GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
240. From God to Jerry to You- When Suffering Strikes: Finding Meaning, Love, and God in Hard Times
Why do good people suffer? What does it mean when pain and loss enter our lives without warning? In this profoundly moving episode of From God To Jerry To You, Jerry L. Martin shares a personal story that brings the universal question of suffering into sharp, intimate focus.
When Jerry’s wife, Abigail, experienced a series of life-threatening health crises—a broken hip, emergency surgery, and a near-fatal internal bleed—Jerry found himself grappling with what he has long called the unanswerable question: Why does a loving God allow pain?
These events tested not only his faith but his capacity for love, resilience, and presence in the face of real fear.
Drawing from his dialogues with God and his books God: An Autobiography, and Radically Personal, Jerry reflects on whether suffering has meaning, purpose, or any redeeming qualities. He discusses how caregiving became a spiritual practice and how supporting a loved one can transform pain into an expression of love in action, discovering how moments of crisis can unmask the deepest truths about our relationships and ourselves.
Listeners will hear how faith can be reshaped by hardship, why caregiving can feel both like a burden and a blessing, and how love often shows itself most clearly when everything else falls away. Whether you are spiritual but not religious, exploring your own questions about suffering and purpose, or simply interested in hearing one man’s honest story of struggle and faith, this episode offers insight and encouragement.
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.
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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. Episode 240.
Scott Langdon 01:07: Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Langdon and Jerry returns this week with a very personal and heartfelt look at suffering with his very latest offering in our series From God To Jerry To You. The question of suffering, and why a righteous God would even allow it, has been at the heart of much debate and discussion about who God is and what God cares about for many centuries. In this episode, Jerry takes suffering out of the theoretical and theological and brings it down to earth in a way that really hits home, his home. Abigail, has been through much in recent weeks and that means Jerry has too, and that also means God has been in the midst of it all. Here now is Jerry Martin. He tells it best. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 02:00: The challenges we have in life are not matters of high theory. They're situational, so close you can touch them with your hands. Minutes before we were to speak at a theological school in Princeton, Abigail fell and broke her hip. The next day she underwent surgery. As I wrote to a friend, I have been overwhelmed since the May 2nd mishap.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 02:31: We had a second episode. After being released from acute rehab while at home doing exercises with helpers, Abigail was suddenly chilled and extremely weak. They measured her blood pressure 60/40. I've never heard of one so low. There was another drama, which I will spare you, that delayed our calling 911, but when we did, they could barely believe that she was sitting up, able to talk to them. Had we not called them, she would now be dead. Arriving at the emergency room, doctors immediately put in two pints of blood and another pint a day or two later. They discovered that she was bleeding from a large ulcer, a hole in her stomach. They cauterized it. That didn't quite work, so they cauterized it again. She's now at home, has resumed the physical exercises expected to last for many weeks.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 03:38: For me, the impact has been as much emotional as being somewhat run ragged. When I fell in love, I was aware that I had a new vulnerability. I had, in previous years, learned to live alone after a divorce, that can be a relief. But having found my true love, it would be infinitely harder to go back to life alone. That concern has taken the stuffing out of me, so I wrote my friend. In the hospital, Abigail asked the nurses, who were very good at explaining things, tell me, why do bad things happen to good people? They smiled and shook their heads. Years ago she had asked her friend, the Jewish philosopher Michael Wischogrod, his answer: Our people are working on it and should have something ready for publication soon.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 04:49: At various points in my dialogues with God, the why of pain and suffering came up. I was given bits and pieces of a possible answer, but never anything that satisfied me. In my book, Radically Personal, I call it the unanswerable question. Of course answers have been given by various great thinkers. Their answers are all top-down in terms of the basic structure of the world conceived, for example, as the best of all possible worlds, or in terms of an unknowable divine plan. Pain is not real, some say. But God told me pain is as bad as the people who turn against God because of it, say it is. No denial there. So why pain? Why suffering? Let's try looking at the question from the bottom up instead of top down. We can look at individual episodes and see how we can best understand them.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 05:54: When I ask in prayer, “Lord, does suffering have any purpose or meaning,” I was told: Think about your own times of physical suffering in the hospital, for example, the shots, the clumsy aid, the itch, the nurse about urinating. Those were full of growth. In the God book, I recall these events being shuffled into an ambulance, the sirens, intensive care, the surgery. The whole ordeal left me feeling fragile, as if I were made of spun glass, a sharp tap and I would shatter. God comments: These moments were not empty suffering. They even had to do with leading you to Me. “How so, Lord?” They focused your attention, which led you to open your heart fully, God told me, to Abigail, because you realized how precious this love was, and it led to your prayer to serve God.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 07:13: How do our recent troubles look in that light? They seem to have few redeeming features. However, Abigail reports that they led to an unexpected unmasking of her love for me. For both of us, finding true love was an overwhelming experience, and for her it was almost more than her sensitive self could take in. She shielded herself from its impact. Living through these life-threatening events together has brought those deep feelings to the surface. She loves me, you might say, more than ever. As Abigail explains it, the fracture plus near-death encounter had to be suffered without cover-ups or evasions of any kind. The combined experiences were too dangerous for evasions. As a result, it's the last thing I would have expected, they gave me no hiding place from joy. In fact, she reports I am happier now than I was before all this happened.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 08:39: From my side, I have observed with deep admiration and respect Abigail's remarkable vitality even in the worst moments, not so much a willful slogging as a lighthearted buoyancy. She's devoid of the spirits of resignation and self-pity. Instead, with remarkable self-discipline, she follows the demanding course of therapy that consumes her days. For me, as her husband and sometime caregiver, these virtues are of incalculable value. Abigail worries about being a burden to me, but that's the farthest thing from my heart. I am happy to share the experience with her. I knew from the first that sometimes one of us would need to take care of the other. In fact, oddly enough, the opportunity to be helpful is a blessing. It allows my love to be not just felt but to be enacted.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin 09:45: There's a theological analog to love in action. The world is full of tasks for which God needs our help. As Abigail says, God can't mail a letter. In fact, the heavy lifting of life is necessarily right here on earth to be done by us. God doesn't write the script. We write it together. Abigail and I are writing our script together, hand in hand, in a hazardous and resistant world. Would I prefer that she have unfallable and unbreakable limbs? Sure. But if we ask, has our suffering been meaningless? Well, no, that would be an overstatement. Do these elements of mutual discovery make the pain a net plus? Not in the sense that we would choose it, but it may well be that even difficult times add to the meaning and purpose of life in what might even be called a redemptive way.
Scott Langdon 11:23: 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.