Matt W Cook

writer.former fundamentalist.christianly fellow

Tag: god

June 28, 2024

I believe in God (an apology)

What is God?

It’s hard to believe in God today, especially if ‘God’ means a supremely good and powerful Person who made the universe and is very concerned with the beliefs and behaviour of mortals. The texts about this god often paint him as petty and contradict what we know about ourselves and the world. Also, this god’s representatives are often no better than the folks who ignore him.

The Ancient of Days by William Blake
And it’s always a him.

If God is a craftsman, crafting a cosmos, then God must be less than Godself + God’s craft + the God-sized room within which God crafts, thus not God.

Here’s my take: God is the Infinite. The that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-conceived. The Alpha to Omega, A to Z, First and Last, the Beginning and the End.

God is before all things, and in God do all things consist. All things live and move and have their being in God. Everything that is, is in God, and there can be nothing outside of God. When I speak of God, I mean the single, infinite substance that constitutes the universe. If this sounds like Spinoza’s God, it more or less is.

Objections

But this God isn’t personal.

God is not a person, but that does not make God impersonal. God is not less than a person. God encompasses every past, present, and future person. So, insofar as God can be known, God can be known personally.

Because God is the sound of a tree falling in the forest; real when I hear it. God is personal when I engage in a personal relationship with God.

We make personal relationships with everything, even when we don’t mean to. When I trip on an uneven sidewalk, the stone is malicious. When I’m stuck on the highway, the traffic is evil. And this isn’t totally irrational. Consciousness must be as natural to the universe as magnetism or the strong and weak nuclear forces. Empathy (and anthropomorphism) is consciousness attempting to recognize itself. There is love here.

So, since I am a person, I crave a personal relationship with God. Religion is a way to intentionally, specifically, and skillfully cultivate a personal relationship with God. There are others.

This isn’t the God of the Bible.

The Bible does not present a unified depiction of God (thank God). Paul understands God differently than Jesus, who approaches God differently than Moses. Origen would not have agreed with Augustine who would not have agreed with Calvin or Darby or any Christian alive today. Every theologian has understood God differently, despite common heritages. This is not (necessarily) a problem.

The Bible is not a science text or a user’s manual. It is a library connecting today’s living faiths with their ancient roots, buried deep in inaccessible history. Its purpose is not to declare facts about God, but to show the depth of our inheritances and inspire us to grow forward from faith to faith, glory to glory, preparing the way for something amazing. To confess Christianity is to take our place in this ever-changing Body of faith and practice.

The Bible has its proper place in my faith: a Godsend, and useful for apologies, gospels, rebukes, and encouragements: so that the religious practitioner can be skilled and equipped for every good work.

Why Christianity?

It is my inheritance, and my children’s after me. Years of practice gave me a rather particular set of spiritual skills. Prayer still lets me talk to God, hear God, and reaffirm my best aspirations. Worship still fills me with joyful holy awe. Scripture still provides spiritual meat and drink. The Father still hides in unapproachable light. The Son is still present in the eucharist, the Body, and myself. The Holy Spirit is everywhere. You say no one is listening when I pray? I listen. And, beyond these clinging aggregates that I call myself, who knows what sapience is privy to my devotional utterings?

A Christian God

The Trinity is one of the oldest and most controversial mysteries in Christianity. Here is a way of understanding the Three-in-One:

God is Father (the Almighty)

The eternal, immortal, immutable, invisible God, sustaining the universe through the Word of His Power. God the Father is no less than the unapproachable, unchangeable laws of nature that govern the universe. The founding principle of reality. The prime substance from which all things proceed. The consistent, unalterable nature of the universe.

God the Father is unknowable, and yet I want to know God. I see something when I stare at the abyss. I hear a sound when the tree falls.

God is Son (the Word)

That sound is the Son, the image of the invisible God, the Word by which the universe comes into being. The Son is firstborn of all creation—begotten not made, co-eternal with the Father—who died and lives, forevermore. The expression of the Father, the Laws of Nature in action. If the Father is the Game, the Son is the game being played.

According to my scriptures, Jesus of Nazareth was declared to be the Son of God in power and taught his followers to likewise call God Father, becoming the eldest of many siblings. His death and literal resurrection in the people who abide in him, the Body of Christ, is one of the great mysteries that Christianity peeks into.

God is Holy Spirit (the Paraclete)

The Holy Spirit could be the biggest mystery because She’s the one by which we speak about God. Like thinking about the mind or looking at the eye; it’s hard to use a tool on itself.

The old creeds say that the Ghost proceeds from the Father, or from the Father and the Son. Jesus calls her a comforter, advocate, or helper. She tells prophets and poets what to say. She opens minds and regenerates hearts. She’s the wind that blows where it wishes, carrying us along. I think God the Holy Spirit is the infinite interplay of relationships arising from the Father and the Son. The manifestation of God’s immanence, the substance of the connection between all things on all levels. This is a mystery.

