GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
271. What’s Your Spiritual Story: Scott’s Journey from Certainty to Love
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In Episode 271 of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, host Scott Langdon shares his personal spiritual journey — from Lutheran liturgy and evangelical certainty to faith deconstruction, mental health challenges, and a renewed understanding of God as love.
Raised in the church and later immersed in evangelical Christianity, Scott’s faith was shaped by music, scripture, and sacred ritual. But a pivotal moment — being baptized again and feeling nothing — marked the beginning of a profound spiritual transformation. Through theater, bipolar diagnosis, marriage, loss, and deep questioning, Scott’s understanding of God shifted from external authority to lived experience.
What happens when you “give up God” and begin praying to love instead? Can faith survive doubt, silence, and reinvention?
God: An Autobiography, The Podcast explores spiritual experience through personal stories, philosophical reflection, and dramatic readings from the book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. Each episode invites listeners to consider their own spiritual story and the possibility that divine encounter is rooted in lived experience.
If you’ve wrestled with belief, deconstruction, or the meaning of love and faith — this episode is for you.
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
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Scott Langdon [ 00:00:17,220 ] 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.
Scott Langdon [ 00:00:58,960 ] Episode 271: Hello, and welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm Scott Langdon, and I've been the creative director and host of this podcast since we came up with the idea almost six years ago exactly. We've had some wonderful interviews so far in our What's Your Spiritual Story series. And on this edition, I'm honored to say Jerry interviews me.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:01:35,880 ] I hesitated when he first asked me because I didn't think I could offer anything new. Maybe I haven't. But looking from the beginning at my life's path and examining my journey with God has been heart-opening for me. And I'm grateful. Here’s Jerry. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:02:02,070 ] Well, welcome, Scott Langdon. I see you often because we work together on the God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. Podcast, and periodically we do What's on Our Minds, where we share, what's on our minds, what thoughts are going. Through our heads, especially with regard to some recent episodes that we've aired. And I know people I've certainly heard and are listening— Listeners have heard parts of your spiritual story just as they come up, serendipity and conversation around this or that topic. But we've never heard your story. Story, as a lifelong story, you know, your own pilgrim's progress, you might say, where you started and where you went next and where you went next. And so let's start with where you grew up. You know, let's get the location established. Where did you grow up?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:03:00,050 ] Start at the very beginning, huh?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:03:01,610 ] Yeah, we start at the beginning.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:03:03,270 ] Very good place to start, they say.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:03:07,090 ] Yeah, I was born in Media, Pennsylvania, in the Media Hospital, when my parents were living.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:03:15,020 ] In Essington, Pennsylvania, which is right by the Philadelphia airport. Right along the Delaware River there as it goes. It starts to stretch out from east to west.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:03:27,510 ] And, Yeah, I was born there and we lived there. In Essington, in that area, and my... Mom grew up in the house that she was born in. Oh, really? Yeah. And when my dad was four.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:03:46,060 ] His family moved across the street from my mom, and he grew up in that house.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:03:53,410 ] And my grandparents, my maternal grandparents, still lived in the same house all the way through the rest of their lives.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:04:00,380 ] And. When I was in Second grade, we moved into the house that my dad grew up in. So my dad and mom moved us into that house. And so I lived across the street from my grandparents and in the house that my dad grew up in for a couple of years before we moved into South Jersey, which would be my middle school, later elementary, middle school, and then high school years.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:04:26,470 ] The beginning of my spiritual story really begins there.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:04:30,860 ] In Essington at St. John's Lutheran Church.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:04:36,340 ] It was where my... Mother was christened, my... Father was christened, baptized there.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:04:44,510 ] And it's where my grandmother... you know, went until. She didn't, you know, at the end of her life.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:04:53,350 ] It was a very influential time.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:04:57,470 ] So that was like the... the 70s, the mid-70s. Now, we're coming up on 50 years since the Bicentennial, and we were living right there during the Bicentennial. I remember all of that part. But back in those days... the churches were much more full. Then the mainline churches, we call them now. I didn't know anything about that. I just know, you know, that my cousins went to the Catholic church. And we went to the Lutheran church.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:05:27,180 ] And my grandmother. Was a Catholic growing up and Lutheranism became where she found her tradition of choice, and that's where we were. So for me, I don't know where the...
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:05:43,940 ] beginning begins but I know, going to as a child, that your family was going to church right. So you started saying at the age of two, well, at the age of two, I guess you're being carted off to church already, right? It's kind of familiar to you from... your whole life long, you might say. Yeah.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:06:06,960 ] And it resonated with you in some way.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:06:10,810 ] It did, and I don't know what, you know... Where the.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:06:15,780 ] initial Resonance came from but I think it really had to do with A couple of Things. First, the music.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:06:27,930 ] That the hymns, the congregational singing, but then also the choir singing.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:06:34,380 ] And.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:06:35,900 ] The kind of hymns that they were.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:06:39,970 ] And then I think the second thing was... The the theater of it all.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:06:45,750 ] And I don't mean in terms of the show. I just mean that. Everything was taken very seriously.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:06:52,590 ] You know, the pastor had a role to play and the acolytes had their role to play and they were wearing costumes that were important to wear these robes it meant something and There was a call and response in the, you know, was printed right there in the bulletin that the, you know, the minister would say the things in italics and then in the bold. That would be the response of the congregation. And, you know, we were taught.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:07:17,770 ] Really I was taught really young. About the ceremony of the whole thing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:07:23,610 ] Yeah.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:07:24,450 ] You know, so there was, you know, the beginning, the prelude. Of the organ and then the choir had a little choir prelude. And then there was a march in. And the pastor had a welcome. And then the first scripture, I mean, it was all, it was this, it was a program.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:07:38,190 ] Yeah, it was a whole program, and it all made sense. All the things you're describing sort of make sense, don't they? The welcome, and even that responsive call and response thing, which is very participatory. You know, the whole congregation engaged in that, and that makes sense.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:07:56,210 ] Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:07:57,590 ] And there was, there was a... a feeling of importance and reverence.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:08:06,860 ] Mm-hmm.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:08:07,580 ] I remember very distinctly there is a... painting above the altar.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:08:14,960 ] So if you're in the congregation and you're looking up the altar, at the very back, there was this really big painting.