immoral little me

Dear Gerald Hannon at "Saturday Night: What Canada Is, Was and Could Be".

Every once in a while something in "Saturday Night" walks right up and slaps me in the face. Generally I am unwilling to get my knickers in a bind when this happens. My motto is "don't get pissed off about something you're not willing to work to change". In the September 2005 issue, though, I came across a sentance in your article "The Curious Case of Malcolm Gladwell" that skipped over the face slap and went right for my groin. As a mid-twenties, possibly virile male, I felt it was a blow I could not ignore. In your article you say of Gladwell that "his belief in God is his one intriguingly anomalous trait, given that anyone who believes in God is surely manifesting some weakness of character, though with a corresponding quickening of the esthetic faculties attendant on any devotion to nonsense."

There it is. Canada is(or could be) a place where it is a given that those who believe in God are weak of character. Artistically gifted - perhaps - but weak. When I read that, the word "character" jumps out and kicks me in the teeth. See, the word "character" has inextricable moral connotations. An individual's character is the moral constitution built over time through moral choices. In this article I find myself being told that the belief in God that has emerged as a result (and sometimes in spite) of the moral choices I have made is an indicator that my choices have been in some way immoral. While I know I have done a number of immoral things, I am left with some real questions for you, Mr. Hannon.

For example, what are you thinking when you refer implicitly to morals, sir? Do you mean that they are principles which are grounded in reality and are true for all times and all people? That cannot be, since they would then have to have some point of origin, or source, to give them that force. A universe without God is a universe without a source. It just IS, and has no underlying reason or structure, but rather is ruled by chaos or chance.

Perhaps you did not mean to imply a moral judgement at all, but instead were referring to values. Values don't necessarily have to be true, they just have to be agreed upon by a bunch of people (or one - but I think he's gotta tell somebody). Perhaps the message you conveyed - that it is a given that people who believe in God are manifesting a moral weakness - meandered off the trail of your intention, which was to say that YOU think most people believe that when people believe in God they're doing something immoral.

I'm not bothered, Mr. Hannon, by your categorization of a belief in God as "nonsense". In a post-[so-called] enlightenment, secular-humanized world it is not at all surprising that you would think this way. I'm used to this sort of thing from popular media, where in one off-hand remark you've poo-pooed any possible moral argument anyone could make for or against any choice of action. If morality demands that there be no God then there can be no grounds for the acceptance of moral statements as being universally True (such as, "it's wrong to rape people"). It becomes utterly impossible to assert that the values/beliefs of any people group are wrong. All you can say is that you don't like them. You've argued (unintentionally, I hope) for the institution of Morality by Majority, which without a God to provide a starting point will always degenerate into Might makes Right. Sometimes that works out (if the Mighty happen to be Good). Usually, though, power corrupts and you end up with things like fascism, the Holocaust, Ugandan genocide, the Crusades and, dare I say it, United States of American military despotism.

Like I said, this is standard stuff. But this little edgewise jab that a belief in God is immoral frickin' terrifies me. With it, you've jumped the fence of reason and weaseled the language of your detractors, asserting that the "morality" you don't believe in demands a disbelief in God - which is basically just insane gobbledygook.

If, as the subject of your article would tend to indicate, you are mostly referring to belief in the Christian God then I have to tell you, sir, that you are sadly mistaken in your understanding of what such a belief means. The Christian God is described in the Bible as Love. Not just loving, but Love - the emanating Source of all things Loving. To believe in that God is to believe in the path of Love, especially towards your enemies (Matthew 5:44). And here is how the Bible describes that love:

"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand it's own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."
-I Corinthians 13: 4-7 (NLT)

THIS is the morality that a true belief in the Christian God demands. If that is a description of weak character, Mr. Hannon, than you can sign me up for depravity.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my thoughts. I cannot help but wonder why your article has drawn me to write on the "existence of God", a topic I've generally avoided on this site because I know I'm not worthy of it. Perhaps it is because if you're right, and the majority of people take it for granted that believing in God is immoral, then it won't be long before a blurb like this is deemed hate literature, and I get censored. So take this, then, as my last hurrah.

wondering

I wonder if I'm going to matter.

I mean, beyond the "gosh, josh. that was just the right thing at the right time - I really needed to hear that and you made my day" type thing.

I wonder if I'm going to spend my life dinking around, getting by, and progressing just enough to stay a few steps ahead of the average.

I wonder what my biggest talents really are. I wonder if I'm ever going to stop putzing around that question and actually begin progressing towards excellence in the areas where I am aware of giftedness.

Last year someone who'd read a leadership guide I'd written told me I'm "remarkably self-aware for someone my age". I wonder if I really am, or if I just spend so much time self-obsessing that to the more practically-minded person it takes on the appearance of depth.

I wonder if I would fritter away my hours with contemplation like this if I wasn't a member of the world's class of economic elite - comfortable beyond the kings of old (hello, water closets!), made docile and fat by too much leisure. I wonder if that's why I keep planting trees - because it keeps me too busy and tired for existential angst.

I wonder if I just go on about this because I feel that it validates my life to have conflict. Perhaps I feel that in a conflicted, violent world the petty indifferences of my daily life are something less than real - perhaps I create mental conflict to compensate for a lack of real challenges in my life.

