GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
286. What’s Your Spiritual Story?: Dr. Stephen Spector on the Bible as Literature and the Nature of God
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In this deeply personal installment of What’s Your Spiritual Story, Jerry L. Martin speaks with Dr. Stephen Spector, professor of English, scholar of religion and literature, and author, for a profound conversation about spiritual experience, suffering, miracles, the Bible, and the changing nature of God.
Spector recounts the moment that transformed his life forever. At fifteen years old, after his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given only weeks to live, he made a bargain with God. What followed would shape his spiritual life, his understanding of faith, and his lifelong relationship with scripture.
Drawing from his background in medieval literature, biblical interpretation, psychology, and Jewish thought, Dr. Spector explores the Bible not only as sacred text, but as a living literary and psychological journey. Together, he and Jerry discuss Genesis, trauma, forgiveness, Jewish identity, evangelical support for Israel, Jewish-Christian dialogue, Ethiopian Jews, Isaac’s suffering, the problem of evil, and the surprising idea that God may grow and change through relationship with humanity.
This episode is thoughtful, intellectually rich, emotionally honest, and deeply human — ideal for listeners interested in spirituality, theology, religion, philosophy, biblical interpretation, spiritual transformation, and the search for meaning.
What does it mean to wrestle with God? Can suffering transform us? And what happens when we begin reading scripture not as distant history, but as a living story about becoming human?
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.
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Scott Langdon
[ 00:00:17,229 ]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
[ 00:00:58,259 ]Episode two eighty six
Scott Langdon
[ 00:01:11,799 ]Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm your host Scott Langdon. And I'm excited this week to introduce you to Jerry's special guest, Dr. Steven Spector. On this week's episode, we feature Dr. Spector in the latest offering of our series, What's Your Spiritual Story? Jerry talks with Steven about his work as a professor of English, specializing in religions and culture, medieval literature, and the English language, and how his spiritual story is continuing to unfold through the exploration of the Bible as literature. I enjoyed this conversation a great deal, and I'm certain you will as well. Here's Jerry.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:01:50,609 ]I hope you enjoy the episode.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:02:01,589 ]Hello Stephen Specter, welcome.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:02:04,709 ]Thank you, Jerry.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:02:06,159 ]Good to see you. I always tell people that everybody has a spiritual story. Even the atheist has a spiritual story. And for most people, their spiritual story begins at home, in their childhood, and with their parents.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:02:23,889 ]That's not necessarily quite the case for everyone. Different people have different stories. Where does your spiritual story begin, would you say?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:02:32,469 ]Well, it's interesting you ask because I don't remember if I told you over dinner, but when I did the research on my book on evangelicals, the first question I would ask...
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:02:42,159 ]Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:02:42,949 ]Would you share your born again experience with me?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:02:48,429 ] Was that the first question they asked?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:02:51,319 ]No, that's the first question I asked.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:02:53,249 ]Oh, that you ask. Yeah. They even have a story, right?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:02:57,069 ]Oh, every one and they were happy to share it, but it also established that I wasn't some uninformed jerk coming around trying to get information without knowing what I was doing. I knew what their experience was and it established the basis of trust.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:03:11,259 ]and knowing them as people taking this seriously.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:03:14,419 ]Yeah So my own religious experience, I think, it probably begins before I was born. My grandmother uh and grandfather came over from from Ukraine. Yeah like many Jews in that generation probably coming over, and my grandfather came over in 1905, we have an autobiography written by his father in Yiddish.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:03:45,759 ]Oh really?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:03:47,109 ]Written after he went blind. My great-grandfather was blind. He was a rabbi, and he learned to crease a page around thirty times and fold it so he would follow the crease and write in Yiddish. So he tells this story that he, his children were leaving revolutionary documents around in public. This was around 1900. And they were in danger now, and so, this is on my father's side, my great-grandfather sent them to New York to get them away from the Tsar's army.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:04:24,859 ]On the other side, my mother's parents, my her father was drafted into the army probably for twenty-five years in Russia because that was a fairly normal draft period, twenty-five years, to to try to bring the Jews into a kind of a like a neutral social position so they wouldn't be so identified as Jewish. And while he was asleep one night in the army barracks, an anti-semite shot a rifle next to his ear. And he was deaf the rest of his life, very hard of hearing. Oh, so my journey begins back with them.