Mind, Jerry L. Martin and Scott Langdon explore the personal and interpersonal nature of God and consider how divine presence may appear through the people who love, guide, challenge, and remember us.

Scott reflects on the death of his close friend Vince and shares how he encountered God not by escaping grief, but by remaining present to love, memory, work, and the life directly in front of him.

Together, Jerry and Scott discuss finding God during suffering, recognizing meaning in difficult experiences, and learning to “play the scene you are in” rather than becoming trapped in what should have happened.

This moving conversation explores grief and spirituality, living in the present moment, personal calling, and the ways ordinary encounters can become expressions of divine love.

What changes when we begin treating every person not as a role or function, but as a person whose story is also being shaped by God?

Related Episodes:

291. What's Your Spiritual Story? John Thatamanil on Faith, Preaching, and Spiritual Formation

290. The Right Track: Finding God Beyond Sin and Suffering- Radically Personal

289. The Difference Between Coincidence and God | Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue

288. You’re Not Alone: How God Speaks Through Other People- From God to Jerry to You

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

***Ultimate Questions***

Listen to the full episode and explore the question with a community of philosophers and seekers.

Join the Ultimate Questions conversation on calling and divine guidance: https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected

• Share: [email protected]
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube