If I were to write again
If I were to write again, it
would be about God
damned time.
Matt W Cook
writer.former fundamentalist.christianly fellow
May 22, 2026
June 28, 2024
I believe in God (an apology)
What is God?
It’s hard to believe in God today, especially if ‘God’ means a supremely good and powerful Person who made the universe and is very concerned with the beliefs and behaviour of mortals. The texts about this god often paint him as petty and contradict what we know about ourselves and the world. Also, this god’s representatives are often no better than the folks who ignore him.
If God is a craftsman, crafting a cosmos, then God must be less than Godself + God’s craft + the God-sized room within which God crafts, thus not God.
Here’s my take: God is the Infinite. The that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-conceived. The Alpha to Omega, A to Z, First and Last, the Beginning and the End.
God is before all things, and in God do all things consist. All things live and move and have their being in God. Everything that is, is in God, and there can be nothing outside of God. When I speak of God, I mean the single, infinite substance that constitutes the universe. If this sounds like Spinoza’s God, it more or less is.
Objections
But this God isn’t personal.
God is not a person, but that does not make God impersonal. God is not less than a person. God encompasses every past, present, and future person. So, insofar as God can be known, God can be known personally.
Because God is the sound of a tree falling in the forest; real when I hear it. God is personal when I engage in a personal relationship with God.
We make personal relationships with everything, even when we don’t mean to. When I trip on an uneven sidewalk, the stone is malicious. When I’m stuck on the highway, the traffic is evil. And this isn’t totally irrational. Consciousness must be as natural to the universe as magnetism or the strong and weak nuclear forces. Empathy (and anthropomorphism) is consciousness attempting to recognize itself. There is love here.
So, since I am a person, I crave a personal relationship with God. Religion is a way to intentionally, specifically, and skillfully cultivate a personal relationship with God. There are others.
This isn’t the God of the Bible.
The Bible does not present a unified depiction of God (thank God). Paul understands God differently than Jesus, who approaches God differently than Moses. Origen would not have agreed with Augustine who would not have agreed with Calvin or Darby or any Christian alive today. Every theologian has understood God differently, despite common heritages. This is not (necessarily) a problem.
The Bible is not a science text or a user’s manual. It is a library connecting today’s living faiths with their ancient roots, buried deep in inaccessible history. Its purpose is not to declare facts about God, but to show the depth of our inheritances and inspire us to grow forward from faith to faith, glory to glory, preparing the way for something amazing. To confess Christianity is to take our place in this ever-changing Body of faith and practice.
The Bible has its proper place in my faith: a Godsend, and useful for apologies, gospels, rebukes, and encouragements: so that the religious practitioner can be skilled and equipped for every good work.
Why Christianity?
It is my inheritance, and my children’s after me. Years of practice gave me a rather particular set of spiritual skills. Prayer still lets me talk to God, hear God, and reaffirm my best aspirations. Worship still fills me with joyful holy awe. Scripture still provides spiritual meat and drink. The Father still hides in unapproachable light. The Son is still present in the eucharist, the Body, and myself. The Holy Spirit is everywhere. You say no one is listening when I pray? I listen. And, beyond these clinging aggregates that I call myself, who knows what sapience is privy to my devotional utterings?
A Christian God
The Trinity is one of the oldest and most controversial mysteries in Christianity. Here is a way of understanding the Three-in-One:
God is Father (the Almighty)
The eternal, immortal, immutable, invisible God, sustaining the universe through the Word of His Power. God the Father is no less than the unapproachable, unchangeable laws of nature that govern the universe. The founding principle of reality. The prime substance from which all things proceed. The consistent, unalterable nature of the universe.
God the Father is unknowable, and yet I want to know God. I see something when I stare at the abyss. I hear a sound when the tree falls.
God is Son (the Word)
That sound is the Son, the image of the invisible God, the Word by which the universe comes into being. The Son is firstborn of all creation—begotten not made, co-eternal with the Father—who died and lives, forevermore. The expression of the Father, the Laws of Nature in action. If the Father is the Game, the Son is the game being played.
According to my scriptures, Jesus of Nazareth was declared to be the Son of God in power and taught his followers to likewise call God Father, becoming the eldest of many siblings. His death and literal resurrection in the people who abide in him, the Body of Christ, is one of the great mysteries that Christianity peeks into.
God is Holy Spirit (the Paraclete)
The Holy Spirit could be the biggest mystery because She’s the one by which we speak about God. Like thinking about the mind or looking at the eye; it’s hard to use a tool on itself.
The old creeds say that the Ghost proceeds from the Father, or from the Father and the Son. Jesus calls her a comforter, advocate, or helper. She tells prophets and poets what to say. She opens minds and regenerates hearts. She’s the wind that blows where it wishes, carrying us along. I think God the Holy Spirit is the infinite interplay of relationships arising from the Father and the Son. The manifestation of God’s immanence, the substance of the connection between all things on all levels. This is a mystery.