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:05:08,839 ]Yeah, of course. Of course.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:05:10,839 ]You know, and in both cases it had to do with being Jews, and in different ways. But the Jews who came from Ukrainian came from Russia proper. In that generation, they cut off their payas, you know, the side curls, and they rejected the rabbis as the authorities in the community. And they tried to become as American as they could quickly, at least the children did.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:05:38,159 ]Right.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:05:39,469 ]Yeah. So I was brought up by the kids who had that experience. My father and mother were the children. My father was the child of the son who was sent away because he was leaving documents around and so they became living in Brooklyn, and I don't know, Abigail may know this, but they were in a really kind of stinky neighborhood, literally stinky neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:06:10,369 ]My wife taught at Brooklyn College for many years.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:06:14,049 ]She may know Canarsie when the tide was out, you really smelled it. And my father's family grew up there, and they're kind of like wise guy kids, except that my father's younger brother was on a Navy destroyer in the Pacific during World War II and was being attacked by Kamikaze pilots.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:06:34,139 ]Oh my gosh.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:06:35,179 ]He made a vow that if he survived the day, he would make something of himself. So he became the first one in the family to go to college. He went, he got a PhD, became a pretty renowned psychologist. He founded the Institute at Temple University. But my father, who probably was learning disabled, didn't graduate high school.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:06:53,059 ]Really?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:06:53,899 ]Yeah, so I grew up in a house where my mother grew up with a father who was deaf. My father's father died when my father was ten and they were not privileged in their circumstances and then my mother got, I told you this, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was fifteen.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:07:17,629 ]Yes. Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:07:19,169 ]At Sloan Kettering Hospital. My father told us that he, the doctor, was this eminent surgeon and said, "you get ready, be prepared, she only has a couple of weeks."
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:07:32,699 ]Yeah, how sad. How about a shocking end.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:07:36,489 ]Yeah. So my sister was ten, I was fifteen, my father was a grocer because he hadn't graduated college. He did what he could do. He opened a grocery store and he was working long hours and he had no way that he could bring us up. So it looked like our lives would come apart and there was nobody to take us. So, I made a bargain with God.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:08:03,139 ]Okay.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:08:04,529 ]Yeah, and you might say that was
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:08:06,259 ]traditions of bargaining with God, right?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:08:08,719 ]I know I wasn't doing it like Abraham, that's for sure. More like Jacob maybe.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:08:14,959 ]So you decided to let's make a bargain.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:08:18,249 ]Yeah. Now, so what does a 15-year-old offer? So I said I would never lie, I would never cheat, I wouldn't steal, and I'd go to synagogue.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:08:26,839 ]Okay.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:08:28,049 ]And then my mother's cancer went away.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:08:31,289 ]the impossible cancer. I mean, the irresistible and undefeatable cancer.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:08:38,769 ]'cause it was ovarian, it was not really treatable by chemo or anything else. The surgeon told my father that he took all the organs out except he had to leave some things there so he could find something to treat.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:08:53,349 ]It was that bad. And then she lived another forty-one years.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:08:57,969 ]Wow amazing
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:08:59,589 ]Yeah
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:09:00,499 ]and this would leave an imprint on a young man, right? Or on any of us when you have that kind of sort of miracle.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:09:10,889 ]So I did, yeah. I view it as a miracle.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:09:13,459 ]Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:09:14,649 ]and I did my best to keep my part of the bargain and for another 40 years or so I went to synagogue and tried my best not to do those things I said I wouldn't do
