Matt W Cook

I’m listening to a bit of Switchfoot these days. Switchfoot always puts me into a strange sort of hopeful melancholy.

Were we not meant to live for so much more? Do we want more than this world has to offer? Do mice and men have second tries? Do we want more than the wars of our fathers? Does every breath inside really scream for second life?

Do we all wake up every once in a while wondering what it’s all worth? Wondering what point there is to doing whatever it is we do? Wondering how we’re managing to spend most of our time on things that…don’t really matter much?

I preached this weekend, and I guess that contributes to the melancholy. I’m always melancholy after preaching. I preached about cataclysm. I’d love a cataclysm. Because I do want so much more. I want so much more than this world has to offer. This world is bunk. Crap. What’s the use? What’s the use of it all if there’s nothing behind it to give it value?

But whining about it does no good, right? I want more than the world will give me, so I guess I’d better get up off my ass and go get more. Jesus calls out to me, daring me to follow him. Daring me to laugh in the world’s face as it tries to sell me its trinkets. Do I dare? Do I dare?

I’d like to dare. I wonder if we even know how, though.

“Your fly is undone,” the Giant said. He spewed his drink over the bar as another bout of laughter wracked his body. He threw his head back and laughed hard, shaking the walls of the tavern and drawing every eye in the place (which, counting the Hovelton twins down from Fair Havens, numbered in the thousands). The svirfnebli eyed him cooly and fingered the hilt of the axe at his belt loop.

“Have you got anything else you want to say?” the svirfnebli said. The combination of his words and stare should have frozen the Cloud Giant’s contorted face for three weeks. But the Giant merely waved him off, wiping a stream of tears that had begun to flow from his eyes.

“No, hehe, that was all, haha! Ah, gosh, what a good one! What’s your name squirt?”

This last statement deepened the svirfnebli’s mood. He jumped down from his stool and snatched the axe into his hands.

“Woah there little guy, don’t mind me! I meant no disrespect. You must admit that the fly thing was a regular gizzle-tugger. I mean, three Morstas and a Zambeezo rat couldn’t keep a crowd entertained as long on such a simple trick.”

Mollified, the svirfnebli swung his axe at the Cloud Giant. As it lodged in the Giant’s arm, the creature gave a huge yell, followed by hysterical cackling.

“Ah! You hit my funny bone! Ahahaahah. Take it out squirt! Hurry, it’s too much!”

Embarrassed, confused, and more than a little dejected that all of his efforts seemed to be severely ironical, the svirfnebli obeyed the laughing Cloud Giant (who was banging the table with his other hand) and pulled the axe free. After a few minutes of weezing and clutching his enormous chest, the Giant turned to the svirfnebli.

“Thanks! I thought I was done for back there. I’m addicted to laughter, and my doctor says if I’m not careful, I’m going to keel over and die in the middle of a good roar. What’s your name squirt?”

the svirfnebli grimiced, but feeling a curious attraction to the magnanimous Giant, he picked his mug up off the floor, ordered another round for the two of them, and started in.

“The name’s Patr,” he began…

What do you call it when this
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Have you ever noticed the default typing for most desktop publishing programs? You know those nonsense words that just fill up the empty space before you start typing?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…

It turns out, publishers had been using the same words to fill space for 500 years. And it’s not just gibberish. It’s a quote from Cicero’s work, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Goods and Evils). It seems to be a pretty neat piece of work. The whole paragraph from which Lorem ispum is taken could be translated like this:

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

For some reason, this reminds me of Christ’s command that we deny ourselves. That we pick up our cross and follow him. Why should we deny ourselves? Why pick up that cross? why subject ourselves to so much pain and crappy living? Is pain an end?

No. We do not deny ourselves because there is something good about denying ourselves. We don’t endure and submit to pain and willing take actions that will hurt us because pain is good. We do it for a higher good. We are willing to be hurt because any light, momentary afflictions that we endure properly will work together for our good and produce and eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.

We work for good. We bleed for good. We die for good. So long as we are attached to The Good.