God is Love
The universe is not cold, uncaring, or trying to kill us. The Earth is a perfect fit. True, not all of it. And yes, the vacuum of space is painfully lethal, but we didn’t emerge there, did we? Despite the ways we have marred it and the fact that death comes with life, this world is friendly. The sky pours water and the earth produces food. The sun gives us warmth while gravity keeps us stable. Behold this gorgeous flesh we inherit, full of sensors that light the universe with taste and touch and sight and sound! What do we call this but the love of God?
It is right to rest in the benevolence of God because God brings me into being and keeps me that way, until this form returns to dust, making room for more of the life that God loves.
Final Thoughts
It might seem like this deconstructs God into meaninglessness. I understand if you feel this way. I would never try to supplant someone’s idea of God with my own. That’s an aggressive idolatry.
But my devotional life has flourished with this perspective. If you find it hard to believe in God today, maybe this is a good place to start.
October 5, 2021
How a Master’s in Creative Writing is similar to being Born Again and Deconstruction
Got the MFA. Now what?
I suppose I assumed the fortune and glory would start pretty much immediately after defending my thesis. I mean, I did the work, right? I’ve pounded out hundreds of thousands of words. Cut, polished, and primed them into a lovely little novel. But what’s changed with me? I still seem to be the same.
Maybe it’s kind of like being Born Again.
When you convert to Evangelicalism, you are considered a new person even if you don’t feel different. Your perspective is new. Your priorities are reordered. You learn to endure, even delight in, esoteric rituals and readings—there is a skill to sitting quietly with your community, remembering an event none of you were there for, discerning it in words and the shared wine and bread.
Deconstruction™ is similar; everything is new. Values shift, painfully. Your community changes. There’s nothing easy there, but it gives power, too. The power to grow your own meaning, like tomatoes on the balcony. The power to prune and repent of sinful beliefs and practices that you’ve never been able to get rid of before. Perspective.
But we’re talking about an MFA here—being Born Again as a Master of writing. I think I can picture this the same way. I have learned to work through this strange art for hours on end, even when it hurts, and I hate it. I value readings and the furtherance of good writing. The very costly effort that was required to gain this title has deepened my approach to the craft.
So, I’m glad I finished this, even though nothing has changed except my perspective. Because that’s kind of everything.
June 19, 2019
15 Years and Counting
During some intensive spring cleaning I stumble across a thick bundle of papers and folders: immigration documents from the first couple years of marriage. Included are several evidences of our mutual affection such as love letters, wedding favours, gifts, and signed statements–we had to prove our relationship was real.
Reading through, I remember how much we’ve changed.
First we were kids, entralled by a wide-looking world.
We grew up fast and got married.
A fledgling family,
we crossed land and sea
We came back different people,
to a different-feeling world.
Even when certain things broke apart,
we never did.
We never even came close.
I love being with you.
I love how we keep changing
and how we always seem to be changing
into people
in love
Love you Ruth. Happy 15th!
June 3, 2019
Review: What We See in The Smoke by Ben Berman Ghan
Part novel, part anthology, Ben Berman Ghan‘s What We See in The Smoke is an evocative and powerful read. Each chapter is a separate short story that can be read on its own, independent of the other chapters. Taken as a whole, they form a grand epic of humanity’s descent into the far future–through a Torontonian lens. Each section and story progressively moves further from the Toronto (and Earth) we know.
The sci-fi elements are both outlandish and belieavble. The tone is often dark and sometimes funny, and there’s always something at stake that hits at the heart.
The first section, “These Memories of Us,” covers the nearly familiar future. We see inter-connected people struggling against overbearing and implacable systems while tending to their own limitations and empowerments. “Planet 58” put us in the mind of people whose understanding of the wider world threatens to cut them off from the local one. “Time Loop Tango” dances with determinism in a way that pushes at its limits. “A Carnival World” jars the reader with 2nd person narration.
Aside: I heard a professor say it wasn’t possible to write convincingly in the 2nd person but obviously that prof had never read “A Carnival World” or the other 2nd person stories in this book or N.K. Jemisin.
The second section, “These Violent Machines,” stretch all the way to 2280. The first story, “Yum,” opens with an epitath from Moby Dick that sets a dark stage for the rest of the book.
“Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?”
While the stories are not (all) about cannibalism, they each introduce a dehumanising factor. “Darkly Dreaming” envisions a Toronto in which the controlling arm of the corporations reach deeper inside a person than we ever thought possible. “Re-Pilot” follows a job applicant trying to adjust to life on Mars. “The End of History” puts the reader in the front seat again, returning to the 2nd person to watch the end of the world as it comes.
As the stories fly further and further from out present-day point of view, Ghan keeps bringing us back to ourselves with relatably broken characters.