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:09:25,539 ]And then she did die. I have to admit that I was going to synagogue when it wasn't in my tradition. I wasn't brought up that way.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:09:38,359 ]Okay.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:09:39,319 ]I didn't know the prayers. I wasn't properly trained. They did have a bar mitzvah, but it was really not legitimate. My father owned a deli and the guy who delivered the Pepsi.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:09:49,709 ]Okay.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:09:51,029 ]go into the basement and teach me some of the prayers.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:09:54,419 ]Okay. So you learn the minimum to get by and it was accepted.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:10:00,869 ]Yeah, but going to synagogue wasn't really comfortable, but I did do it.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:10:05,489 ]Okay.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:10:07,049 ]And then eventually I started just instead of doing it in synagogue, I would hold the service in my own in my own house, in my own room.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:10:15,129 ]Okay.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:10:16,059 ]and do the reading and things like that. And I always, for some reason, loved the Bible.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:10:22,129 ]Hmm.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:10:23,279 ]And I had a few gifts that I brought with me when I went to do my PhD were an interest in religion, and in psychology. So, I had started out as a psych major but decided to be an English major because I could do religion and what I saw as psychology. Because in those days what you learned as an undergraduate was all behaviorism.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:10:43,179 ]Yeah, so boring. I took that. We ran rats through to chase drops of water.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:10:49,399 ]Exactly.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:10:54,039 ]I trained a quail to jump when we showed the color green.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:10:57,599 ]Okay. Yes, well that's a lot further than I got in it. So, but I have a feeling in the end your story could not end as a behavioral psychologist.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:11:10,479 ]No
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:11:11,649 ]I've decided to add a second major of English. And then since I was in an academic trend, there was nothing else to do but to do a PhD. I wasn't qualified to do anything else. So, when I got to Yale, I found out how unprepared I was. I graduated in three years with two majors, and hadn't done much reading in either. I was really struggling that first year. But I did have an interest in religion and I started to work on medieval Christian Bible plays.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:11:45,509 ]of all things
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:11:46,829 ]Yeah
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:11:47,819 ]Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:11:50,439 ]I became more or less a specialist in the Bible because, you know, what an editor does. I was editing 15th century Bible plays from northeastern England. And you know what an editor does, everything, answer every question, you know, who wrote this?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:12:05,239 ]when, what is the source, what was changed, what was the author's intention as opposed to what the scribe wrote, and you get pretty close to the Bible when you're writing about Bible plays.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:12:15,419 ]So by the time I graduated, I was already on a path. I was committed to do the rest of those Bible plays, and a society at Oxford gave me the assignment to do it, which I spent 19 years doing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:12:28,409 ]Whoa.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:12:29,479 ]it was a huge, huge project.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:12:32,389 ]And then when I finished, I realized I could do what I wanted to do. So, because I was now tenured. So it actually takes another personal turn. I got divorced after a 20-year marriage.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:12:45,119 ]Yes
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:12:45,729 ]about a 30-year marriage and didn't feel like he could concentrate.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:12:49,319 ]Yeah, I have gone through a divorce and it's a very difficult time of life, at least for many of us.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:12:56,809 ]Yeah. I was able to read the sports pages, but that was pretty much it. Yeah. So I decided I would do an interesting topic. I went to Israel on sabbatical. And a friend asked why haven't you read about the Israeli airlift of Ethiopian Jews? Because it was an interesting, exciting sort of adventure. And nobody was writing about it and there was a society that had funded it. And they gave me access for some reason. They trusted me, gave me access to all their unedited notes and intelligence briefings from the time.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:13:32,759 ]In short, before you tell that story, who are the Ethiopian Jews? You know, you might say, why are there Jews in Ethiopia? And, what are they like?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:13:44,479 ]Well, the fundamental story of the Ethiopians is that the original king of Ethiopia was born to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:13:56,719 ]Ah!
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:13:57,679 'Because you know that Sheba went to visit Solomon and he answered her questions and she went home, but in their foundational myth, he also seduced her.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:14:07,159 ]Okay
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:14:08,089 ]and when she got home, she gave birth to a king, and that meant that he brought with him a large number of Solomon's courtiers. And he stole the ark of the covenant as well.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:14:21,209 ] Well, that's very...
