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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Other Series:

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

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

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Questions? Comments? Text Us!

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

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

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

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

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

Explore the full Radically Personal Series and Book

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

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

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

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Other Series:

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

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

Stay Connected

• Share: questions@godanautobiography.com
• Ultimate Questions Substack
• Get the books: God: An Autobiography, Radically Personal

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