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:08:21,930 ] And I can't remember the... the painter right now, but he... portrayed Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. And it's Jesus.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:08:33,140 ] a kind of praying on this rock, and you can see in the background the apostles are sleeping, and there's this beam of light shining right down on Jesus' head. You know, I didn't know anything about this then, but admittedly, he's very European looking. He looked a lot like me, you know, a lot like the founding fathers' portraits, that kind of thing. But I didn't— I knew, and I think I've talked about this before, I knew that wasn't a portrait of Jesus. Like, Jesus did not sit for that portrait. This is not like a photo. Right, I got that at a very early age.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:09:08,610 ] It's not an attempt to show what Jesus actually looked like. Right, right. It's showing a scene. And the feeling of the scene, it was a very intense scene, right? In Gethsemane. And so it's showing that sense of the scene.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:09:25,070 ] Yeah. Yeah. And it just, it made me want to take everything really seriously. You know, I just felt like. That was a work of art that was important, and that's why it was there. And the pastor wore his robes and the acolyte wore their robes. And we all sang together at a certain time. Like it all meant something very important.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:09:48,980 ] And, So that was where we were. And then, when I was in fourth grade, we moved into southern New Jersey, only about 45 minutes away, straight east from South Philadelphia there where we were. A completely different type of situation we were in, you know, at the time, South Jersey was really, you know, farmland. I mean, the house we built on an acre was, you know, cut out of the forest, the Pinelands forest, you know? Yeah. So it was very, my mom especially wanted to be in or... rural type of situation. And yet, close enough to the urban, that we could, you know, do things or whatever. But so it was really ideal type of situation.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:10:33,630 ] During that time, we found, the Church of Christ, so a very... much more, evangelical.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:10:45,360 ] type of non-denominational.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:10:48,420 ] situation. And it appealed to my mother specifically.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:10:53,160 ] Because my mother always had this, just tell me what to do.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:10:58,420 ] And I'll do it. You know, just like, you know, God. What is your plan for my life? Just, she always seemed to be searching so deeply, and dad too, but specifically mom. And, you know, if you'll just tell me what to do, I'll do it, but just give me the sign, you know. And so when... My brother Dan, I have two younger brothers. My brother Dan is two years and almost three years younger than me, and then my brother Lee is four and a half years younger than I am. And my brother Dan, when he was playing baseball in a little league, he was. And the catcher became good friends. His name was Amos Jones. And it turns out that Larry Jones, his father, was the minister at the Church of Christ in Tabernacle, where we lived, Tabernacle, New Jersey. And that's where they were playing baseball. And so, the more my mom and... Mrs. Jones talked. During the games and stuff like that, you know, they got to know each other and they're, you know, those great people. So they invited our family to church.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:04,710 ] So I was... the summer of my seventh grade year, I think.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:11,510 ] And so... They.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:14,450 ] We started to go there.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:16,890 ] And then... My mom and dad.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:20,980 ] started studying the Bible with. Larry Jones and Mrs. Jones, so the pastor and his wife.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:27,960 ] And I was going to the youth group and things.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:31,570 ] And what we got was everything that we had been doing.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:36,640 ] With the Lutheran Church and everything else, it was wrong.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:41,020 ] Uh-oh. And that we had to... get right with God.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:12:45,450 ] Yeah, yeah.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:12:47,490 ] That was difficult for my mom because, you know, she was born and raised as a Lutheran. And now that put my grandmother's soul in jeopardy and all the other things. What? What do we do? And it was interesting because this line of.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:13:04,870 ] like a saying that used to kind of make me laugh.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:13:09,270 ] We'd say, 'You know, there is no gray area in the Bible. The Bible is in black and white.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:13:16,520 ] Okay.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:13:16,800 ] All you have to do is open it and see it's in black and white. It's black and white. Yeah. And. I wasn't, I didn't know.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:13:26,270 ] It didn't feel right.'
Scott Langdon
[ 00:13:28,290 ] But as a middle schooler, an eighth grader, I didn't have any ability to really question that yet.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:13:35,430 ] Uh-huh.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:13:36,610 ] And my mother and father, but my mother specifically, who was, you know, telling me what to do. And they say, 'Yeah, well, okay, we have to do A, B, C, D, E.' So there it is. And so.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:13:48,470 ] My mom, okay, well, let's do that. It led to... More study. And after the study, the conclusion, which... has to be the obvious conclusion is that you need to be baptized.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:14:00,990 ] Again.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:14:02,380 ] And by baptized, we mean immersed fully underneath the water. Like if I don't get all of my body and then we have to do it again because we have to get all the way under. Yeah. And. My parents. I was out at a youth group function and my parents.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:14:19,300 ] decided on a Sunday night after a study session that they were going to get baptized. Why delay? I mean, goodness. You could drop dead at any moment, but let's get this done. So they got baptized. So when we got back to the church building with the youth group and I saw that my parents, you know, had gotten baptized.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:14:38,610 ] And it was like, All eyes on me.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:14:42,270 ] Is this something you want to do? And I said, well, you know, and I had been studying too with the youth group and then private. And yeah, let's, I mean, let's do this. Let's do it. Yeah, that feels great. Everybody's here. Here's the family. Let's do it. And so the pastor, actually, I think my dad, yeah, my father baptized me.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:00,160 ] Okay.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:02,040 ] And when I got up out of the water, I was kind of terrified.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:09,810 ] Because I didn't feel any difference.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:15:13,290 ] Yeah.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:14,250 ] And the problem was, and, you know, I realize this is all kind of looking backwards on things and being able to realize things years later. At the time, let's go back to the Lutheran Church. And when I was... when I was seven, eight years old and singing in the children's choir.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:32,960 ] And listening to that music and participating in the ceremony and all of those other things.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:39,160 ] I never had, there was never a question. Of whether or not God existed.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:15:44,640 ] Right.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:45,020 ] And whether or not God was.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:47,810 ] For everyone. I had Jewish friends. I had, it just. You were over here and we're over here.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:15:54,380 ] This is how. God comes to me. I mean, Obviously, as an eight-year-old, I couldn't articulate that, but I know I could. Tell you God was present in the church. God was present in the forest, in the... in the baseball diamond. Like I, I, he was everywhere. Like I just didn't. Understand.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:16:13,080 ] Separation. But then when we got to the Church of Christ and there was this, oh, you've been doing it wrong.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:16:20,150 ] That really. struck me because, okay, well, if I've been doing it wrong, Let's do it right then. Well, you have to get baptized. And so, when I got baptized, and I came up, and I thought, 'Well, now what?'