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:14:25,529 ]They believe they're still in a church in Ethiopia. And so they believe all the Ethiopians believe, at least the northern Ethiopians believe, they can trace their heritage to King Solomon.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:14:37,639 ]Wow.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:14:38,999 ]but then converted most of them to Christianity and then a lot of them to Islam. But a small number, a percentage of them remain Jewish in their minds.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:14:49,339 ] they were black, they didn't know any Hebrew, they only knew the Bible, they didn't know any of the rabbinic traditions, but they believed they were Jewish and they were the victims of a kind of antisemitism, and they fought wars, they fought for their identity. So the Israelis didn't really believe that they were legitimate Jews. There are a number of African peoples who believe they're Jewish. One group in South Africa genetically really is.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:15:14,689 ]Okay.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:15:15,789 ]But this group, it was more dubious, but then there was a rabbi, I think in the 15th century, who, no, it was a rabbi looking back to 15th century documents said that he believes they're Jewish. And because of the Rabbinic decision, the later rabbis said that the chief rabbis, Sephardic chief rabbis of Israel declared them Jewish. And then in 1990 or so, 1989, politics took a turn so the Israelis wanted to bring people in.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:15:46,289 ]Okay
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:15:46,989 ]her birth rate was high. They were afraid they'd be overwhelmed. And so the Ethiopians were part of that. And Ethiopians wanted to come. And there was a civil war that was twenty-year-old civil war ending just then. And the Ethiopians, the Ethiopian Jews, seemed to be in danger. So the Israelis airlifted them out all in a day and a half. Twenty thousand of them.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:16:13,069 ]So that was the story.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:16:14,309 ]And so this was a story. It was somehow a turning point for you as well.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:16:20,099 ]right because now I could interview people. I interviewed the former prime minister. I interviewed the people who rescued them. I interviewed a lot of the Ethiopians who were in Israel.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:16:31,739 ]So with these interviews it was a lot better than sitting in the corner of a library. Yes You've done that for 20 years basically.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:16:41,219 ]Right. And I wanted to write on the Bible, but I wasn't in a position to discipline myself that way yet.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:16:50,089 ]So I published that book and then I was in a position, I knew that it was published by Oxford. I got a good relationship with the editor, the religion editor. So I proposed another topic and that was the evangelical support for Israel.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:17:06,579 ]And it's because of this phenomenon.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:17:09,649 ]I don't know if several years ago at least it has not been much recognized. I don't know at what point it came to your attention. I guess that's about now that you know this point in your story.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:17:22,099 ]Well, I was reading about it. Reading, I was there's a good book that's quite popular by a journalist named Gorenberg, an Israeli journalist, Gershom Gorenberg. And he's saying basically it's a bargain with the devil. And that the evangelicals have no real support for the Jews, they just want to convert you. And he was the one more or less, at first I thought that was what I would find. And I wasn't a journalist, but he got me, he sort of tutored me in how to do journalism.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:17:54,369 ]Okay.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:17:55,339 ]And then I found that when I began with this, will you share your born again story with me? Yes. When people began to trust me, I think, they began to tell me things that were different from what Gorenberg were seeing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:18:10,649 ]that were different from what?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:18:12,749 ]from what Gorenberg the journalist
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:18:14,949 ]Oh, okay. Thank you.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:18:16,419 ]almost... almost... sorry, they're not... No.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:18:20,559 ]Aha.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:18:21,629 ]Ugh
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:18:22,609 ]What are they trying to do? I mean, what is their interest then in you as they get to know you?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:18:27,799 ]One of them was named Robert Stearns and he said, look, I'll be honest with you. The best thing that ever happened to me was meeting a Jew named Jesus.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:18:36,559 ]Really?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:18:37,649 ]He said, "I want you to know, I live on the hyphen between Judeo-Christian."