I wonder if a former president had said this a while ago, things might have worked out better.
BBC Link

Almost the entire Muslim world thinks that America has been at war with the Muslim world for years. Why didn’t former leaders ever think to clarify? Why was there so much stigma and labeling of certain countries as forces of righteousness and others as ‘axis of evil’? When Obama reaches out to Iran with an offer of friendship, what is he saying? He’s saying that the Irani people are not especially evil. And he’s saying it clearly.

I don’t think any former president have thought the Iranis or Muslims to be generally more evil than anyone else. I know that Bush’s beef with Iraq, Iran and North Korea was with their leaders, not with their people. But how is the average inhabitant of these countries supposed to know that? When the millions of people in Karachi hear that the greatest Christian nation in the world has attacked and overthrown Muslim nations, what are they supposed to think? What are they told to think? When the US sends drones into Pakistan and blows up houses, what are they to think? When the US promotes sanctions that hurt the average Irani more than the government, what are they to think?

But when Obama says in clear English: “We are not at war with the Muslim world,” then the only war to continue believing that America hates Muslims to to call him a liar. And I know many will. But some won’t. And at least the West is now doing what can to clarify things. There’s a lot to be said for clarity.

A Muslim man will generally tell you that both the Bible and the Quran are revelations from God. He may think that the Bible has been corrupted a bit, but generally he’ll say that it’s still a holy book. Until he reads it.

When he reads it he expects to find things that he doesn’t agree with. He’s prepared for that. What he’s not prepared for is the fact that it’s not a monologue. The Quran is a dictation from God to Mohammad. The Muslim assumes that the Bible is the same. When he sees that it’s really a collection of poems, songs, histories, stories, personal letters and wild visions, it just doesn’t compute for him. He can’t understand how Paul is writing even though God is speaking. And so often, God doesn’t speak through simple prose.

The Bible is literature. Ancient, beautiful, complex, imagery-filled literature. God uses poems and songs and stories to get his ideas across. Why? Why doesn’t he just do things instruction-book style like the Quran?

Poems, songs and stories have an ability that prose does not. They can contain great depth in small spaces. They can transmit ideas in minutes that would take a theologian hours to unpack. Which is why we spend hours and hours unpacking small passages.

Which is why poems, songs and stories are powerful tools that we need to be using. We tend to use prose because it’s simple, though a little awkward. But there is hardly a theologian who can capture the depth of the Christian experience that Bunyan caught in Pilgrim’s Progress. Or the battle between good and evil in Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet. Or the picture of the transiency of evil in Star Wars.

So ye who are creative and have something to say, pick up your pens and paper and say it. Say it skillfully. Say it creatively. Say it with words that make pictures and pictures that come alive. On we go.

If you know Julia Stiles and you watched Ghostwriter, this.is.awesome.

If you know Julia Stiles and you watched Ghostwriter, this.is.awesome.

I wish we could be a little more affectionate around here.

In Pakistan, if you meet an old friend whom you haven’t seen for a while, you hug and greet affectionately.

When you meet a good friend you just saw yesterday, you hug and greet affectionately.

When you are introduced to a friend of a friend, you hug and greet affectionately.

When you bump into a stranger on the street and start up a conversation, you hug and greet affectionately.

See a pattern?

In Canada I think we only dare hug if we meet a very good friend whom we have not seen for a very long time. Hugging is baaaaaad.

I was thinking a bit about this and trying to understand why we in the West refuse to be affectionate with each other. I had an idea.

I think we equate affection with sexuality. We live in such a sex-saturated culture that touching of any kind is suspect. We fear ulterior motives and we fear people suspecting that we have ulterior motives. I think it’s sad, though. We miss a lot. We can’t greet each other with a holy kiss (or even a hug) because of our morbid fascination and obsession with sexuality.

When sexuality is not in its proper place, other relationship issues become difficult, don’t they?

So hug, guys. Hug your brother, hug your buddy. Plant a kiss on his cheek every once in a while, too. Affection is good.