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:16:33,780 ] That's scary.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:16:35,770 ] I mean, you're supposed to cross a big line. Before, God had been everywhere. But now it turns out, well, not if you're doing things wrong, so you got to do them right. And that includes this baptism. And so you think, 'Okay, now I'm going to cross the line and move into the... true godly realm.' But you come out, you feel nothing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:16:57,540 ] And this whole idea of... Everything's got to be done one way, and that even description of baptism, that it's got to be entire. If you're not totally submerged, you'd have to do it again because it wasn't done right. So you haven't crossed the line into the godly area. And there you are— as a still quite young kid.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:17:23,660 ] Yeah, so now here I am in middle school and then going into high school and... the theater started to really take hold.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:17:32,270 ] And. You mean the theater of the church? Well, the theater of my... acting.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:17:40,020 ] Oh, you're acting. Uh-huh.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:17:42,680 ] Because there was kind of a parallel movement. in my life. And the parallel movement is sort of two things happening at the same time. We're going to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, being with the youth group. Doing youth group activities, you know, on the weekend or whatever.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:18:00,010 ] And kind of going on this track of... how God is, how God works, how God looks, and where God isn't and where God is.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:18:13,170 ] And then this. Other sort of side— this other part of the parallel— which was finding God, even though I don't know if I would have said it that way at the time, but finding God in becoming other people.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:18:31,920 ] By playing other people.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:18:33,420 ] Were you already in school plays or something, or just in high school?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:18:37,640 ] Well, I had been doing theater since those early days. So around the same time that I'd been singing in the children's choir, I'd also do other things, secular plays.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:18:49,590 ] Uh, concerts and I did a lot of singing as a boy soprano as a young person and so by the time I got to... you know, middle school and was doing the school plays and things. By the time I got to high school, I ran with a group of friends who were deeply into theater. We had a really terrific community theater. called the Pineland Players, where I lived in South Jersey. When I was in high school, those of us who were in high school, we formed this junior company. and the junior company under the auspices of the community theater.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:19:23,410 ] put on our own work, our own shows. You had to be under 21 in order to. Have any kind of position, you know, backstage director acting, any of it. You know, so we had one or two adults from the company who were very influential in our you know, upbringing in the theater. So it was very fortunate to have that work.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:19:48,590 ] But it was always kind of stifled in a way by.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:19:53,090 ] the morality of The Church.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:19:58,050 ] and the quote-unquote, immorality of the theater. I mean, this goes back to, you know, the earliest days of theater, obviously, Shakespeare days.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:20:05,410 ] Yeah, we've heard that for centuries.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:20:08,060 ] The church condemning the theater because the theater shows all kinds of things. And a lot of them are kind of. Oh, sinful, especially by... The standards of a particular church, an actor might be smoking, and smoking might be prohibited. I know my grandmother's church, dancing was prohibited. For example, you know, some certain kinds of music were— kind of sinful. So you had this parallel thing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:20:41,350 ] playing off each other, I suppose, but with some tension between them, because the theater wasn't quite... up to snuff. religiously.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:20:51,070 ] Well, I wouldn't say that I never found truth in my church. Or in any of the church activities. I did. I found a lot of deep truth there. Yes. and the youth pastor particularly was a seeker. We always asked questions. We always could talk. I mean, I had a really wonderful youth group. Camp during the summer was a wonderful time. And so I have a lot of really great memories about that time. Wonderful. The conflict was that... I never felt satisfied with only seeking the answers in our particular faith.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:21:32,670 ] Not that I wanted to go to another denomination or another religion, but I was really starting to feel.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:21:40,030 ] that I was finding deep truth and deep meaning in.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:21:45,130 ] theatrical experiences. So either as an audience member at a movie.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:21:50,190 ] It had nothing to do with religion, but there's a deep truth about this story in here. There's somebody singing a... A song and it was conveying something really deep. And then. You know, just the more I started to see of the world? The more I would look into the world.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:22:11,330 ] I was still finding truth and meaning and, and.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:22:15,970 ] How to be empathetic. Yes. And how to, you know, and.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:22:22,200 ] Again, it's not that I was not finding that at church, but I was also finding it in these other experiences. And so the exclusivity of my religious upbringing. Just. It never really made sense to me. I tried to really... be that way—I tried to shut the other things out.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:22:47,380 ] The way I took a lot of the teaching in was, for example, St. Paul has a lot of— military and warrior kind of language. In some of his So, put on the breastplate of righteousness, put on the arm yourself with the sword of the spirit, all that kind of thing. And then the evangelical hymns are onward Christian soldiers marching as to war, right? So there was all of this...
Scott Langdon
[ 00:23:19,680 ] making sure that I had the right. theology so that I could guard against anything else that would take me off of the shore ground of my theological thinking.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:23:32,060 ] Yes.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:23:32,920 ] We have the only way. We have the right way.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:23:36,700 ] Isn't that a little bit much? I know it's a burden. Aren't we fortunate? And yet it just never made sense because I knew people outside of my particular religion that also had a deeply meaningful relationship with God. And I was being told, 'Oh, no, they actually don't.' It may look like it, and good people may be good people, but they're not saved. Okay. Saved from what? You know, we, the whole thing, but I just, it. It never... held up.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:07,620 ] And yet the more I tried to push it away.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:12,070 ] Just be done with it.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:16,040 ] The.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:18,450 ] More I wanted... That authentic relationship. With God. I never.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:24,460 ] I could never say that I didn't believe God existed.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:24:27,770 ] Right.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:29,100 ] Now, there was a time when I thought the supernatural, theistic God.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:33,280 ] did not exist. That God could be everything, God is everything, God is... That I could... Kind of start to get my head around, but never the supernatural, theistic God didn't work. But I couldn't—it couldn't be an atheist. It just.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:53,030 ] It doesn't make any sense.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:24:53,750 ] There's just like nothing.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:24:56,990 ] But that's just— it's fine even to be nihilistic. I guess, okay, but— That's not interesting to me. I mean, I started to realize like that.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:25:05,250 ] That doesn't... do anything for me. Yeah. You know, you're just this, and then you go to dust and that's it. And is it okay? Well, all right. Maybe you don't know that because here you are telling me that you like whoever you are. Right. So you don't know if you don't know. And if I don't know.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:25:21,140 ] Thank you. You know, like.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:25:23,200 ] Who knows? I don't know. Right? And certain things do seem meaningful and even deep. Both in religion and beyond religion.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:25:32,580 ] And then that's where you're finding some kind of truth or spiritual insight or life insight. I don't know how you would have put it, but some kind of insight or wisdom.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:25:44,860 ] Or ways to relate to something beyond yourself, maybe, would be a way to put it. Does that sound right?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:25:54,000 ] Yeah, I think it is. I just couldn't reconcile. The fact that. Other.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:26:00,780 ] ways of looking at something were not valid.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:26:05,370 ] I mean, because that was what I was trying to... get at as an actor. And still do is.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:26:12,320 ] How can you?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:26:14,160 ] I mean, let's explore who this person is. Let's explore this character that I'm playing. I want to know, you know, who are you? And so I look around at different angles. You know, I'll try to say a line a different way. I try to listen to what the other characters are saying to my character. Like, how does that affect how I'm, you know, am I really listening to them? Am I not? Am I? You know, what am I taking in?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:26:36,640 ] You can play a scene.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:26:39,610 ] You know, several different ways and try to get at it. In a different way. And if you can do that with a... character that you're trying to play. I mean, why? Can't you do that with your own life?