Matt W Cook

Have you ever seen the documentary, ‘Super-size me’?  You’ve probably heard of it.  A man decides to see what would happen if, for a month, he lived on nothing but what McDonald’s had to offer.  He tried everything on the menu at least once and had three full meals a day.  At the beginning of the experiment he was in top physical condition.  At the end he had gained about 35 pounds, had sexual dysfunction and mood swings and got some liver damage.

We weren’t surprised.  None of us were.

Because we all know how bad fast food is.  Every one of us understands that poor food choices are going to rob us of health and happiness.  We know that a triple Baconator will make us feel like crap.  Just like we know that five hours of World of Warcraft will take away our productivity and clean conscience.  Just like we know that useless and banal entertainment will have bad effects on our lives.  We know all this.  We know that if we choose the easy, unproductive things, we will regret it.  And yet we choose those things.  We still choose Big Macs over spinach salads.  We still choose soap operas over Charles Dickens.  Why?

What is it about good things that offends us so much?  Why do we have that deep, settled feeling of resistance against anything that is inherently good?  Seriously, what gives?  Wouldn’t we be much better off if we chose the good?

Wouldn’t we?

I want to know.  I want to know what it’s like to actually live according to the rules we seem to be made for.  So I propose an experiment.  The Wellness Challenge.

For the next month, I will endeavour to do the opposite of what Super-size Me did.  Instead of subjecting my body to everything I know will hurt me, I will subject my body, creativity, relationships and spirituality to those things that I am told will be good for me.  And, at the end of it all, I will see if it has made any improvement on my quality of life.

I will focus on a couple elements from four parts of life:

1. Physical Wellness
• I will endeavour to eat only things that common sense deems ‘healthy’.  I don’t think there’s a huge need to do great amounts of research here.  We all know that veggies are good and beef, pork, sugar, caffeine, salt and all other yummy things are bad.  If it ain’t healthy, I don’t eat it.
• I will endeavour to exercise every day.  I’m not talking about doing a marathon, just a half hour a day of some useful exercise.  I’m pretty sedentary now, so this feels like a big step.
2. Creative / Mental Wellness
• I will refuse any form of entertainment that is shallow, trite, or otherwise mentally / creatively unfulfilling.  This includes a lot of movies and, I think, pretty much all video games (argh!).  And whatever entertainment I do deem worthy, I will use with strict moderation.
• I will endeavour to dive into mentally / creatively stimulating projects.  I don’t know what they will be quite yet, but with all the free time I’ll have from my video game fast, I’m sure I’ll think of something.
3. Relational Wellness
• I will endeavour to have meaningful time with my family everyday.  Duh!
• I will endeavour to have meaningful time with friends and neighbours often.  This is important because we live in the West (for now) and in the West we tend to avoid people.  Bad trend, gotta fix it.
4. Spiritual Wellness (I wanted to call this something else, because everything is spiritual.  I almost called it mystical…but it sounded funny)
• I will endeavour to kick my prayer life up by three notches (vague, I know.  But I know what I mean by three notches, so no worries).
• I will endeavour to produce what I’ve called a ‘Jesus-aura’.  That is, I will try to live a life that is so saturated with Jesus that people come up and ask, ‘Hey, I notice that all of your hope and trust seems to be placed somewhere different from where mine is.  Could you please give me a reason for the hope that is in you?’  Of course, I should have been doing this already…

So there you have it.  As the creator of Super-size Me destroyed his body so that we could see how bad it is to choose McDonald’s, so I will endeavour to live the best life possible so that you, too, may see how great it is to live this way.  Pretty noble of me, eh?

But, what are the odds of all this working?  I don’t know.  I have a pretty good idea of how messed-up I am, and these things don’t look very attractive to me.  As I see it, the only way I will be able to last a month in the first three is if Jesus gives some serious help.  And as for the fourth one…yeah.  Serious, serious help needed.

But I’m going to go for it anyway.  I didn’t realize that it was New Years when I came up with this, but it’s fitting, isn’t it?  Let’s see if living well translates into well living.  And I really hope Jesus helps me, because otherwise, I’m screwed.

But aren’t we all?

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Harry Potter and Mr. Weasley were on their way to the Ministry of Magic. They were taking the subway. Mr. Weasley, a man not accustomed to travelling with non-magical people, stood amazed at the technology. For a moment he stopped dead in front of a ticket dispenser, awe-struck.
“Isn’t it amazing?” he asked Harry.
“But Mr. Weasley,” Harry said. “It’s broken.” He pointed to the out-of-order sign.
“I know, but still.”

