Matt W Cook

writer.former fundamentalist.christianly fellow

Category: Archive

August 31, 2009

Analytical

var addthis_pub=”4a0af351783743a8″;I recently lost Google Analytics.

I was playing around with new-looking blog templates and all of a sudden it was gone. Google Analytics is a super-slick way of keeping track of how your traffic is doing, where it’s coming from and how it’s getting to your site. I suppose I could re-load it…

But suddenly I don’t really want to.

Do I really care how many people read this? Yes. I honestly do. I wish this was a super-popular blog that had visitors from all over the planet scrambling up the bandwidth pipe to bask in my cyber-wisdom.

But I don’t know if my handy-dandy counter is helping with that. So I’m not going to put it back on.

And I’m not going to get one of those flashy, pretty templates for the blog. I don’t want you to come here just because it’s pretty. I want this blog to stand or fall with words. Are the words good? Are the sentences valuable? Do you, the reader, get something from the time you spend here? Then it stands.

Otherwise it falls.

Either way, I’m not going to be analytical about it anymore.
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August 28, 2009

Bits of Flesh

var addthis_pub=”4a0af351783743a8″; It was the bits of flesh I noticed first.

The DVP was jammed almost as soon as we got on it. Sirens wailed in the distance behind us, coming quickly closer. Two police cars passed us on either shoulder.
“Car accident,” I muttered to Ruth and Jodi. We were taking Jodi to the Greyhound station downtown. She was going back to Quebec after staying with us for about a week and a half.
The traffic started to move and funnel into the left lane. I saw the police cars and looked for a sign of accident. The police were moving around quickly, putting up that yellow DO NOT CROSS tape and talking on radios. A couple cars had been pulled over to the side, but they didn’t seem damaged at all. There was no broken glass. No tire marks. I didn’t notice anything.

Until I noticed the bits of flesh.

Then it all came in quick. There was a body lying under a white sheet, bare feet exposed. I turned away quickly and felt sick. The girls gasped. It was then that I noticed where we were. Right under the Millwood bridge. Suicide.

I can’t find anything on the Internet about it. Who jumped? Why? Anyone care? What pushes someone so far? What makes a man think that non-life is better than life?

Ruth wondered aloud about what the jumper’s relatives must think now. Had they cared about him during life? Would they feel any guilt now that he was gone?

Depression is a dangerous thing. It’s too strong to fight with simple words. “Cheer up!” does nothing.

Toronto is a strange place. The highest and the lowest. The richest and the poorest. The happiest and the jumpers. What potential a large city has! What opportunity lies in dense population! What if we loved? What if we cared? What if we treated each other in a way that made it so there were no jumpers? What if we lived like Jesus told us to? What if we followed him?

Are we more than bits of flesh?

The next bridge down had a suicide net on it. I heard it cost about $2.5 million. Someone once commented that the money would be better spent on social services and suicide support lines. I doubt that would help. You know what would help? You know what would bring the suicide rate down? You know what would have stopped that nameless man from jumping?

Love. If someone loved him and knew his name. If we would just love people – all people – wouldn’t the world be better? What would it be like if Christ-love infected us all? What would it be like if we were all willing to love the unloved?

Paradise on earth?

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August 21, 2009

Up @ Night #9 – Naiveté

var addthis_pub=”4a0af351783743a8″;Did you hear about how NASA had a computer that proved Joshua’s missing day?
Or what about the story about how Einstein proved there was a God?
And, of course, how Barak Obama is really a Muslim and probably a terrorist.
Did you know some airlines make sure a non-Christian is flying their plane, in case of Rapture?

I’ve often wondered where this strange, permeating sort of Christian Naiveté comes from. What make intelligent Christians believe in and stand up for things that have never actually happened?

Part of it is probably just because these urban myths promote our worldview. If they promote our worldview, they must be right. Unfortunately, they don’t really help at all because non-Christians quickly recognize them as falsehoods.

We all have a tendency to believe things if they sound nice and toss things out that we’d rather not be true. This is why we don’t require Bible dictionaries to cite their sources and at the same time refuse to believe a science article unless it provides a pile of primary data and statistics.