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:26:51,270 ] Mm-hmm.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:26:52,010 ] It just never made sense that we have answers.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:26:56,010 ] But to the questions we don't have answers for. Well, we'll leave that in God's hands. Like.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:27:02,320 ] What?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:27:03,880 ] It's— It's either all in God's hands or it's not. I mean, where is God that it's not in his hands? Where would God be then? If God's not here, where would God be? I mean, those kinds of questions really. Well, you know, it's... No, I need to know. I need to know. And I would ask that, and I couldn't get any answers. But the more I would explore a character, the more I would see a play or see a movie that made... How? I would.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:27:30,720 ] Get these. Ah.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:27:33,320 ] Yes, life is like this. Oh, wait, no, it's kind of like that. Oh. And I would have, you know, I'd have these Realizations about what life is about, what love is about, what?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:27:47,190 ] you know, all of it.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:27:49,740 ] Yeah, that's fascinating, Scott, because you were learning as much about the ultimate questions. You know, religion speaks to these ultimate things. When you talk about love in that context, it's not how to have a successful date. You know, it's a little more ultimate than that.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:28:07,430 ] Oh. And you're learning as much from theater about that as from religion. You're learning from both.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:28:15,040 ] But it sounds like the only problem you've run up to on the religion side, really, well, you've run up... against the exclusivism side. That, quite frankly, just doesn't seem to say that we should put these little boundaries around it when there's so much insight and wisdom available all over the place. In that sense, that well, God can't be bounded in little places, you know? And I guess that's why the kind of supernatural, big person of God seemed a bit wrong, because that sounded as if God would have to be—over somewhere, I guess— higher than the sky or something, you know? Rather than all around you.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:29:03,000 ] Does that be— way to put it? Or how are you thinking about it at that point, as you... Oh, kind of emerged from high school into... Whatever came next.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:13,780 ] A lot of what The, the.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:18,400 ] religious tradition that I grew up in.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:21,690 ] had to do with.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:23,640 ] was not doing things.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:29:27,080 ] Yes.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:27,800 ] Try to be as good as you can at not doing things. and these certain things.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:33,370 ] And I think in college, I got pretty caught up. in that.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:41,130 ] Why? Do I desire to do these things?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:45,370 ] and Why is this?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:49,810 ] a constant battle.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:52,740 ] Yeah.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:29:54,380 ] of making sure that I'm not being seen doing things.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:29:57,860 ] The things you want to do that you might say human nature. And yet there's a big list of do not do this, do not do that, do not even think or feel certain ways.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:30:09,030 ] Yeah. That's a pretty hard...
Scott Langdon
[ 00:30:12,100 ] Hard thing to do.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:30:14,060 ] It is. It is. What I see looking back and what I was lacking then was the focus on what is it that I want to do.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:30:25,820 ] Which I now feel is God-directed. God led.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:30:33,280 ] Type of thought process.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:30:35,540 ] So you could substitute the words, 'God,' 'what is your will for my life?' 'What would you like me to do with my life?' I didn't have this sense of... communicating with God inside me. Because at that point, I was told and taught that God was somewhere else. God was out there and I'm here.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:30:59,110 ] The conflict that I had. All growing up. was again, going back to that eight-year-old boy. I never had a question that there wasn't me and God.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:31:09,310 ] God was me. I was God. We're clearly separate, but... All of the hymns there, what are hymns like? At the Lutheran Church, where hymns like 'Amen.' And he walks with me and he talks with me. This idea of 'I come to the garden alone and I am with God and we're walking together.'
Scott Langdon
[ 00:31:32,240 ] I didn't take that in and go, 'Oh, I didn't know it was like that.' Now I know it's like that. I always thought it was like that. Yeah. Until I was told, 'Oh, no, no, no.' That's not what you were doing. You weren't? No, you have to do this. And then I would do this, baptize.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:31:50,700 ] Make sure you're good at not doing things, all of that stuff.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:31:54,500 ] In order for God to be pleased and... Come near me?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:32:00,610 ] I never got over the fact that God wasn't with me. I just didn't know how to.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:32:05,500 ] That sounds like a bit of torture. You know, torture in the sense that you've somehow got to pull something off that there's no way to pull off. You've got to achieve something there's no way to do.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:32:18,040 ] Yes, that's a great way to put it.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:32:21,730 ] That's a great way to put it, to try to pull something off that you're just not going to be able to pull off. I did feel that way a lot, I think. Yeah.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:32:28,800 ] Well, at some point, were you able to move beyond that?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:32:32,510 ] impossible dilemma, you might say.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:32:36,310 ] I went to... I went to... Northeastern Christian Junior College in Villanova, Pennsylvania for my first two years of undergrad. And.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:32:50,000 ] After that program was over, you had to transfer to a four-year college somewhere. And that college was affiliated with the Church of Christ. So it was a really, it was a beautiful experience. Very small school. Got a lot of attention in certain areas of academic study and otherwise. And so I was really pleased with the education. Lifelong friends that I still keep in contact with. But after that program, after an associate's degree, I needed to transfer.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:33:19,500 ] It was a question of which.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:33:21,710 ] Church of Christ school do I go to? I go to Harding University in Arkansas. Do I go to Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas? And there were only a handful of them.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:33:33,350 ] And a lot of my friends were going to Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City. Actually, it was Oklahoma Christian College at the time. And for some reason, I felt like... I can't just go where all of my friends are going.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:33:47,190 ] I should go somewhere else.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:33:49,740 ] And so. I went to Abilene Christian University. Had a really nice theater program. I thought this would be terrific. It's just what I need.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:33:59,290 ] But I only knew one person there when I got there. And it was so overwhelming.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:34:04,100 ] And I stayed there for two and a half weeks and I told my parents I have to come home. I can't, I can't stay.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:34:09,659 ] That sounds horrible.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:34:11,620 ] It was horrible.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:34:12,650 ] Yeah, the university in a strange state. You don't know anybody except one poor person. West Texas.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:34:19,120 ] Wow, I know it was a bad time for me. And I could not do it. So my parents brought me home and I worked the rest of that.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:34:31,229 ] And went to Oklahoma Christian in the spring. I was like, this is where I should have gone in the first place, whatever. And I went there. And it was wonderful. I had that spring semester. And it was terrific.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:34:45,020 ] And then came home and worked. And then that next fall, The fall of 1989.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:34:50,690 ] my, first wife. Melissa.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:34:55,449 ] came to school. And I met her. Okay.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:34:59,770 ] I remember this experience. We met in the fall.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:03,680 ] And. Talk to you a time or two.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:07,580 ] Then we were at this Christmas banquet.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:11,260 ] In early December. And I was with another date. I took this girl and she was with a friend of mine as his date. But they were just there together, no big deal. And I saw her across.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:27,190 ] The ballroom, it's almost like a movie.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:30,460 ] But I saw she was over there.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:35:32,420 ] Strange.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:34,290 ] And she turned to me and I caught her eye and we locked eyes for a minute. Probably just a couple of seconds, right? But it felt like forever.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:43,540 ] But in that moment, I heard this voice. Say to me.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:48,940 ] That's the girl you're going to marry.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:52,050 ] And I said, 'No, it's not.'