I know it’s broken. But still. I know it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to work. Indeed, it hardly seems to have any use at all. But still. The ingenuity. The originality. The sheer usefulness of the thing. Though it does not work, yet I am in awe of what it stands for. Of what it could be.

I believe human nature is broken. If you really think about it, you’ll agree. We have so many destructive desires and tendencies. Yes we kill and hate. Yes we are ignorant and undiscerning. Yes we take and destroy and pervert. But still.

But still we are human. Still we are the images of God. Still we have his spark, his life.

Don’t get so worked up over human depravity that you forget to stand in awe of what we have been made to be. Yes we are, like Jeremiah said, desperately sick and wicked. But still.

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Joe and I just finished watching The Empire Strikes back (again). With any good movie there are new things that stick out every time you watch. Two lines stuck out to me this time.
Han: Then I’ll see you in hell!
…
Lando: It’s not my fault!

So Han Solo finds out that his buddy Luke is lost somewhere in the cold night of Hoth, ready to freeze to death. What does he do? He sets off to find him, of course. And then one of the deck officers tells Solo that the temperature is dropping so rapidly that he’ll be dead before he gets very far.
At that point, what would you do? I thin most of us would say something like, “Seriously? Dead before the first marker? Well…shoot. Now what do I do?” We’d waffle. We’d hesitate. But Han rarely hesitates. He shoots back, “Then I’ll see you in hell!” and kicks his tauntan, riding into the snowy twilight.
Han looks at the prize (his friend’s life), looks at the cost (his own life) and makes a call. I’ll go to hell before seeing my friend left alone in the dark.

Now move near the end of the film. We see Lando, Han’s old buddy, betray him to Vader and Boba Fett. He eventually has a change of heart (quite a bit too late) and rescues Leia and Chewie. As they blast away from cloud city they find out, at the worst possible moment, that the hyperdrive is down. How does Lando respond?
“It’s not my fault!”

Friends, maybe. But very different people. Han sees a problem and throws his life on the line to fix it. Lando sees a problem and his first thought is to abdicate responsibility for it. Which one would you rather have at your side in a blaster fight?

Or a church?

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    I’m cursed with a great imagination.  Give me a situation am I can very clearly picture myself in it.  It’s creepy sometimes.

    For example, I can picture the glimmer of hope a prisoner on the way to Auschwitz would feel upon reading the sign that stood over the gate: Arbeit Macht Frei – Work Shall Set You Free.
    I can picture myself turning that over in my head.  True, the stories have said that no one was ever set free, but the sign!  The sign says that work could set me free!  Perhaps, if I just work the hardest…

    And I can picture that sign and those words driving me to work harder than anyone else.  I can picture seeing my friends being exterminated and reasoning with myself, “They didn’t work hard enough, that’s all.  I’ll work harder.”
    I can picture my body deteriorating as I worked it to its breaking point.  Again, I would reason with myself, “It’s a test.  I must pass it.  Work shall set me free.”

    Months would pass.  I’d outwork them all.  Finally I would be taken away from the other inmates.  I’d be led away, all the while thinking that all my work had finally paid off.  But then they’d herd me into that building from which I had never seen anyone leave.  And in my last moments of life I’d be raising my confused protest, “But I worked!  You said that work would set me free!”

    I think that the door to religion has the same sign over it.  Work, and you will be free.  And so we work.  We sacrifice.  When our friends fall, we say they didn’t work hard enough.  When trials come, we say we just need to work harder.  But work cannot set us free.  It never could.  If is could, most of us would be free already.

    The Truth sets you free.

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I just watched the Olympic torch run through Thorncliffe Park. Wild, eh? Not something you see every day. When you think about it, it’s actually pretty special that I saw it? How many times are the Olympics held in Canada? How many times has the route the torch takes been right in front of my house? Odds are I’ll never see the silly thing again.

But it isn’t a silly thing. I don’t know about you, but I love the Olympics.

But the funny thing is, I don’t really care about the games.

For me, the Olympics symbolizes something. I saw the crowds this morning, all smiling in the freezing morning air, clapping, waving flags and cheering a stranger on. I saw them hoping. I saw them rejoicing. In what? I don’t really know.

