Matt W Cook

writer.former fundamentalist.christianly fellow

Category: a year of living christianly

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.

Matt Cook: Deconverson (not so) Anonymous

Had a great conversation with the Graceful Atheist! Have a listen!

Matt Cook: Deconversion (not so) Anonymous. Click to play episode on anchor.fm
Click to play episode on anchor.fm

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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Nearing the End

I thought I’d have done a lot more for this year of living christianly. I wanted to read the entire Bible, join a local church, and post regular blogs and videos about religion and spirituality and scripture.

I didn’t.

I couldn’t finish the Bible. This is partly because it took a long time for morning devotions to become a habit. Also, scripture is to be lingered over, not devoured. Bible reading isn’t like studying for a test, it’s like a homeowner going through storage, seeking treasures old and new.

Church was difficult. I was always on the outside, even though I’d sing louder than most. Our local evangelical church worked homophobia into every sermon (they will know we are Christians by our sexual conservatism!). And I was on the outside in progressive churches because they never sang songs I knew. In either case, I couldn’t take communion, which I’ve always understood to be the chief meeting of the Church.

My posts about religion, spirituality, and scripture were irregular. I found myself in a middling space, seeing the profound flaws and injustices of religion, along with the beatific and life-changing powers of religious spirituality. This has been hard to write about.

So here I am, my year of living christianly nearly over, and I’m no closer to believing in the crucial aspects of the Christian religion: the existence of a personal God and the resurrection of His son, Jesus Christ. These doctrines are the crux that bar my way back.

But I am not done with this old-time religion. Morning devotions have turned into something powerful for me, and I’ll keep them. I realize that I’ll probably never be done with The Book. And in the new year, I’ll have more to say about it.

An Unbeliever’s Prayer

Sometimes I pray that God would

create in me a clean heart
renew in me a right spirit
have his presence go with me
and restore the joy of my salvation

What can that mean to someone like me who does not believe
in God,
or cleanness of heart,
or salvation?

A clean heart can be unclouded desires
A renewed right spirit can be an energetic and positive attitude
The presence of God can cast out fear
The joy of my salvation can be ultimate gratitude with my state and rituals

That works

Biblical Fiction: “Not Wanted on the Voyage” and “The Red Tent”

I’ll start reading any stories based on Bible stories. Ancient myths of all kinds are like fertile fields that grow new crops every time they’re sown. My favourites, so far, are Timothy Findley’s “Not Wanted on the Voyage” and Anita Diamant’s “The Red Tent.” 

They’re completely different kinds of books.

“Not Wanted on the Voyage” is a deep and whimsical fantasy about Noah’s Ark.

“The Red Tent” is a stark and realistic portrayal of the life of Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter.

Both of them grabbed me deeply.

Meanwhile, I have given up on Gore Vidal’s “Live From Golgotha.” It’s funny, clever, and I just can’t bring myself to finish it. The premise is interesting: time travelers want to shoot the crucifixion for NBC. There’s wit and anachronisms everywhere. But I just don’t care.

I’m wondering what Findley and Diamant have that Vidal (in this book anyway) does not. Here are my thoughts:

  • All three are willing to turn the patriarchs on their heads, but Findley and Diamant make it serve the story. Noah and Yahweh are hugely problematic characters in “Not Wanted on the Voyage.” Diamant paints Jacob just as double-sided as the Bible. There is irreverence, but not for its own sake. The irreverence serves the story.
  • Findley and Diamant dig deep when the suffering comes. They refuse to shy away from the depths of human hurt–and human apathy. But Vidal’s light touch makes nearly everything that happens in the story light. And since it is light, it doesn’t matter.
  • Perhaps most importantly, Diamant and Findley make me CARE SO MUCH about the characters. Like, ruin your day kinda care. Meanwhile, I can’t bring myself to invest much in the people in “Live From Golgotha,” despite its very interesting premise.

So if you’re looking for some really good Biblical fiction, pick up Anita Diamant’s “The Red Tent” and Timothy Findley’s “Not Wanted on the Voyage.” Both are engrossing, gripping, and more than worth your time. 

And if you want something that smacks like an irreverent Douglas Adams, “Live From Golgotha” might be for you.

Jeremiah’s Dirty Underwear

The LORD was appalled with the nation that called themselves after his name. They oppressed the strangers, the fatherless, the widows, and shed innocent blood all over the place. They churned out wickedness like a fountain spewing forth water. The prophets lied. The priests chased political power. The congregates loved it. The pastors were brutish and did not seek the loving-kindness of their God. They did not grieve. They made their faces harder than rocks. They refused to repent. They had faith that they were God’s nation, even though they didn’t act like it. Time for an object lesson.

The LORD called Jeremiah.

“Get yourself some new underwear. Something nice, made of linen. Wear it, and don’t wash it.”

Jeremiah did that.
A few days later, the word of the LORD came again.

“Take it off, and hide it under a rock by the river.”

Jeremiah did that.
Many days later, the word of the LORD came again.

“Go back and fetch that gitch. How does it look?”

Pretty bad.