Scott Langdon
[ 00:35:57,159 ] Because, not because I didn't want to marry her or whatever. I hadn't even really met her— I met her a couple of times, but. Because I already had these plans that I was going to graduate school, move to New York, become an actor. It was just, you know, this was not in the plans.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:36:09,820 ] Right?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:36:11,700 ] But after that, it was maybe a day or two later, we went away for Christmas break and I was in New Jersey and she was from Oklahoma.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:36:19,520 ] And she was from Shawnee, Oklahoma.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:36:22,760 ] Went to Shawnee High School.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:36:24,890 ] But I lived in New Jersey. And the high school that I went to— was called Shawnee High School. Oh, my God.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:36:35,310 ] Sometimes you've just got to connect the dots, right?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:36:39,150 ] It's hard to believe all this kind of magic, and yet here it is. Here it is. And maybe better just to go with it. Think, hmm, this is telling me something. Mm-hmm.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:36:51,680 ] Yeah. And so I, you know, I called her on the phone and this was, you know. Back in those days where you had the long cord on the phone and kind of had to go downstairs to get some privacy or whatever. I called her. And then the next semester when I came back in the spring. We started to date and, in 1992, we got married.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:37:11,210 ] Wow.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:37:12,900 ] I went to graduate school.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:37:15,040 ] And right after I finished graduate school that last semester, actually, I went from 93 to 95 to Oklahoma City University.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:37:24,340 ] And my last semester. Melissa got pregnant. With Michaela. Our daughter. And so in 1995, again, another thing that was not supposed to happen, quote unquote, you know, we were supposed to move to New York. Well, no.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:37:40,130 ] So then we had Michaela. And I decided to stay in Oklahoma and teach. And Melissa taught as well. Four years later, we had Connor.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:37:49,890 ] And then... Back up here, we moved up here to the Philadelphia, New Jersey area where my parents still were, still in the same church where I grew up in and all of that.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:38:00,380 ] And that worked for your wife as well. She was not against moving out of Oklahoma.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:38:07,300 ] No, we felt like that would be the best thing to do. And also, you know, it was time for me to pursue my theater career in a more broad way. For example, Broadway in quotes, but also in a more broad, more general way.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:38:23,340 ] Yeah, the East— you were in the East Coast, much nearer, a lot of active theater.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:38:30,470 ] Especially then, in the 90s, because they didn't have— the kind of theater scene that we have now around the country, which owes a lot to social media and a lot to the internet and all of that, as it developed over time. But this was going to be the place where, if I was going to make a living in the theater, this would be the place we were able to do it.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:38:56,370 ] Yeah. And what was your spiritual life at that point? Then you come east. So whatever you're doing in Oklahoma. They're now breaking those rules.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:39:08,490 ] Connections by moving east back to where you used to be. And did you pick up the thread of the... Church of Christ near that you had been going to, or did you take some new turn? For what?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:39:50,560 ] Several years before we moved up here, We were in a much more progressive Church of Christ.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:39:59,279 ] My wife Melissa and I were. That's where we had our children and raised our kids, you know, in the early days at the Dayspring Church of Christ in Edmond. And a lot of college professors from the area and a lot of, there were a lot of young people our age too who were having similar thoughts about theology. And... with a more progressive... movement towards. looking at other traditions and seeing what they offered, while at the same time... tending to the traditions of our particular faith and recognizing them as such. These are the traditions of our faith, not... the only way to do a thing. It's the way that we have done things. And so acknowledging that. So, singing, Acapella, for example.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:40:51,930 ] That if you wanted to have an instrument at a particular service or whatever, you know, sure, do it. Forbidden.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:40:58,110 ] But the tradition of singing with shape notes and singing acapella is... It's a beautiful one. So let's hang on to that. You know what I mean? Those kinds, that kind of thing. And so. By the time we moved up here, we'd already had a much more progressive theology and theological experience, not only in our church-going life, but then also The books we would read and the lectures that we would listen to and the different perspectives that we could see. So when we got here.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:41:31,130 ] We lived with my parents for two years while we kind of got some things sorted out, and Melissa got a teaching job, and I was working on some other things, and then we moved from Tabernacle, in my childhood growing up home, to the Princeton area, to Plainsboro, which is, you know, central New Jersey. And when we were there, we went to the Princeton United Methodist Church. And that's where our children were raised, really. My son, Connor.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:42:01,649 ] Pre-kindergarten, I guess, we were there. And then that would have been third grade, I think, for Mikhail and my daughter.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:42:08,390 ] They kind of went their whole lives in the Methodist tradition.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:42:14,860 ] And the Methodist tradition, and. A couple of things that were really good, and that particular church did, the Princeton United Methodist. Had the Hymns. and the robes and the choir and the organ. and the almost Lutheran kind of sensibility. That I... found so much comfort in as a child.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:42:40,370 ] And also had— a very do as much good as you can, as often as you can. Motto of John Wesley.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:42:52,690 ] So we were able to raise our children in a situation where they were getting what we thought was a well-rounded theological education, but also service-driven Methodist background.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:43:08,210 ] And between that time... and I don't know, in your lifetime line, are we sort of close to when you... When I first got to know you, when you first discovered God: An Autobiography, or what happened in that transition time? Between the Methodist Church, which sounds... You know, your spiritual story so far sounds like a story of progress to me, because you developed very mature, even within the Church of Christ.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:43:39,980 ] Evangelical and somewhat literal, you know, and boundary drawing, you developed a very mature attitude to that and found a congregation. Where you say, well, it's more like this is our way, then this is the only way, and the rest of you are going to hell, you know, kind of attitude. But, okay, the others are interesting. Too, and may have something to offer for someone. Now the Methodist church sounds like one that's meeting your needs and those of your family very well.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:44:12,360 ] And uh. So I'm wondering, well, okay, how did you go from that? What further twists and turns did you take maybe on the way to... our encounter.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:44:25,270 ] Well, there's a lot of twists and turns. Oh, there might be. A lot of twists and turns.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:44:31,140 ] We haven't talked about. I think we have on some other what's on our minds or something maybe, but. In 1999, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:44:40,610 ] Oh.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:44:41,620 ] And. That I don't know where it started, how it started. I have. You know, some ideas about. I know in high school there was a difficult phase of time. I do know that when I was talking about Abilene Christian, and I was there for two and a half weeks, and had to come home, that was a really difficult time, a breakdown, quote unquote, you know, you could say. It was always Scott is Moody.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:45:10,440 ] One day he's the life of the party, and the very next day he's sitting in the corner. What's that about? You know, a lot of things.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:45:16,350 ] And was very fortunate to be able to be diagnosed in 1999.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:45:23,000 ] And some of the fallout from... the poor decisions.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:45:29,540 ] Made during. that time. Particularly you know, 19... 99, 2000, 2001 in that area.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:45:39,360 ] Melissa, my wife, and I decided it was best to move up here and start my career, start a new life, come up here. And So we were.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:45:51,090 ] Kind of leaving behind an old life, where there were some really difficult challenges in our marriage, and give it another go.