Tag Archives: death

Pacifism and My Violent Book

Posted on by matthewcook

     I’m a pacifist. Not a passive-ist. A pacifist. I am against violence in all forms for any reasons. Strange, eh?

     I wrote a book that has a lot of violence in it. Bad guys killing and harming good guys. Good guys killing and harming bad guys. Alignment-unknown guys killing and harming … everyone. Blood and death and harm and stuff. It almost makes you wonder how I reconcile that with my beliefs.

     I also tend to enjoy media that has violence in it. Game of Thrones is probably my favourite show in TV right now. And if you’ve ever seen a more violence show, I’d be surprised. And I’d ask what kind of sick cable channel you are subscribing to. Most of the books I read have violence. Every video game I play involves blowing something up.

     So what gives, Matt? You some kind of ridiculous hypocrite or something?

     Probably. But not for that reason.

     I find violence reprehensible because of the suffering it causes and the damage it does to the violent’s soul. But I cannot deny that violence has been a part of the human experience ever since we crawled out of the goop. I’d be willing to bet that everyone has an ancestor who took lives through violence. It’s engrained in us. That’s one of the reasons most people find the idea of pacifism so repulsive.

     Art is not idealized life. It’s elevated life. Art (literature, paintings, performances, TV shows, etc) needs to show every true aspect of life. And one of the most basic and foundational truths about the lives we live, is violence and death. Like Hemingway said, “All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

     A writer, or any other artist, has no right to keep from his or her reader those things he disagrees with. That’s one of the reasons why I find it very difficult to reader Christian novels. They are sterile. There is no shit, only poop. And it’s not poop that ever hits the fan.

     I hate violence in any situation. But it’s a part of life, so it needs to go in the stories I make. Just like I hate malice and conflict and suffering and sickness and cancer. These horrid things are all around us. The writer who leaves them out of his book had better have a good reason for it.

The State-Sponsored Murder of Love

Posted on by matthewcook

     Jesus was killed.

     My tradition has always looked at his execution from an abstract, theological point of view. We talk about God getting stuck in a sort of cosmic loop-hole where his previous promise to kill sinners works against his desire to let them live, so he works out a deal with his son in which killing his son makes it so he can let sinners who understand this theological concept off the hook.

     But I find myself looking at it from a different point of view this year.

     Jesus was a different sort of fellow. He refused to accept the conventions of who was ‘us’ and who was ‘them’. He would befriend hookers and foreigners and heretics. He undermined the religious and civil establishment by commanding people to call no one father or teacher or master. He starting knocking the legs out under the power of the empire by telling people to love their enemies and to never repay evil for evil. He upset the commercial establishment by clearing the businessmen from the temple and by telling folks to share everything they had until there were no poor people left. He told people that the Utopian Kingdom of God was within their grasp.

     They had to kill him, of course.

     Not only that, they had to break his message.

     So now, instead of a Jesus who was willing to die before kill, we have a Jesus who blesses our soldiers and weapons manufacturers while condemning bartenders. It’s an easy thing to do. Watch.

     First, we take the premise from Romans 13 that the government is established by God. Then we remember that, while Jesus made it abundantly clear that our only attitude and actions toward our enemies should be love and kindness, God is allowed killing anyone he wants. So when the government tells us to kill, it’s okay! So long as you do it without hating the people in ‘your heart’, as Luther says, “Soldiers, as Christians, should indeed love those enemies – not hate them, hold malice against them, or mistreat captives or civilians – but they have an authorization to do what soldiers have to do.”

     And all the other things that led Jesus to the cross, we steer away from. Instead of eating with hookers and heretics, we rail against them. Instead of turning over the tables of unjust businessmen who use religion as a means of profit and oppress their workers, we support Walmart and Wall Street while condemning the people trying to change the system. Instead of forgiveness, we call for punishment. Instead of rehabilitation, we call for death. Instead of freedom, we set certain men as higher than ourselves, call them ‘government’ and put on fancy clothes and ribbons while we go off killing their enemies.

     That sort of Jesus never would have gone to a cross. He would have started a profitable career in politics.

     But the real love of Jesus threatens everything. It threatens our wealth and safety. It’s risky. It’s full of uncertainties. It’ll kill half the people who sign up for it. But it’s also the only way to life. Jesus proved it.

Entropy

Posted on by matthewcook

     Does entropy ever bother you?

     They say that all energy will eventually fizzle and turn useless. They say the universe will turn cold and all life and information and movement will cease. All the songs will be silenced. All the stories will be forgotten. Every trace of human wisdom, love, and hope will fade from the cosmos, leaving not even an echo behind. So it goes.

     The thought makes me shudder.

     It makes you shudder, too, even though you know you won’t be around to experience it. There is something deeply disturbing about end of all things. About the final death. It’s sick. It’s perverted. It’s madness.

     I think we’ve always seen it coming. The ancients knew that all good things come to an end. But they didn’t accept it. They couldn’t. They raged against it.

     The ancient seers flung out their prophecies, calling for the ultimate death of death. They claimed that all these decaying things around us would be reconciled and made well again. They spoke of a pinnacle of existence, better than the one we find ourselves in, where there is no entropy. They claimed that those who sought after glory, honor, and immortality would be a part of it.

     Sounds too good to be true.

     But, you know, it’s the madness of entropy that makes me think those prophets could be right. It’s the utter terror of the thought of nothingness that makes me think there could never be nothing. That makes me dare to hope that our stories will never fully fade away. That makes be wonder if death, indeed, will die.

     Eternity is bound up in the heart of Man. Does that suggest we are meant to dwell in a realm that does not decay?

     I think so.

     I may be wrong. It could be that this universe is all there is. It could be that when the last human fades and dies, all our spirit and love will die with him or her.

     Or perhaps the kingdom of heaven will come. And death will be brought to trial and done away with. And perhaps the stories and songs will never end and the sun will never set. And perhaps the weight of affliction of this dark world will not be worthy to be compared to the glory to be revealed on that day. And we will laugh and dance with those ancient prophets who searched the human and divine spirit to predict that glorious morning.

     Either way, what can we do but rage against the dying of the light?

     So it goes.

The Life You Always Wanted

Posted on by matthewcook


     You’ve screwed up. So have I, I guess. That’s the way it goes, sometimes. What are you going to do about it?

     Usually we re-live it. We put our minds there and run through the screw-up again and again. So instead of screwing up once, we screw up everyday. The same screw-up. It sucks.

     Keep it up and you’ll die full of regrets.

     Ever wondered what it would be like to know you were going to die? People talk about the choices they’d make if they found out they had a terminal illness. People say they’d call up old friends and right old wrongs and tell off enemies and live life the way they’d always dreamed of living it. I don’t really get that.

     Because I am dying. And so are you. We’ve all been diagnosed with a terminal illness – mortality. No one beats it. 100% casualty rate.

     You know what I’d change in my life if I found out I had terminal cancer? Not much. To be honest, I’m already living the way I want to.

     I have a family that gives me nothing but joy. I am slowly but surely working toward my creative dreams. I am just about the happiest person I know.

     Because I know I’m dying.

     So I don’t pay much attention to the mistakes I’ve made. I don’t re-live them. I don’t whine about not having enough time to follow my dreams. Because I don’e have time to whine. I’m dying. And there’s nothing like living like you were dying.

Steve Jobs on Death

Posted on by matthewcook

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Bits of Flesh

Posted on by matthewcook

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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