God is Love

The universe is not cold, uncaring, or trying to kill us. The Earth is a perfect fit. True, not all of it. And yes, the vacuum of space is painfully lethal, but we didn’t emerge there, did we? Despite the ways we have marred it and the fact that death comes with life, this world is friendly. The sky pours water and the earth produces food. The sun gives us warmth while gravity keeps us stable. Behold this gorgeous flesh we inherit, full of sensors that light the universe with taste and touch and sight and sound! What do we call this but the love of God?

It is right to rest in the benevolence of God because God brings me into being and keeps me that way, until this form returns to dust, making room for more of the life that God loves.

Final Thoughts

It might seem like this deconstructs God into meaninglessness. I understand if you feel this way. I would never try to supplant someone’s idea of God with my own. That’s an aggressive idolatry.

But my devotional life has flourished with this perspective. If you find it hard to believe in God today, maybe this is a good place to start.

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June 2, 2018

The God-Shaped Whole

(I’ve been slowing down on the blog posts because of other projects. Gonna have a new thing starting up soon. Stay tuned.)

I still love the Bible. Heck, I still have a thing for reformed theology, and the precise and careful application of a christianly spirituality. Evangelical Christianity features powerful mythos, ritual, and ethics.

But it also features a slow-to-anger-abounding-in-lovingkindess God who considers religious pluralism to be so heinous as to warrant occasional genocide and eternal hell.

And if God, who is love,
is willing to eternally immiserate
the overwhelming majority
of sentient beings
over a defect they cannot remedy
without His direct intervention
…
well, that could certainly mess up a person’s idea of love, couldn’t it?

If it were swallowed whole.

I’m thinking about the ex-evangelical hashtags and the harsh, brazen, and deeply important stories and conversations attached to them.

#ChristianAltFacts
#EmptyThePews
#HowToEvangelical

There’s a lot of people hurt by the church–not just by the people, or specific conflicts, or isolated incidents–by the whole thing of it because Evangelicalism is a whole life. If you’re unsure what could be wrong with the church, please read some of the threads with these hashtags. And if people seem unduly agitated about the faith we hold dear, consider what could have made them that way.

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August 5, 2012

Sometimes Art is Like…

Sometimes art is like the little girl who was drawing a picture in art class.  Her teacher walked over to her and stood behind her for a moment, trying to figure out exactly what her student was drawing.  It was nearly impossible to make out.  The girl’s crayons danced on the page, scattering colours and shapes all around.  In some places it was wild and frenzied.  In others it was sober and serious.  In a few places, it looked downright childish and silly.  Finally the teacher couldn’t be bothered to guess anymore.

“What are you drawing, dear?” she asked.

“God,” the student replied without looking up.

The teacher gave a wry smile.  “But no one knows what God looks like, dear.”

The student leaned in close to her page, sticking her tongue out as she laid down a streak of deep red.  “They will in a minute,” she said.

Sometimes art dares to touch the things that cannot be touched.  Sometimes it tries to see the things that cannot be seen.  Sometimes it succeeds and turns around to show it to us.

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June 25, 2012

The Song That No One Has Heard

     I’m kind of a sucker for devotional music from all sorts of religious traditions. I’ll shove John Michael Talbot, Yusuf Islam, and Krishna Das all onto a playlist together. They get along on iTunes, I wonder if they’d get along if they were all in the same room…
     One of Krishna Das’s best songs is Heart as Wide as the World.

I looked away
Your beauty too much to bear
Where could I run?
Your eyes,
I found them everywhere
All I want is to sing to you
The song that no one has heard

     I follow a lot of aspiring writers on Twitter and blogs. Sometimes it’s a tad discouraging because often they talk about ‘essential’ writing subjects like self-promotion, knowing the market and replicating past successes. Many good, talented, creative people just want to write a story that will sell.
     How low.
     I don’t know about other creative people, but I’d do this work even if I knew I’d never make a penny from it. I’ve been doing it for years and I’ve put time and money into it, but I’ve never gotten a cent back. Sure, I’d love to make some money. I’d love to be able to quit my job and spend my life writing. That’d be the cat’s meow. But that’s not ‘all I want.’

All I want…
… is to be a best-seller.
… is to be famous.
… is to get rich.
… is to be the next [insert successful name here].

     Low! Low! Low!
     I look up to the sky and to the infinite space it rests beneath. I look to the Hand that sparked it and all the glories that dwell within it. And all those petty desires fade like a fog when it is faced with the sun’s fury. One desire remains. One thought. One driving force.
     All I want is to sing to you the song that no one has heard.
     And I’m the only one who can sing that song.
     And you’re the only one who can sing yours.