Discernment is good. Let’s use some.

But in the meantime, make sure you sign this petition to stop the upcoming movie that portrays him and his disciples as gay!

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August 21, 2009

Up @ Night #9 – Naiveté

var addthis_pub=”4a0af351783743a8″;Did you hear about how NASA had a computer that proved Joshua’s missing day?
Or what about the story about how Einstein proved there was a God?
And, of course, how Barak Obama is really a Muslim and probably a terrorist.
Did you know some airlines make sure a non-Christian is flying their plane, in case of Rapture?

I’ve often wondered where this strange, permeating sort of Christian Naiveté comes from. What make intelligent Christians believe in and stand up for things that have never actually happened?

Part of it is probably just because these urban myths promote our worldview. If they promote our worldview, they must be right. Unfortunately, they don’t really help at all because non-Christians quickly recognize them as falsehoods.

We all have a tendency to believe things if they sound nice and toss things out that we’d rather not be true. This is why we don’t require Bible dictionaries to cite their sources and at the same time refuse to believe a science article unless it provides a pile of primary data and statistics.

Discernment is good. Let’s use some.

But in the meantime, make sure you sign this petition to stop the upcoming movie that portrays him and his disciples as gay!

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August 19, 2009

Proclaiming #8 – Sticking it to Nietzsche

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What is more harmful than any vice? – Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak – Christianity …

Thus wrote Friedrich Nietzsche the in 1888; the year before he went insane. His influence on Western society is, I think, not really understood. Many of the bumper-sticker doctrines that form the foundation for our culture can be traced back to his writings. Here’s a list of some of them:

  • The goal of life should be to find yourself. True maturity means discovering or creating an identity for yourself.

  • The highest virtue is to be true to yourself (consider these song titles from a generation ago: “I Gotta Be Me,” “I Did It My Way”).

  • When you fall ill, your body is trying to tell you something; listen to the wisdom of your body.

  • People who hate their bodies or are in tension with them need to learn how to accept and integrate their physical selves with their minds instead of seeing them as in tension with each other. The mind and body make up a single whole.

  • Athletes, musicians, etc. especially need to become so attuned to their bodies that their skills proceed spontaneously from the knowledge stored in their muscles and are not frustrated by an excess of conscious rational thought. (The influence of Zen Buddhism on this sort of thinking is also very strong.)

  • Sexuality is not the opposite of virtue, but a natural gift that needs to be developed and integrated into a healthy, rounded life.

  • Many people suffer from impaired self-esteem; they need to work on being proud of themselves.

  • Knowledge and strength are greater virtues than humility and submission.

  • Overcoming feelings of guilt is an important step to mental health.

  • You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself.

  • Life is short; experience it as intensely as you can or it is wasted.

  • People’s values are shaped by the cultures they live in; as society changes we need changed values.

  • Challenge yourself; don’t live passively. (source)

    • There’s really no need to try to prove that these ideas are part of our culture. We all know and feel it. And just because Nietzsche said it, doesn’t make it bad.

    But there is another piece of advice that he gave that the church took far to seriously: The idea that helping the poor, weak and helpless is evil.

    How many times have we heard the same excuses?
    “You can’t help all of them.”
    “If I help them they’ll just use it to hurt themselves.”
    “They don’t deserve it.”
    “I have my own problems.”
    “They got themselves into this mess, let them get out of it.”
    “If a man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat.”

    This sort of thinking is only logically possible if we concede that humans are nothing more than smart animals. If we are animals then our survival is based only on our fitness and we are at competition with all the other members of our species. We are then well within our rights to bite and claw to survive and become our own Übermensch. When we refuse to help the poor, weak and helpless we are declaring that we are nothing more than products of evolution.

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    August 14, 2009

    Filler most blatent

    I’m in Peterborough. It’s hot here.

    Many friends are here. I’m hanging with them. I love them so much that I’m not even going to bother trying to make this post profound or interesting. I’m just going to stop writing and get back to my socializing.