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:45:59,190 ] And so, you know, we moved back up here.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:46:02,250 ] I started, I was in the theater. Like I said, and starting to kick my career up. And in 2003, in the spring, I was doing Evita. A musical at the Walnut Street Theater, and my daughter, who was eight at the time, came and sat on my lap on a day off and started crying. We don't see you enough. I was like, okay. That's it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop. I'm not going to be away from my kids. I'm going to.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:46:26,440 ] Oh, the problem is in the theater. You're going off to the theater. I'm just all the time. Every night. Right.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:46:33,080 ] Yeah. And sometimes out of town, right?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:46:36,750 ] Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:46:39,200 ] So I decided to go into teaching. My wife, Melissa, at the time, was a teacher in Elizabeth. I mean, I'm sorry, in East Brunswick. And I found a job as an elementary school teacher teaching music. Firsting Elizabeth for four years. in the 2000s. 2004 to 2008.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:46:58,810 ] And then... Excuse me.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:47:01,800 ] Then I took a job as a... humanities teacher at East Brunswick High School.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:47:09,170 ] And I was there for three years. So from 2008. 2008-2009 school year. to the 2010, 2011 school year, so three school years.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:47:20,900 ] And I taught the seniors. I taught a humanities course, team taught with two other teachers. And it was terrific. I got along with them really well. We wrote the curriculum.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:47:31,090 ] I thought that I would still be there. To this day.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:47:35,130 ] Uh-huh.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:47:36,540 ] I thought, okay, you know, my career. This is it. You've made a commitment. Both of my parents were public school teachers their whole career. We had a wonderful life growing up. They were off when we were off for vacations, all that stuff. So, It worked for us. Raising our kids.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:47:53,520 ] And then. After the 2011 school year, East Brunswick Board of Education did not pass their school budget.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:48:02,570 ] So the non-tenured teachers, including me, got riffed. Which is reduction in force. Nothing personal. It's nothing personal. It's just you become a line item.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:48:14,920 ] On a budget. And all of my evaluations from the assistant superintendent were glowing.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:48:24,620 ] My colleagues, all of them thought it was terrific. My students, we had a wonderful time. And now I'm a line item on a budget.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:48:32,450 ] Oh.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:48:33,750 ] And. Luckily, I had I. that was doing a play.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:48:40,280 ] And. Just a community theater play.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:48:44,470 ] That.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:48:45,820 ] semester and my daughter. When I found out that I wasn't she came to me and said, 'You need to get back in the theater.'
Scott Langdon
[ 00:48:54,460 ] So it was like this sort of, she's the one who said, 'We don't see you.' But now she was 16 and she was, you know, this is what you do. She could see it, right? She could see it. And, you know, I talked to my wife and, you know, and so we did it. You know, I did it and I just, I went back into the theater.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:09,480 ] And so we were going to the Methodist Church.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:13,340 ] Thank you.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:14,740 ] But.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:16,440 ] My... there were more poor decisions. And those poor decisions.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:24,090 ] cost me my marriage. Oh. and my family. Oh. This was in 2000.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:32,050 ] 2014, 2013, 2014.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:35,770 ] And then... Melissa and I got divorced in the spring of 2014. I mean, I'm sorry, spring of 2015.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:44,490 ] And then at Christmastime, of 2015.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:49,000 ] I did A Christmas Story, the musical, at the Walnut.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:49:53,920 ] And so from there, Till this Christmas. Just now. Where I closed A Christmas Story at the Walnut. So, 10 years later, they did it again, and here I am. So, in those 10 years, was a lot of change.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:50:10,550 ] A lot of God work. Working on me.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:50:15,730 ] Showing me things.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:50:18,380 ] Pointing stuff out.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:50:20,280 ] That at the beginning, of this 10-year stretch.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:50:24,270 ] Yeah. I, I, really struggled with.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:50:28,940 ] Because I really had this feeling that God was, you know, if God exists.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:50:35,810 ] Which I don't even know what. I meant by that. I still, I didn't think the supernatural, theistic God did not exist. However, there was something that.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:50:46,100 ] I didn't want to give up on. But I didn't know how to articulate it. I was reading other... I was reading a lot of books. Marcus J. Borg was a big thinker that I turned to.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:51:00,620 ] It's a different understanding of Christianity, right?
Scott Langdon
[ 00:51:04,120 ] With a different understanding of Christianity.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:51:06,660 ] Yeah.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:51:07,330 ] And a different way of looking at God, what the word God refers to.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:51:14,080 ] Yeah.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:51:15,140 ] And then, from there, Started.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:51:19,650 ] See, finding and this was really had a lot to do with YouTube and algorithm. I don't believe that God is the algorithm at the same time I feel like there was a look at this.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:51:31,750 ] As opposed to not that. But look at this.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:51:35,330 ] And. So finding spiritual teachers. That admittedly sounded like people that I wanted to sound like or thought had authority, so Alan Watts. With his English voice and it, it was a track. So then, and then Ram Dass.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:51:53,750 ] And. And then Thich Nhat Hanh. A Buddhist monk whose life... was extremely interesting, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King. for his activism against the Vietnam War and all kinds of other things, so he was a personality that was really interesting to me. And then just starting to open up to those things.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:52:19,710 ] And all along, really starting to pick up my theater career. I was doing a lot more work and finding... a lot more about myself and learning more about myself by some of the characters that I was playing. Empathy for somebody who could look at something this way. You know, just juggling that. And then, when the pandemic happened. And this is a story that many have heard before. Just before the pandemic happened, I had a lot of work lined up. I had done some ghostwriting. And, and before. And I was thinking, hey, maybe I can do some ghostwriting or something along with this theater work that I'm going to do. And that's when I found your advertisement in Craigslist. And you were looking for somebody who could promote your book. On or you know, the ideas on social media and things, and I've done some social media work, so I was like, you know, let's see what this is. Two retired philosophy professors. Let's work with them. Then it just felt like something to pursue.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:53:24,120 ] And then we met, and you told me what the book was about and what your experience was like.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:53:29,790 ] And I never... paid attention to myself.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:53:33,690 ] And what I found was I wasn't going. This is crazy. Let me get out of here. I didn't think that. I just thought, okay, tell me more.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:53:42,990 ] And I said, okay, let's do this. And I took the job. And then we decided, you know, about the podcast and let's make it into a podcast and all of that. And I started to think.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:53:53,600 ] Before we really got started on making of the podcast and in the early scripts, I started to think.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:54:00,110 ] I don't know if I can do this. I mean, is, is this, is he telling the truth? Is he not? I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I mean, did this happen or didn't it? And I got a really distinct feeling. I can't call it a voice, but whatever a voice is, it compels from you on the inside.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:54:21,430 ] Whatever that was.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:54:23,330 ] The compulsion was: 'Look at this.'