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:18:43,149 ]really I live in the Hyphen between Judeo-Christian.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:18:49,129 ]Yeah. So I said, if I could convert Jews, I would be happy to do it. I'd like to have the same happiness and security that I have.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:18:56,539 ]Yeah
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:18:57,169 ]but no, no, if no Jew ever converts again, I will continue to support you and I would die for Israel.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:19:03,429 ]Wow Wow
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:19:06,049 ]Well, after hearing you talk, because you came to Abigail's Temple to give a talk about this, we went to a big Christian church that had a rally. We went to two, I think you were at one of them.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:19:20,509 ]And it was a mind-boggling phenomenon. There was Hebrew up front, there were Israeli flags, there was a evangelical outreach person from a Jewish organization who spoke in evangelical cadences, you know, to the congregation. You know, learned to do that. And they're making... so anyway, it's just an amazing phenomenon.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:19:44,549 ]I remember that not only because you and Abigail came to a second talk by me, that was amazing to me, but also because people cried at that meeting.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:19:52,149 ]Yeah
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:19:52,719 ]Because I was saying, you know, the evangelicals are not... Right. Okay, virtue.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:19:56,909 ]Yes
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:19:57,609 ]they have their own agenda, but it is an agenda that has to do with love and remorse and guilt and gratitude.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:20:07,249 ]Yeah. So people, I thought that I saw that people were beginning to fear each other less, at least the Jewish group was fearing the other side's intentions.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:20:16,949 ]Well, when when you spoke at Abigail's Temple, there may have been more Christians there than Jews, because Jews were very wary and were disturbed at the thought, because they all had this quite understandable, you know, history behind them, that Christians are the enemy.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:20:36,429 ]Right.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:20:37,239 ]your story began with the pogroms and so forth and with Ukraine which was the center and Abigail's story did too. That's her heritage and yet you discovered something completely different when you started interviewing these people.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:20:55,159 ]It didn't endear me to the liberal Jewish groups or to the more progressive evangelical groups because they believe that the evangelicals are committing theological error.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:21:08,509 ]What's the error?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:21:10,259 ]Well, the error would be believing that the Jews, that God's promises to the Jews are still valid. And that is and but more particularly a political error, if God promised the Holy Land, the entire land from Jordan to the sea. If He promised that to the Jews and the promise was still valid, then peace talks should not allow the return of any land. So, that meant that in the eyes of people like Gershom Gorenberg and others, evangelicals are a danger to the peace process.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:21:44,889 ]No. That's not exactly a theological insight. That's again, you know, pragmatics of the process.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:21:55,159 ]I interviewed political leaders about it as well, including a young congressman named Mike Pence.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:22:02,909 ]Oh, really?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:22:04,419 ]Mike Pence from Indiana. Yeah, and he said we would be flexible. They all told me they would be flexible if the democratically elected government of Israel made peace. He said, they think it's suicide, but if it's a democratically elected government, they would support it. But their flexibility stops at some point, and Pence told me, and for me, those that point is the problem is it's the borders of Jerusalem.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:22:31,079 ]really
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:22:32,269 ]No, no compromise on Jerusalem.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:22:34,589 ]Aha. Aha.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:22:36,139 ]So Pence was one of the figures who was active in the last year in Trump's decision to recognize all of Jerusalem, at least all of West Jerusalem as Israeli, and then the peace plan which gives all of Jerusalem except for some suburbs to Israel.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:22:54,359 ]Yeah.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:23:23,779 ]But back to your spiritual story.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:23:28,099 ]Well, I think that I gave talks. I gave sermons at the local Hillel for 20 years on High Holidays.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:23:39,269 ]Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:23:40,149 ]on my reading of the Bible, because now I was really enjoying teaching the Bible, and it came to life for me.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:23:50,029 ]Yeah
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:23:50,769 ]and I was giving talks about how I understood it. And then teaching was also very meaningful to me.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:23:58,739 ]Yes
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:23:59,419 ] because I would get some Jews, some evangelical kids, but a large number of kids who knew nothing about the Bible.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:24:07,379 ]You're teaching in a public university.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:24:10,059 ]Yeah.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:24:11,009 ]Yeah, so you're not reading about reading the Bible as one's own scripture.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:24:15,829 ]Right. No, just reading it as literature book with some informed discussion about what the Hebrew words suggest behind the language but asking at every meeting who is God
