Matthew Burkholder

Is logic in America dying? In 1998 a doctor by the name of Andrew Wakefield published an article in the medical journal The Lancet claiming to have found a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The research, which had a sample size of twelve children was quickly disseminated and latched onto by anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists. In the wake of the article, the scientific method began its due process with independent and governmental researchers attempting to confirm Wakefield's claim and found it to be entirely fraudulent, leading the journal to retract the article's claims . However, the damage was done. Uninformed, albeit well-intentioned, parents began to stop vaccinating their children for MMR and the result has be devastating. Fuelled by celebrity authorities  and alternative medicine crusaders , the anti-vaccine movement has had a lasting impact on modern society all over the world. Simply put, where Wakefield's message has caught on, measles has followed. What...

For those interested in evangelical history, here is an essay I wrote on Jonathan Edwards: The Introspective Spirituality of Jonathan Edwards

One of the most poignant warning signs in history is the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. It also is unfortunately one of the easiest to ignore. Polluted by our own sense of divine like humanistic narcissism, societies far too often refuse to asses their own propensity to horror. Putting faith in human systems of checks and balances, we like to think that we are above the "evil" of "others", failing of course to remember that the madness of Germany happened in a democratic country. Hitler is suppose to be a mirror, to show us what each and every one of us are capable of becoming in a climate of fear and anger, and that no amount of modernism, progression or social evolution can ever hope to remove the potential for human beings to be evil. The greatest lie that has ever been told, and will continue to be told, is human progress. Systems of government and our judicial guardians can melt in the heat of social anger and unrest. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizen...

The deep polarization that is American culture seems to be drifting further apart with no hope of reconciliation. It never ceases to amaze me how after something as tragic as the Orlando massacre, people begin quickly pointing fingers at the other  and blame them in oversimplified terms. One can't help but wonder if the volume of these mass shootings in the United States has started to become so normal, they have become less a tragedy and more a vehicle for political persuasion.  I realize that as a Canadian I am an outsider, but it seems as though people are talking at each other and not with each other, and I think like most arguments that digress into such black and white thinking, it becomes  impossible to be rational. The internal vision of the American psyche is truly unique, but I hope they are asking the question: "Why is this an American problem?" I would hardly claim to be an expert on the subject of mass murderers, but I do feel as though I understand ...

Every Easter season we remember the greatest event in human history, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we tell the story in our houses of worship, a story that has been told to us many times before, a story we remember every time we share in the Lord's Table, a story we sing about and express in our art, we declare our God is a God who suffered. It's an odd claim and truth to boast of and we understand why the early disciples struggled to accept it. The disciples of Jesus had grown up in a world with suffering all around them. They felt the oppression of a brutal empire. They saw profound sickness and death. They saw economic poverty as the result of the rich and spiritual poverty as the result of hypocrisy and empty religious leadership. The walked with Jesus and saw him heal lepers, calm storms, raise the dead, and transform the lives of the darkest sinners. What was the culmination of Christ's ministry and profound love for humanity? "And he began ...

Response 1: "I'm not sleeping again. It turns out my body might be reacting to antidepressants. The annoying symptom? Night sweats. We thought it might be lymphoma. It wasn't. That was a fun couple of weeks. I'm terrified. I'm terrified that this won't be the end of it, that the next medicine will fail too, and those absolutely terrifying impulses to harm myself and the thoughts of failure that I tell myself I am over and over and over and over and over and over again will one day be too much. Will these thoughts that only seem to stop in short intervals darken into complete mental breakdown? My biggest fear isn't snakes or falling, it's that I will end up on the street and lose my intellect and sanity, being mocked by people who don't know what mental illness is like. I'm afraid that the loneliness I seem to NEVER break from free from will enslave me into a life of dependence on others. I was doing so well but maybe wellness is just an illusi...

It got bad when a man who made the world laugh couldn't make himself laugh. I think I realized very early on that life isn't guaranteed. One of my earliest memories is that of attending the funeral of my mother's grandmother. I remember walking up to the casket and seeing a human shell. I vividly understood the notion that the breath in my lungs would one day cease. Providence reminded me of this truth when as a teenager I came close to dying from one of seven collapsed lungs, the centrepiece of my transition from innocence into to the cold reality of human mortality. Age has brought much joy, but also the haunting notion that I am trudging to a definite end of this thing we call life. When my father, a person of whom time has kindled the deepest of admiration, suffered massive heart failure just over five years ago, I was reminded again of the profound value of breath. The will to survive exists because life is worth living. So why did a man who made the world laugh ta...