Scott Langdon
[ 00:54:27,080 ] as an actor.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:54:29,160 ] When I look at a situation that I'm going to act in, I don't say, 'Is this true?' or 'Is it not true?' or 'Could it happen?' or 'Could... I say, 'What if it is true?' And then I act as if it were true. That's what acting is. You act as if. Yeah. And so, and I thought, 'What if Jerry, what if what he's saying is not true?' Well, then it's going to turn out to be not true. And then this will all be over. But what if it is true? And once I locked into 'what if it is true' and I started to act as if it were. It's... I never had the question again. I have never had the question again. Yeah. And I honestly, no one has ever asked it of me. No one has ever asked me. And I've been waiting for it, Jerry. Nobody has ever asked me, do you think he's telling the truth?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:55:19,700 ] Nobody's asked it. Thank you. That's amazing. The one thing I do know, whether it's the voice of God, you know, people can be mistaken and I can be mistaken, but I know I'm telling the truth in the sense this is. exactly what happened. God in Autobiography is very nearly a transcript. At first, when I showed that draft to Abigail, she said it was too much. much of a transcript. She said, 'Honey, the readers aren't hearing God.' You need to put yourself in because you're their connector for them. And then I thought, 'Oh, where was I?' And, you know, started putting in that situational facts and how did I react? And then people wanted to know how did Abigail react? But when I hear your story, Scott, if we go back a little. back somewhere around or just before we got to Marcus Borg.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:56:11,500 ] It just sounded to me as if God had become your partner. In this search, in a very... strong sense of partner. You know, God was just working right with you, by your side, and directs you to all these things, or opens your... heart to them, your heart and mind to all of these things that you Ram Dass and whatever. And then somehow is playing a role. I always take it as one testament that I'm probably telling the truth and probably is God precisely because God gets people like you. With your intense religious experience, I didn't have that. I was an agnostic. You have an intense religious sensibility. That you bring to this. And I think... You know, thank the Lord, you know, because we need that. In this kind of podcast. But anyway, I just see that as one sign, as God is working with Scott, that God brings Scott to this project.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:57:12,020 ] Okay, good. You know, and anyway, that's just. my own sense of it. And I know one thing— you've said, I don't know what you want to say next, but one thing we should get to is that about that time, in fact, that I first met you, I think you told me that you had given up God for Lent. Hmm. And we're now praying to love. Hmm. And we've talked about that. I mean, it's come up, but I always felt I tend to go off and say my own blah, blah, blah about love. But I felt that I didn't really draw out of you.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:57:51,080 ] What that meant to you.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:57:53,530 ] What are the implications?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:57:56,620 ] Of. Oh.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:57:59,060 ] Praying. Not to God.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:58:02,420 ] But to love.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:58:04,830 ] If I put it right.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:58:06,470 ] You know, that's right. And I think it had to do with a couple of things. The one was that, again, I just couldn't.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:58:13,490 ] Except anymore this idea of a supernatural, theistic god out there somewhere away from me.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:58:23,650 ] And having gotten to where I am now. So at that time, I was still in that. Idea and part of that was also because God. The letters G-O-D. Just. Didn't really, didn't mean anything to me anymore because Everyone was asking about a God that I didn't believe in. You're right.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:58:52,930 ] What they were referencing when they used the word God was not something that I was interested in.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:59:00,590 ] But love was something that I was really interested in.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:59:04,440 ] And then, the scriptures.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:59:08,030 ] Is it James who says God is love?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:59:12,270 ] Yeah, I think Book of John. Is it okay, Book of John, God is unless he quoting somebody but I think the actual Gospel of John. Because I looked it up recently. It's always seemed puzzling to me. I'm too much a logician. God is love rather than God loves.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:59:28,790 ] You know, I've... I've just kind of puzzled over that. It's sort of an abstract. noun in that context or something. I don't know what, but... But what does it mean when the gospel says it or when you say it? What does it add? You know, I believe God loves us.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:59:52,010 ] But... This statement seems to be... It kind of ratchets that up in some way that I don't well understand that God is love.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:00:01,360 ] It was born out of the... newer experience of that God is everything.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:00:11,300 ] All there is, is God.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:00:14,720 ] Marcus Borg's writing introduced me to panentheism, Yes. Which is everything is in God. So this idea that everything exists.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:00:29,230 ] All there is. is God. All there is. Isness.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:00:35,850 ] is God. And so I started to think instead of, God is nowhere.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:00:43,810 ] God is nothing, no thing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:00:46,720 ] You've written a book by that name, which I can recommend to our listeners. God is no thing.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:00:52,590 ] No thing. What if you flip that around? Because you can always look at something the opposite way. What if God were everything?
Scott Langdon
[ 01:01:00,760 ] And what is the greatest of all of these things? The scriptures teach us the greatest of these is love. So I just, I wasn't using it in an abstract way, but just in a way that would be all inclusive.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:01:12,380 ] So if I were to say, love.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:01:21,110 ] Be with you.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:01:23,000 ] That has no denominational, no religious implications of anything. I'm not asking you to just love be with you. I'm wishing you all the best.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:01:34,830 ] And I imagine that that's what I mean when I say God be with you. I'm meaning that same thing. So why not just leave out the tricky theological thing and just say what I really mean, which is love. I think that's where it started. But the more I did it, the more inclusive my thoughts about what God could be became, just by just saying love all the time. Instead of... Because I was coming from this very specific way of seeing God.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:02:04,980 ] and The thing about our podcast, that was very significant, was when we were doing the first 44 episodes, which was where I was playing you. And you were, in a sense, playing God. I mean, those are the roles we played in this dramatic adaptation of what actually happened. And you were always very... conscientious about really trying to portray God in the as it happened as you had heard it. I want to try to convey that.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:02:37,310 ] I get in the mode of how it was to hear God and then I would try to just sort of say it that way.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:02:44,470 ] The gun side.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:02:45,940 ] And the way the process happened was you would record your... Answers. Sometimes questions, but just your lines. And send them to me.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:02:56,200 ] And then I would hear that audio that you had sent me. And I would have to put... My lines in in there and my lines were often either the narrator, which is your story, or specifically this conversation with God playing Jerry. So I had to think about the inflections of how I would say a line or or a question to God or how it would fit inside of what you had given me. And doing that?