“This evil people,” saith the LORD, “which refuse to do justice and live the loving-kindness they claim I am full of, are just like this loincloth: good for nothing.”

Lament

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem (Rembrandt)

“Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people” (Lam. 3:48)

As a religion, Christianity may have failed. Not because of its roots, but its branches.

Because it has become a tool for oppressors,

and the watchers on the wall have either not noticed,

or have sided themselves with antichrists:

Scribes
Pharisees
Pilates
Caesars

They rail against the marginalized, forgetting that the Christ-followers are called to empty themselves.

Like Christ, who did not consider his privilege something to be grasped and squandered,
but
poured
out
for the benefit of many.

The holy city sinned.

Her prophets and pastors see vain and foolish things. They do not expose their people’s sin, but glory in their own self-righteousness. They lay false burdens on those who trust them.

I weep for my people, the Church. Evangelicalism has become a byword because her leaders side with oppressors instead of the Samaritan, the adulterous, and the crucified thief.

Justly do her enemies wag their heads.

 

On Abuse and Hell

I’ve heard it said that teaching your children that Hell is real is a kind of child abuse. That jarred me. Billions of people believe in Hell—most of the disagreement is just over who has to go there.

But I can see how belief in Hell can be hurtful.

It teaches that the most loving being in the universe is still cruel enough to hurt you forever.

Stop. Don’t throw down your easy reply about the holiness of God just yet. Let it sink in that the Author of love is willing to pour eternal misery on you.

What kind of love is learnt from a Father like this?

Of course, if Hell is real and the go-to place for those of us who can’t muster belief, then not telling people about Hell is abusive.

Praise be, then, that it’s not a Biblical concept in the first place.

Christianly Book Review: Life at the End of Us Vs Them by Marcus Peter Rempel

images“The warnings I offer here do not come out of a superior religion but out of a failed religion

Marcus Peter Rempel’s book, “Life at the End of Us vs Them,” is a seriously thought-provoking view of Christianity and its place in our “strange, endtime world.” Drawing on René Girard and Ivan Illich, Rempel presents a view of the Cross that necessarily undermines any power structure that would try to build on it.

The crucifixion of Christ, he argues, is not best seen as a judicial act of substitutionary atonement. Instead, it is something like God identifying with the most marginalized individuals, the most hated outcasts, the people who society crucifies. “It is by taking on the viewpoint of those it marginalizes that Cross-formed culture comes to be accurately mapped, and more justly remade” (13). Rempel takes this understanding, and applies it to his relationships with “those who are his other: women, queer folk, refugees, Muslims, atheists, and Indigenous people.”

Here’s what I like about this view of the Cross: it reminds you of everything at once. It reminds you that you are part of the system that crucifies innocents. At the same time, it offers to forgive you. And it bids you pick up your cross, and follow in that way of looking at the world–that the “least of these” is, somehow, the Christ. It shifts the view from Us-Them to I-Thou. Frankly, it reminds us that Jesus never meant to convert the world. Yes, he meant for his Way to go out into all the world, but not to colonize it. Not to become the oppressor.

The Cross will always glare accusingly at any system or person that tries to use it as a tool of oppression. It undermines all sacred violence. It perpetually strips the sacred cloth from the temple, showing it to be empty. The violence we thought we did in God’s name was actually against his own son. All persecution persecutes the Christ. Christianity as a religion, Rempel argues, has failed insofar as it has been complicit in violence.

At least, that’s how it could work. From what I read on the Internets, I don’t see a reconciliation between Church and the vulnerable anytime soon. If it’s possible, though, for follows of Christ to sit with the very marginalized instead of always being seen beside the oppression, this book gives clues on how it will be done.

I heartily recommend this book to people who want to take the Bible seriously and are troubled by the dissonance between Church and Christ. If you believe that substitutionary atonement is the only correct way of understanding the Cross, you will probably balk at a lot of what Rempel has to say. Consider, though, that both Scripture and Church have cast the Cross in different lights to glean fresh insights from that wonderful tragic event. Rempel offers a light that the Church today would do well to meditate on, even if she can’t swallow the whole thing.

A Christian and Two Ex-Believers in a Pink Room

Ruth and I sat down with P.J. Tremblay, A.K.A. P’Jamz. We all met at Bible college a couple life-times ago. We had a great conversation about the faith and losing it and keeping it and how we can all start to speak the same language.

P’Jamz recently released his an LP, Foibles & Fiction. Songs like Proud and Odd One Out candidly talk about the fallout from losing faith. Go to his Audio4n6 Site to check him out and buy his album.

 

Sit in on our conversation on the Audio4n6 channel. There’s a lot here, and it’s been split up into convenient little chapters:

Part 1 — How we all got to Bible college

Part 2 talks about evangelism and missions

Part 3 — the uses and abuses of Christianity

Part 4 talks about what it takes to be successful at religion

Part 5 — how if religions don’t change, they don’t endure

Part 6 makes Ruth choke on water

Part 7 — childlike curiosity

Part 8 reminds us there are a few things to keep

Part 9 — the power religion can provide

Part 10 talks about how hard it sometimes is to talk about this stuff