Matt W Cook

writer.former fundamentalist.christianly fellow

Category: religion

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.

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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.

Here’s a guy who’s religious AND spiritual

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.

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