Scott Langdon
[ 01:03:24,700 ] I had, I felt like.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:03:28,110 ] I finally started to be able to navigate this duality inside of me that we all have. When I say I'm going to work on myself, there's an 'I.' That's going to do the work and the 'myself' that's getting worked on. That's a whole other thing we can talk about. But the idea is that we all recognize that duality. And in working on the specific project of... having this dialogue with you or having this dialogue with God. Inside of me, there was this.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:03:57,890 ] No, that's not it.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:04:00,420 ] Okay, I'll try it again another way, and I would do the... Yeah, no, that's it. I would have this sense of, 'That's it.'
Scott Langdon
[ 01:04:07,970 ] Okay, and I would listen to it back, and I had the ability.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:04:12,070 ] To listen. As an audience member, Now, Don't get me wrong. I can still watch myself and hear myself and really critique myself. There is, I absolutely do not think I'm perfect in any way. Right. I do, however. Feel like I have been given. And it was through this process of these episodes, this ability now to hear myself as an audience member, as a third party.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:04:41,140 ] And... be able to have this conversation almost with what I call God, what I think is God saying. This is it. This is it. Or this isn't right. Or this is right. And I still, even in the episodes that I edit today, which are, you know, you and Abigail or you and I doing this right now or what's on our mind, I sit down and I edit it out. I still have that dialogue.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:05:05,060 ] Oh, this is, yeah, this feels good. This doesn't. But it's carried out into my life.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:05:10,950 ] It's carried into my... relationship with my work as an actor. Where I'm like, is this a way I should say a lot? I get, and then into my actual life of, should I say this to Sarah, my wife? Yes. Or should I not? Or... This person said this to me. Ooh, I'm offended. Oh, are you offended? Why? Why are you offended? I have this conversation. Which I know is more than just. He's talking to himself again.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:05:40,340 ] Now, that's interesting. That's evolution that, as I say, I felt went back to Marcus Borg or before. We saw increasingly God being your partner, leading you along.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:05:52,690 ] And then leading you is perhaps to... respond to my little ad for social media, and then you came up with the idea, hey, this is kind of dramatic, and thought of doing a play, or even better, let's do a whole podcast, you know, kind of. dramatically reenacting what happened. And... Now, and so you're entering into it there with a little God prompt when you've got it right, and now that's carried into… Well, your life as a whole, and that is what it is.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:06:30,760 ] I guess in my view. And based on my experience, and now as well as educated by your experience, that is how God works with people.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:06:42,170 ] can work with people even if they don't think, even if they're atheists and never recognize that there's a God partner present. God can do all these things because God is, as you say, also everywhere.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:06:55,380 ] But available to all of us all the time. But here you're enacting that.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:07:01,730 ] And here in this. hearing your story.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:07:08,090 ] We... You might say, see it happening before our eyes, as you tell the story.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:07:15,580 ] Is this a place to end, or is there more that we should say about your journey?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:07:21,690 ] Your journey didn't end yesterday.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:07:25,730 ] Well, one thing I do want to mention— is to go back to Marcus Borg, that is, something very significant, because when we were... at still living in Oklahoma City and going to the Dayspring Church of Christ. That was the first time, and during that time is when I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder, as I said, 1999 into 2000.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:07:47,910 ] And in 2000, I spent some time in the hospital. And while I was in the hospital, one of the members of the congregation where we were going gave me the book 'Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time,' which was the first Marcus Borg book that I ever read. And I've since read all of his things.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:08:04,750 ] Isn't that a great title? 'Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:08:08,830 ] For the First Time.' It's a beautiful book. And it was very challenging. It really challenged my... Everything. I was not ready for it. I came back to it a little while later. I had to look at it again another time after some time had passed. But I come back to Borg because what I found through Marcus Borg is God is an experiential reality. Mm-hmm.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:08:41,160 ] And so we've talked before, like on What's On Our Mind, about the new atheists, about Sam Harris and others, for whom God is... non-existent.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:08:52,560 ] And... I just find that It's. especially with you and having been with you for this long, but encountering you at first. your experience.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:09:05,120 ] it counts for so much.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:09:07,560 ] I mean, you say, when you said, you just said it earlier, I'm, Whether it's true or not, I'm... This is what happened. Yeah, I'm just relating what happened. I'm relating what happened. If I tell you if I tell you that I was. diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I spent some time in the hospital. What? That's what happened. That's what happened. And you're saying God talked to me and told me these things. It's the same.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:09:29,840 ] Thing. Yeah. And so.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:09:32,729 ] I really started to understand.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:09:36,689 ] More and more about experiences and started to look back on my experiences and be able to track the things that you just mentioned, especially along the way of these last 10 years of... looking back and seeing this point in my life. This is the end of this video.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:09:55,090 ] Road that I took this way instead of taking that way. Like, do you remember? The nudge you got? Do you remember the nudge that you got that you ignored? And how that turned out. Right, right. And all of it. It's... So, based in my experience. Yes. And I think being able to pay attention more to experiences, not only of our own, but experiences of others, is the only way.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:10:22,880 ] To really get close to the God that we know.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:10:27,740 ] How in general do we know anything about reality? It's because we experience it. That's how I know that we're doing a podcast now, because I experience it. And God is the same way, and love is the same way, and your sense that, uh-oh, that would be a wrong thing to do, or that's a beautiful piece of music. You know these by experience, and the reductionists, the atheists, wipe out the whole level of meaning, and it's just bare factuality. But that's not what you experience. You don't experience bare factuality. You experience moments of the divine, moments of beauty, moments of love, moments of obligation, you know, of service.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:11:11,610 ] That's your full experience.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:11:15,240 ] Why not trust it? Why not go with it? And at least see what happens.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:11:21,440 ] And that's what you've done.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:11:23,710 ] Well, thank you, Scott. And this was a wonderful story to tell. And I think it'd be valuable for anybody who tunes in to hear Scott Langdon's story.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 01:11:36,520 ] Thank you, Jerry. A blessing to us all. Thank you.
Scott Langdon
[ 01:11:47,150 ] 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 1 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.