Author Jerry L. Martin’s book describes his journey from non-believer to believer to translator.
Imagine.
As if riding lightning, a bolt from the blue brings God’s voice to you one day.
Would you listen? Would you believe?
Jerry L. Martin did and does. Furthermore, he said that he collaborated with God on a book, “God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher” (Caladium, $24.95). A former agnostic, Martin journeyed from a status of non-believer to believer to translator within a transformation and result that brands as phenomenal.
“The first time God spoke to me,” Martin writes in the opening of the book, “I didn’t believe He existed.”
Martin was sitting with his future wife, Abigail Rosenthal, on a park bench in Washington, D.C. Suddenly, he heard a voice that she did not hear.
“I said, ‘who is this?’” Martin, a philosopher and former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, said during a recent interview by phone.
The voice replied casually, as if in conversation.
“‘I am God,’” Martin said. “The voice was as real and normal as talking to my wife on the telephone. She was writing in her journal. I told her about it. She didn’t say very much. The voice kept talking to me.”
[…]
Gradually and unsurprisingly, Martin’s life radically changed. Essentially, his professional life shifted from that of a philosopher to an author, a skeptic to a conduit for God.
“God wrote 80 percent of this book,” Martin said. “God said He wanted me to tell His story. God gave me the title.
So…”God”, who apparently is happy with that damn placeholder rather than its proper name, is as good as Leonard da Quirm* when it comes to naming things.
*Oddly enough, his creativity seems to stop when needed to give appealing names to his inventions: for example, for his machine capable of travelling submersed in a marine environment he came up with the name of “Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device”. Source.
Aaaaaaand, a bonus facepalm:
Right the first time. Also, isn’t there a diagnosis for people who hear voices in their heads? *Rhetorical question*
machintelligence:
That was my first thought. If I started hearing a voice, a clear and distinct one, I’d be damn worried, and I’d be on my way to have some tests done. I certainly wouldn’t take the ‘word’ of a voice in my head.
Second thought: someone just figured out how to make a potful of money.
I thought god already had an autobiography…? Several, in fact?
Well, yes, supposedly. That doesn’t seem to have occurred to ‘God’ or his translator.
God just likes a lot of autobiographies, I guess. Narcissistic asshole.
That was my first thought. A wannabe Joseph Smith.