The truth is, I needn't do very much at all in order to get by. Excellence, in this system, breeds excess - which I'm afraid of. And so, instead, I retreat to mediocrity and mind games. Afraid of my own potential, I hide in the ease and comfort of the consumer, conformist self I've allowed to be shaped by the selfsame society around me.

Someday, I hope soon, I'll be kicked in the head by reality and I buck up, suck up, and be a man.

Fortunately, until then there's always this website to keep me occupied.

red eyes

I got oil in my eyes last night while trying to wash the stuff out of my hair. After three hours lying on my back figuring out I don't know jack about autos I decided to take a break.

You'd think that something like taking an oil pan off a car would afford a creative thinker like myself no serious challenge, but all the creativity in the world can't unfreeze an ancient, rusted bolt. Why is it so easy to hate an inanimate object? I'm not even a cursing man, so I get no real venting except to say "ow, ow, ow - gosh, that smarts" when I smack my elbow full force into a tie rod.

What lessons will I learn from this? I'm not rightly sure I'll know 'til it's over. I may learn that there's nothing you can't do with a lot of time and a willingness to really muck things up (a pneumonic ratchet gun would also really help). Or, alternatively, I could learn to trust professionals. The problem is that I've got to work three hourse to pay the pros to work one, and my time is free.

We've encountered some interesting beurocracy, which is forcing us to hang out in Maple Ridge instead of taking our intended meandering trip through Mexico and the grand canyon and such. The only thing I love more than rusted bolts is red tape.

sweat

I am overdue to write something on here, but am hesitant to begin, on account of the perspiration factor. Here's a little inside insight on my writing: it makes me sweat. I'm in Canada, for Pete's sake, and although it is summer, it is overcast and I'm inside a cool house. Nonetheless, the moment I start to write, my underarms begin to drip. From there, it spreads to my palms and then all the pores blossom and the floodgates are released. Ah, yes, I can feel it now.

This is a bit strange, I think. I'm not normally a sweaty person, but writing (and chess, and painting) get me going more, even, than some minor physical activity. They say brain work burns a lot of calories, but come on, this isn't exactly nuclear physics I'm doing here - I'm writing about a type of excrement. Yet here I go, getting flushed and drippy all over.

As inane as this whole entry is, then, I can't bring myself to delete it and start over. First, because I'm hungry and can't think of anything but food and baser things (like sweat) and second because I feel like I've actually been working here. As a guy who makes his living doing manual labour, physical work isn't somthing I can slough off lightly. So there it is, folks, the story of my sweat.

out of the trees

I have just spent the longest period of my life away from any town or city or reasonable facsimile of the thing the folks in my planting camp longingly referred to as "civilization".

"Where?" you ask. Well, not quite - but close. Halfway between Mackenzie (out there) and Fort Ware (waaaaaaaaaay out there) there is a bridge, which will be known here as "The Mesalinka #1 bridge", the beside of which we were encamped, the off of which we jumped. Absolutely God-wonderful breathtaking. Breathe that air for a week, and see if you ever want to go back.

You would thing from knowing my mental bent that now, sitting at a computer in Prince George, I would be off ranting and raving about the evils of this "civilization", throwing in the odd anectadote about four timberwolf pups I saw on the road three days ago, or about Werner and Rosy, who live just up the road from the Mez One Bridge in a log cabin Werner built with only a chainsaw, using logs he'd felled and skidded with a late-eighties hatchback with no windows.

I'm not, however, spending too much time these days thinking about the simple life. Instead, I'm thinking about character and about how with a generous application of the human freedom to choose, I can change just about anything (even the world) "with my own two hands".

You see, it is easy for me to see this site as just a way to vent - to release a bit of mental pressure so that I can feel I'm sending out "a message" to the web. I get on here and I blather away about this and that, but do I really work to change the things I want to see changed? Am I willing to make hard, daily choices in order to see this fantastical "simple life" occur, to see injustices stopped, to break the bondage of myself and my fellowfolk to consumer, conformist culture, and to live instead a life of service? Will I see my life - my every moment - as a talent which I have the priviledge and joy to use not for self-gratification and aggrandizement, but for the good of others? Will I throw myself, body and soul, into painting or writing or whatever in order to fill up the world with more of myself, or will I do those things in order to diminish myself and allow the world to overflow, through me, with a greater sense of the Truth and of Love?

In less than a week, I will be twenty-six. I spent a jolly few moments of my life (between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two), claiming that I would die when I was twenty-five. At the time, I figured I was being cryptical, mystical and prophetic. I thought that my words made me special and gave me meaning. That was, I think, a fantasy. Lives were not meant to be lived in fantasy, but in the hard-knock world of real life, where actions have consequenses and morality is a universal current which I can toil uselessly against, or which I can accept.

As soon as I write all that, I'm tempted to say that my twenty-sixth birthday is going to be some sort of symbolic end to fantasy - that I'll now choose to really LIVE in real life. But again I catch myself inflating words, sentimentalizing away my responsibility to the truth. And the truth is, the truth is about today. Right now. Tommorow doesn't exist, and today is rapidly becoming the yesterday that I've created. So today, folks, I'm going to try to live humbly and love ridiculously under the philosopher's creed - with my death always before my eyes.