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:24:30,129 ]Mhm.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:24:31,659 ]And at first they thought it was kind of silly to keep asking it, but as we were moving through Genesis, they began to see that God, that understanding of God was changing.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:24:43,249 ]Yes
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:24:44,529 ]and some of the things that God says to you in your book.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:24:47,979 ]Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:24:48,779 ]I mean from the beginning He has a certain experience of being born or being coming to life with the creation and then in His early times he's more emotional and we're coming…
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:25:02,059 ]I found that shocking. I found that shocking of God changing. Where God has always spoken of his changeless, eternal, that's part of the perfection, once you're perfect, any change would be less good. But the story that I was told in my prayer experience was definitely of a God coming into the world and taking it from there and learning by interacting with people and your point is, well, that's the story of Genesis. And maybe of the whole Old Testament, certainly Genesis.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:25:37,909 ]Genesis is a wisdom book but not in the usual sense of like Proverbs. I think it's a wisdom book about growing up and as I told you over dinner, learning to tell the truth about yourself.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:25:50,899 ]showing remorse, forgiving each other, reconciling. I think that's the wisdom it has to teach. But also it reaches that point by showing honestly with real integrity how the patriarchs failed time and again and behaved badly as parents because of their failures.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:26:11,019 ] God kind of corrects them in silent, mysterious ways. So they're changing but He's changing too.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:26:18,779 ]Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:26:19,919 ]the God of the flood is not the God who is correcting Jacob and his sons, right? And putting them through that kind of perfect justice where what they did to hurt others happens to them, never rebuking them.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:26:37,329 ]It's really different from the God who rebukes. You know, in the flood story, the Babel story. You know, God changes and changes His way of dealing with his human beings.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:26:50,849 ]Yes. Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:26:53,159 ]And the kids were seeing it and then they got into it. And sometimes they'd express criticism. Like one of them said, you know, I think God is a first-time parent and I don't think He's really doing so well here.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:27:07,549 ]Right, but everybody is a first-time parent, you know. Yeah. That's one of the strange things that every life is shaped by amateurs, you know, the two parents who have no real experience or expertise at this.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:27:21,979 ]Yeah
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:27:22,809 ]they're learning to be a parent as the child is learning to be a person.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:27:28,019 ]Yeah, but by the end, by the time we see the reconciliation in the miraculous way that God has manipulated events in ways we couldn't see. By the time the brothers get to Joseph.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:27:38,389 ]Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:27:39,579 ]that there's a plan that we had no idea was going on and they didn't know. Right. And that revealing that plan forgives them…in the next couple of chapters because human beings lose their lessons. You know, that's one of the joys I've had in this last year writing this book, being able to read all the stuff I hadn't had time to read because I was doing other things. And some of the really great scholarship, people like guys like Sternberg and even the early work, h Sternberg says something like all biblical figures lose the lessons they learn with shocking speed.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:28:20,059 ]Oh really? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:28:23,259 ]to a large extent, it turns out he's probably right. But when the kids saw it for themselves, they kind of, these are English majors who get into it when they see psychological surprise.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:28:34,539 ]Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:28:35,759 ]So, yeah, for a lot of them, I would hear from them later after they graduated.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:28:44,949 ]hear from colleagues that the kids who took that class felt like they could do anything with literature. Because they had ripped line by line and seen the changes.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:28:54,929 ]Yes. Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:28:56,179 ]for me that has been, I mean, I almost became a rabbi, but didn't quite. So for me that was sort of like the rabbinic work. It wasn't necessarily with Jews.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:29:06,319 ]Yes
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:29:07,019 ]but it was leaving them with a sense of what the Bible really is and who God is in the Bible.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:29:14,189 ]Yes