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June 15, 2012

Life as Temple Run or Minecraft


     Have you ever felt like life is kinda like Temple Run?
     The game only just came out for Android. It barely runs on my phone, but I can’t stop playing it. You take on the role of Guy Dangerous, an explorer with a ridiculously impressive cardiovascular system. You start the game being chased by skull-faced monkeys through an unending temple maze filled with traps and stumps and fire-breathing statues. You run until you die.
     How do you win? You don’t. The maze goes on forever. No matter how skilled you are or how many hours you devote to the game, you always die.
     Is life like that? Is it just a Temple Run where I try to get the farthest I can before the skull monkeys eat me? Is it all just a game of ‘He who dies with the most toys wins’?
     I’ve been on a long, interesting spiritual journey since high school. I’ve gone from atheism to Christian fundamentalism to something else altogether. But one of the things that I’ve never been able to shake off is a deep and resentful contempt for death.
     As an atheist, death was a thing to be avoided at all costs because it was the end of everything. It was the bitter reality that threatened to swallow me whenever I gave it attention.
     As a fundamentalist, death was the gateway to hell for nearly everyone I knew (and, I thought, perhaps for me, as I feared sometimes my theologies would be too incorrect to get forgiveness). The final, unforgiving act of God.
     But now, what is it? Is it really the end?
     I feel like life is a little bit more like Minecraft. Some critics look at the game and scoff saying “It’s pointless!” And they refuse to play. But for others, there’s something special in it. There’s something special about building grand structures in an infinite world. About walking through gateways and slaying evil monsters. About reaching The End and destroying the vile Ender Dragon.
     And what happens when the monsters are all slain and the mighty works are all built? What then?
     I’m not totally sure, really. I can only think of two possibilities.
     Either the old, atheist Matt was right, and there is nothing beyond the grave. Not even darkness.
     Or, as I think these days, the Great Teacher was right when he spoke of another Kingdom that was not of this world. Of a place where Love gives life. Where life comes abundantly and where mankind is reconciled with the source of Love and Life. Where my acts of love and creation live on and rejoice with the other works of love and creation that we have made together with God.
     So I run, mostly confident that I’m not in a game that can only end in death. If I’m right, all my joy today is building toward an endless joy that will one day witness the death of death. If I’m wrong … I’ll never know.
     Keep creating.

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January 30, 2012

Honestly

     Without honesty, you’re dead.

     Trust me, I know. I used to lie to everyone. Everyone. It was tough. I would cry myself to sleep. Well, man-cries, at least.

     It took a while to find someone I could be honest with. And then I found him – myself. It was a bit of a shock, really. Because I knew me to be a pretty judgmental fellow.

     I had been lying to me for years. It was a little scary once I gave myself permission to tell the truth. But, man, it did great things for me.

     A weight came off my shoulders. I know it sounds cliche, but I can’t think of any better way of putting it. I was free. Suddenly the future looked brighter. And, better than that, the present looked bright, too.

     Then I looked to my right and saw my wife. It turns out she had been standing there the whole time, ready and willing to hear my honesty. So I gave it to her. And she was gentle with it. She touched my honesty as I held it out to her, and smiled at it.

     “I’m on a roll,” I thought. I looked around to see who else I could be honest with. I looked up and wondered about God.

     I’ve have a very complicated relationship with the divine. I’ll tell you about it one day. But I figured it was about time to get honest with God. I went to find him and let him know how I really felt.

     But God was not where I had left him. The lock on the door was smashed, you see. It fell apart the day I started being honest with myself. So my concept of God broke free. And God has been leading me on a merry chase through the universe ever since. And he’s been blowing my mind.

     I’m honest with a bunch of people now. It’s nice. It’s freeing. Sometimes it’s dangerous and leads to anger and confusion, but that’s okay. Because most of the time, people look at your honesty and smile. Because I’m free inside and the burden on my back is light. One day I’ll be honest with everyone. One day I’ll be honest with all you wonderful people who read these silly little posts. Not today, but one day.

     Are you honest with you?

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October 19, 2011

How to Love

People say it’s hard to love. I guess it’s true sometimes.

Different people find it hard to love for different reasons.

Some folks can’t stand argumentative people. Some folks can’t stand people who think differently than they do. Some folks can’t stand mean people.

Everyone has haters. From Gandhi to Mother Theresa all the way down to Glenn Beck and John Stewart. Everyone is hated by someone. Or, at least, unloved.

Depressing, eh? Especially when you get that sneaking suspicion that you are one of those unlovers.

But there’s a way to love.

The greatest man told us to love enemies. Then he proved it was possible by walking a path of love that led him to a state-sponsered death. And while he was dying, he told his killers that he loved them. ‘Father, forgive them.’ And he showed us what God is really like.

The fact is, God loves Glenn Beck, regardless of how he makes me squirm. He loves Glenn Beck relentlessly. Passionately. With the unbridled power of a thousand suns. It doesn’t matter what Glenn Beck says or believes. God loves Glenn Beck. Because Glenn Beck carries within himself a beautiful image of God. He is, despite what I or anyone else thinks of his opinions and politics, a beautiful soul.

And when I think of that, suddenly I love Glenn Beck, too.

Pick that one person. That one person who gets you on edge every time they speak or tweet or show up on the TV screen or knock at your door.

God loves that person. Passionately. Relentlessly. With the unbridled power of a thousand suns. That person is a beautiful soul.

That’s worth loving.

Because if we could just master this one thing, the wildest part of Jesus’ most famous prayer would come true:

Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.

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