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    August 5, 2009

    A Stitch in Time

    We were out on a family canoe trip this past weekend. We trekked in Six Mile Lake, over two portages and into Lone Tree Lake. Good times, for the most part.

    On the first day at the camp site my little brother, Robert, and I decided to have some fun with gunwhale  bobbing. I won. But not without a price. Here’s the order of events:

    We get into our positions and start bobbing.

    I manage to cause Rob to fall into the drink.  I lose my own balance right afterward and fall in, hitting my leg on the gunnel as I go.

    Feeling the pain build in my left left, I struggle to shore to examine the damage.

    Ow!

    It needed stitches, but this was the only trip where we didn’t bring needle and thread.  I tried to use fishing line and a saftey pin, but I couldn’t get the line to go through the holes I made.  I ended up just throwing a handful of bandages on it.  I expect a decent scar to show off.  Here’s a shot after we got home:Pretty, eh?
    So, yay for camping!  Here’s a video:

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    August 3, 2009

    Up @ Night #8 – Mortality

    Have you ever thought about mortality? That’ll keep you up at night, even if nothing else will. Doesn’t matter much if you’re thinking about your own mortality or someone else’s. Mortality is a sleep-killer.

    The death of my father-in-law really brought the truths of mortality home to me. It became something real, not just the general, yeah-i-know-i’m-gonna-die feeling. More of a substantial truth, death-is-coming-for-us-all feeling.

    Death is coming. One day, this body-machine of mine is going to stop working and my spirit will be violently ripped from it. It’ll probably hurt, too. And before that more and more of the people I love are going to slip away. One shot is all we got. One roll of the die. One chance at the wheel. One pitch at the plate. Once. It’s not like a video game, where, if you fail, you can always start over or try a different route. There’s no edit-undo button.

    Jonathan Edwards tried to think about his own death a lot. I thought that was a bit creepy. I bet that practice kept him up at night a lot. And I bet it made him a lot more careful in how he lived. No screwing around with this game.

    Mortality keeps me up at night. I get scared. Scared of dying. Scared of the people I love dying. And, most of all, scared of dying without having done what I ought to have done. Up all night long…

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    July 24, 2009

    Proclaiming #7 – Milking cows and office work

    I once heard that Luther said something like “Even the milk-maid can tend her cows to glory of God.” I don’t know where he said that (if you do, please let me know). I can imagine that being a milkmaid was the most dreary, lowly job of Luther’s day. The equivalent of an office grunt, maybe. One of those jobs where you sometimes think to yourself in the morning, what is the use? What am I contributing?

    But even the most dreary job can give us an opportunity to proclaim on what ground we hope to stand. It’s about about the manner in which we carry our job out. So let’s assume we’re milkmaids, office grunts, cashiers or whatever. How can we proclaim a radical foundation for life while doing jobs that are completely normal?
    – By doing those jobs for the good of society. Your milk feeds the people in the village. The software your company makes benefits C-Stores all over the nation. The products your store sells actually do help people and fulfill needs. Keep the good of society in mind. If your job is not actually a benefit to society…well maybe you need a different job.
    – Work in harmony with your co-workers. A divisive Christian is a blot on Christ’s image. The follower of Christ ought to be the most peaceable, most friendly member of the workforce. Anything less is…normal.
    – Work hard. Laziness in a Christian is another blot. Poor work ethic betrays a deep problem of sloth and apathy. Care about the job and do it as if God is your boss. Because he is. Indeed, he is using you to disseminate whatever benefits to society your role is providing.
    – Work with wonder. Look at the cow you are milking and wonder at it. Look at the software you are supporting, and thank God for creating the human mind that put it together. Look at the people you are serving, and remember the image of God stamped on them. Wonder at the monotonous, because nothing is monotonous.
    – Work with thankfulness and generosity. Especially in this time of recession, think of those who have no job. Lend a hand. Be cheerful and don’t complain over petty, insignificant thinks like mix-ups, work politics, money and the like.

    Secular work gives us all an amazing chance to show what we’re standing on. So work! Milk! Support and serve. On we go.

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    July 20, 2009

    TPK Diaries #2 – The Heart of the Matter

    Joys of cooking:

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