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:29:15,199 ]And it's in spite of those early and developmental features you're talking about, at least Abigail has this dialogue with members of her own congregation often. They just say, well, that's people aren't really like that anymore. Those people were very, very different. But every time I turn around, I'm seeing the same kind of people and and in a sense the same kind of God that we're all learning our lines and it's an adventure together and a learning experience together.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:29:45,369 ]And what I'm seeing when I read in the book what I came up with is that the patriarchs, I broke to bear some of my psychology background. They're going through some of the clinical signs of what we would recognize.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:29:57,389 ]the suffering, especially consider Isaac.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:30:01,179 ]Is that right?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:30:02,419 ]trauma he goes through, then the symptoms turn out to be the same symptoms as developmental trauma in current thinking.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:30:09,509 ]Oh really? Really. And is that the key also to a spiritual lesson?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:30:17,129 ]I mean, is that part of what enables us to learn from his story?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:30:22,109 ]I think part of it is that this is kind of difficult because what Isaac is put through is extremely cruel.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:30:31,949 ]Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:30:32,869 ]But he's put through it for a purpose. Yeah. it's a purpose that God doesn't tell us.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:30:37,679 ]Yes. Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:30:39,169 ]So what I say in the book is, when my students object and start criticizing God, I would ask them to show a little theological humility.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:30:47,009 ]Yeah
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:30:47,839 ]we are just not beginning to begin. We don't even... our brains are like little peas compared to what we see in God. We can see ahead so many moves.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:30:58,889 ]Yeah
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:30:59,919 ]He's playing multidimensional chess.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:31:02,669 ]correct
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:31:03,719 ]And so let's show a little humility with it, but for whatever reason Isaac is put through that and children in Genesis do suffer.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:31:12,399 ]Yes
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:31:13,689 ]there's a lot of cruelty to children, but Isaac is the one who suffers the most and stays with Him.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:31:20,509 ]Yes. Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:31:22,009 ]So but even Isaac becomes sort of ennobled at the end and he blesses Jacob with the genuine blessing and sends him off.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:31:33,269 ]Yes. Yes.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:31:36,809 ]and that reminds me of something, you know, I'm told in God: An Autobiography, you know, in my prayers, God does not dismiss suffering. You know, there's this so-called problem of evil, which is how is it a good God can manage such a world with so much suffering and not intervene and prevent it and so forth. And, this question would come up periodically in my dialogues with God. And I would never get what seemed to me like a definitive answer. But, but part of the answer is there's a larger story.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:32:16,459 ]And that was sort of clear behind the screen, you might say, but it was, you know, what is that larger story? Well, one is told in some sense toward the end of God: An Autobiography, but one of the keys is that in my prayers, God is not one of these people who wants to say the suffering is made okay, you know, or there's not really suffering as some religious traditions say, or it's something to rise above. It's really, really bad. And I think the actual quote is, suffering is as bad as the people who turn against God because of it say it is.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:32:56,669 ]So we have to accept that as part of this complex reality of us, the world, and God. And anyway, but let me ask Stephen, at what point did you become aware of God: An Autobiography?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:33:15,529 ]And as I said, I just don't remember what point I saw it. I mean, I knew I found somewhere that you'd written it, and then I immediately wondered, I know it would have been out a while by that time. I put an enthusiastic review up on Amazon.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:33:31,539 ]Well good for you. Amazon reviews are very helpful to books. What struck you about it? About the book?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:33:42,689 ] I approached it as an English professor.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:33:47,169 ]Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:33:48,049 ]So as I read the Bible as literature, I was reading it as literature.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:33:51,599 ]That makes sense. For me, it's the voice of God, but people have to read it however they read it and take in what they get from it.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:33:59,939 ]Right. So, the question for me is, God in this book, is God a person?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:34:05,769 ]Yeah
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:34:06,579 ]is a developed character who is distinct enough from my friend Jerry.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:34:10,859 ]Yes.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:34:12,159 ]for me to accept him as a character.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:34:14,449 ]Yes
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:34:15,159 ]And I think in a lot of ways He is.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:34:17,299 ]Yeah
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:34:18,149 ] and the fact that God says things that you personally didn't believe.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:34:22,949 ]that I found very upsetting.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:34:25,289 ]Yeah. And I didn't like I didn't like every answer, but I respected the answers, that God gives you. So, what he tells you about Jesus being a unique son of God, and being God as well, it sounded Christian to me, which would mean that, I mean you said that Abigail would, how would Abigail react to all the suffering the Jews have gone through for what?