Finally, “An Uncertain and Distant World” takes us far from familiar earth, with mind-implants, teleporting art theives, robots on trial, and (my favourite) an ever-evolving race of beings waging eternal war on a hull breach. The settings and circumstances are believebly outlandish. The characters are tanglible and real.
What We See in The Smoke peels back painful and beautiful layers of humanity in a time when we are becoming more and more aware of the futures we are constructing for ourselves. These stories are engrossing and powerful. The prose is darkly comic and brightly sombre. This is a book for anyone who loves stories about Toronto, rocket ships, and the kinds of love that can survive apocalypse. Go buy it!
Buying Options:
Crowsnest Books
Chapters Indigo
Amazon
May 21, 2019
It’s interesting how myth can be taken in different ways
eg: There are at least seven competing theologies of the atonement.
I should totally blog about that
eg: Scripture can be used to condemn or justify war, pacifism, civil rights, racism, bodily autonomy, abortion, charity, racism, colonialism, communism, murder, feminism, capitalism, polygamy, poverty, penitentiaries, and everything else I can’t think of at the moment.
Might want to blog about that, too
eg: Concepts emerge from sacred books that lens our reality, and can either enable or repress us.
Definitely blogging about that soon
But today I’m just thinking about a bit of Bible, and my two favourite ways of taking it.
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.
Ephesians 4:26
This means: don’t sin by letting anger control you, and resolve your fights before going to bed.
or
This means: be righteously angry, and don’t let your anger’s day end.
April 4, 2019
Matt Cook: Deconverson (not so) Anonymous
Had a great conversation with the Graceful Atheist! Have a listen!
Today’s show is a Deconversion (not so) Anonymous episode. In these episodes, people who have gone throughdeconversionor faith transitions tell their stories anonymously or otherwise.
On today’s episode, my guest is Matt Cook from Toronto Canada. Matt was a former evangelical missionary to Pakistan and a preacher who lost his faith about six years ago. Matt is not your typical deconvert. He calls himself religious but not spiritual. Several years after deconversion, Matt chose to live a year “Christianly.” During that year he prayed, he read the bible daily, he went to church and practiced other spiritual disciplines. Although, it did not change his mind he has found continued value in these disciplines and practices some of them to this day.
You can learn more about Matt and his year of living Christianlyat his blogmwcook.com, on his YouTube channel and
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March 15, 2019
Oh Be Careful Little Brain What You Believe
Whenever there is a horrible violent act like the terrorist attack in Christchurch, I want to say something. I want to offer thoughts and prayers, but I know they can be vapid. I want to say how broken-hearted I am, but that just puts the focus on me. I want to say how much I hate the beliefs and ideas that inspired the terrorists, but that seems easy.
So I’ll offer this: We must be careful what we believe. I’ve always thought that we cannot choose what we believe, that the mechanisms which produce and sustain convictions are more or less out of our control. But there’s a lot more to it.
If you really want to believe something, you’ll find a way to make it fit. These terrorist attacks were the result of deep conviction and sincere belief. These terrorists acted according to their hateful ideas.
We must be on guard for the seeds of hate we let take root in our minds and hearts. They start small and, and might not give a hint as to how they will grow.
The immigrants are stealing our jobs.
The LGBTQ agenda is poisoning our kids.
The Muslims want to Islamify the West.
The OTHERS threaten the US.
Ideas about race, religion, or any kind of identity threatening our own liberty are dangerous. Do not allow these ideas to grow. Call them out. Expose them so they cannot sprout.
Terrorists are tempted by the desire for easy answers to complicated situations. Desire conceives belief. Belief, full-grown, can bring forth death.
February 13, 2019
Religious, but not Spiritual
I get confused when people say they are spiritual, but not religious.
I don’t know how you can do spirituality without religion. Religion is like scaffolding. Both the five-hundred-year-old tradition and the vague conception of following your own inner truth are religion. Religion is the structure, the ritual, the lens through which you see parts of the world.
I think I’m religious, but not spiritual.
“What does that even mean?”
I pray and read the Bible. I belt out hymns and attend church. Christianly myth undergirds my interpretation of reality. I love sacred things. I’m religious, and I can’t help it.
But I don’t think any of the stories really happened. I don’t think the Bible is a book from God, and I don’t think that Jesus rose from the dead. I don’t think anyone is listening when I pray, or spiritually leading me, or that I’ll survive my death in any meaningful way. I’m not spiritual. I believe in the sacred, not the holy.
The Bible is sacred, foundational to many religious frameworks. But it is not holy. It is not whole and pure and uninjured. It is a collection of disparate works across time and genre that do not internally cohere without a complex hermeneutic formula. If I believed it was holy, I would have to accept the obviously evil bits of the Bible.
A benefit of being religious but not spiritual is that I can hack my religion. Since it’s not the eternal edict of the universe, I can toss out every word of the law that contradicts the spirit of love and, with a nod to Marie Kondo, every doctrine that does not spark joy can be reverently discarded.
Matt W Cook 