I was rejoicing in unity. I was rejoicing that we can, as diverse humans, put problems aside for a while and play a few games together. I was rejoicing that we don’t take life so seriously that political squabbles can get in the way of a good hockey game.

Rejoice with me.

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How would you describe Darth Vader’s evil?

Monolithic – Large, powerful and uniform.  Made of one thing.

Darth Vader is a monolithic evil character.  There’s nothing redeemable about him at all.  From the very first scene we know this, when he strolls onto the rebel space craft and glances down at the corpses, as a man would look at a bed of flowers.  Or look at the callous way he deals with the failings of his staff, choking them on whims.  Even captain Needa, who went to personally apologize for a failure that was hardly his fault was snuffed out.  And then Vader, with that dark, chuckling voice uttered that coldest of lines: “Apology accepted.”

Even in his transition from Anakin to Vader we see deep evil.  Without a single argument he obeyed the Emperor and slaughtered the children in the temple.  Darth Vader was the worst of terrorists, the most gruesome of psychopaths and the most merciless of despots.  Bad dude.

And yet, he was redeemed.

Vader claimed, with his dying breaths, that Luke was ‘right about him.’  Most of us assume that meant there was a little good left in Vader all along.  I doubt that.

Luke was right about the fact that there was a chance of redemption.  Somehow Luke brought it out.  Somehow it happened.

I’m always pleased when I see a monolithic evil character redeemed.  It makes me think of myself in happier terms.  I may not be monolithic, but I’m pretty evil.  Yay for redemption so wild that even Vader could partake.

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I’m reading A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. It’s epic fantasy and has a wonderfully unique voice. Give it a shot.

There is an execution scene near the beginning of the story. It stood out to me because the lord of that massive realm didn’t have a headsman. He did the deed himself. I wondered why.

Then the lord’s own son asked him why. And Lord Stark explained.

We hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die … A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.

After reading that I asked myself, “What hard tasks do I have that I try to delegate to someone else? Do I ever hide behind paid executioners?”

Difficult choices are not actually all that difficult. It’s the carrying out of difficult choices that is tricky. Usually we know the right way. We know what needs to be done. But we don’t want to do it. Usually we try to get it done by proxy – to get someone else to take care of it.

Getting someone else to do something for you because you’re busy is efficient. Getting them to do it because it’s awkward is dishonest and, eventually, very bad for you.

Do the dirty work that needs to be done yourself. You’ll be better off for it, having learned what it means to do dirty work. You’ll be better respected for it. And it’s a much more honest way of living.

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Francis Dolarhyde, antagonist in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon wanted to become.

From childhood Francis understood his weaknesses. He was born with a deformed face – unable to speak properly. He was raised by his vicious grandmother who constantly told him what a horrible child he was. Francis understood his weakness. And he wanted to rise above it. He wanted to ‘Become’.

He lusted after the persona of the Red Dragon. He sought to Become the Red Dragon. To do this, he killed.

In the end, the Dragon got out of control. He tried to fight it, but it was too late. He had Become it already. And then he died.

I think, if we are honest, we can all relate a little with Francis. We understand our weaknesses. If we really dig deep, we see that we are seriously screwed up. If we ever want to do better, we must Become. Indeed, all of us will Become.

But what shall we become?

C.S. Lewis said that each human has within him the possibility of Becoming either god or devil. Which one?

Francis became a devil. He gave in to lust and shadow. He Became devil and died, as all devils must.

I think Christ beckons us to Become. Through him, he beckons us to Become like him. To become little Christs. Little (I say it reverently) gods.

We all must Become something. We cannot stay in this frail form forever. Light or darkness? Gods or devils? Life or death?

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Adapted from a sermon last Sunday

You may be spiritually destitute if…
10) You sometimes find yourself hating something good.
9) You sometimes have a flashing desire to hurt people you love, especially with passive-agressive behaviour.
8) You fail to put up a decent fight against the imperfections you’ve found in your own life.
7) You feel a deep need to correct all the problems you notice in others.
6) When you try to do something spiritually, creatively or physically good, you feel a deep, nearly unconquerable feeling of resistance.
5) You have harsh flashes of anger toward the annoying.
4) You have a deep dislike for people who are not like you.
3) When faced with difficulty, your first reaction is not to solve, but to complain.
2) You cannot sympathize.
1) You have any desires, ideas or behaviours that are illogical and destructive.

It’s a good thing the kingdom of heaven is for the spiritually destitute, eh (Matt. 5:3)?

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