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:34:55,489 ]Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:34:56,809 ]So, on the other hand, when God talks about I was young then and I didn't and my emotions were strong, I didn't know how to deal with humans. That totally corresponded to my understanding of God from the Bible.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:35:13,129 ]Well, you know, on this Jewish question, which is interesting because I was told those things that sounded like more or less just what Christians believe about Jesus being, you know, uniquely special. Let's call it. And so I asked, should I become a Christian? Because I would do whatever the voice of God told me. No, they're a sect. That's what God told me. They're a sect. And at one point I started to mention the Trinity. Oh, don't go there.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:35:43,539 ]I mean that's, you know, it's Christian elaborate doctrines and don't go there. I was told to read about Jesus going into Jerusalem, but not Jesus coming out. And I took that to mean, you know, Jesus as we read in the Gospels and not Christianity, which is in a sense what came out of Jerusalem in the hands of Paul and others.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:36:11,919 ]and one day I was, I think it was Seattle maybe or Portland, I was in the limo back to the airport after some kind of visit. And, you know, looked over and saw kind of a nice Christian steeple and praying. I oh, you know, I also encountered Jesus as you know, in the book. And at that point I prayed to Jesus. And I say, is that your house? And I'm told, Well, there's some good people there, but they're not very spiritual.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:36:50,909 ]That's what I was told. I don't know if that meant Christianity in general or just that particular church, but I asked Jesus, "Well, where is your house?" You know, "Is that your house?" No. Where is yours?
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:37:05,429 ]the synagogue. I was told. Right. So anyway, I found that I have a surprisingly large number for that I assumed as soon as Jesus turns up or those first questions and answers about Jesus that I from my Christian background naturally asked that Jewish readers would simply unplug at that point. But I found that, before the book was published, the president of Abigail's Temple then, was reading the book online. I was putting excerpts online, you know, to generate interest.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:37:41,829 ]at night when he couldn't sleep, he would go read some of God's autobiography. And he asked would I come speak to the temple. Well, I put it off for a while because I didn't want to embarrass him, you know, that then I can't say there's no Jesus in this book.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:37:57,059 ] but he insisted and so I did and I've had a perfectly good discussion and reception and so forth and I know one of my Jewish friends who's rather learned and knows the Hebrew and as well as Greek and Latin and so forth found this it was a healing experience. Cause this Jesus isn't quite the Jesus that you know of the image he had beforehand. And so anyway, so I don't know, you know, how you processed all of those, but I have been struck by that.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:38:33,649 ]Well, you know, I do teach Matthew, Luke, John, and Romans, and a bit of Revelation in the course I do on the Bible. And of course, I'm doing it with respect and trying to take an exact same approach as to the Old Testament, but you know, I think it was Mary who actually...
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:38:51,749 ]put it in a language that I can accept. She was brought up Catholic.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:38:58,509 ]she was brought up in the time of Vatican Two. Okay. which revolutionary time and they weren't having like radical masses in their in their parents' basement.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:39:10,889 ]with a priest who didn't quite agree with the church and everything. So she was very liberal. She taught in a parochial school at one point and taught contraception.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:39:20,589 ]Oh my god.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:39:23,809 ]That's right.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:39:25,329 ]'Cause the church says you have to have an informed conscience before you make up your mind. So how can you be informed unless you've seen all the points of view? So she had...
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:39:33,339 ]found a loophole.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:39:38,329 ]pretty liberal point of view, but she feels that we all have bits of God, you know, and I think Jesus had a lot of it.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:39:45,689 ]Yeah, that's right.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:39:47,359 ]And I think you know, when some of my students sometimes come up to me afterwards and say, what do you really think personally about Jesus? I don't like to privilege myself as a professor, but with this one, I think he had a lot of God in him.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:39:59,249 ]Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's important.
Dr. Jerry L. Martin
[ 00:40:03,149 ]That's important. Well, you be well, Stephen, and may you be well. And I very much thank you for this interesting interview, and I wish you well in everything.
Dr. Stephen Spector
[ 00:40:17,229 ]Pleasure. And you and Abigail, all the best. Stay healthy.
Scott Langdon
[ 00:40:30,689 ]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.