“Who is the number one god?” In the 1996 movie The Island of Dr. Moreau, the beast people revolt against the godlike scientist, taking over the island. In fits of rage, the beast people, once controlled by electric shocks, now rule. Done with Dr. Moreau’s tyrannical law, the beast people are now left to consider the question, “Who is the number one god?”
If Moreau’s law is gone, the beasts could now make their own; but which beast would decide? If one concludes that there is no law outside of humanity, then power wins. If power wins, then Mao Zedong, China’s 20th century tyrant, murderer of many more millions than Hitler, was right:
Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.
Ponder the implications of unrestrained human power if humans are left to decide what laws to obey.
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
Richard Weaver’s book Ideas Have Consequences has reverberated through my life every time I read it. You don’t need to scan any further than the introduction to see Weaver’s concern: men have dismissed transcendence, universal ideals, logic, realism, objective truth, and original sin. Some want to take down the original pillars of Western culture set upon these biblical truths which is a recipe for cultural suicide.
Perhaps our best reminder of our present state is from a 1999 movie The Matrix. Lawrence Fishburne’s character is trying to impress upon Keanu Reeves’ character Neo how the world really is. The Matrix is honest reminding us that real life includes not a nameless calamity, but a desert of our own sinful making. Ideas do have consequences. Sometimes it takes a movie to remind us.
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
During the year 2025 through July 4th 2026, America is celebrating its 250th birthday.
It is important to notice that no nation, no people, no family, no person can move forward without acknowledging – consciously or unconsciously – what and who has gone before. And if we are wise, we should pause every day to utter a bit of gratitude.
We would do well to remember the ultimate sacrifice of Americans who allow us to enjoy our freedoms. The famous line bears repeating,
“American soldiers fight not because they hate what’s in front of them, but because they love what’s behind them.”
We should embolden gratitude in the next generation by reminding them of the exploits of those defending our freedoms. Storytelling the past is essential to maintain allegiance for successive generations. America is only as great as the Americans who call her home.
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
Jon Meacham’s book, American Gospel: God, the Founding Father, and the Making of a Nation should be required reading for all Americans. Meacham suggests that the distinctive feature of America’s founding is etched on the Liberty Bell. Found there is the line from Leviticus 25:10,
“Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”
“Liberty and justice for all” is meant for all people. Freedom is the very center of the broad faith the Founders nurtured and passed on to us. Our minds and hearts, as Jefferson wrote, are free to believe everything or nothing at all; yet, it is our duty to protect and perpetuate this sacred culture of freedom. Many of the Founders based their belief in the connection between religion and morality. Meacham writes
“The Founders believed they were accountable before God.”
May that same sentiment be ours today.
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
More and more information comes out weekly about artificial intelligence, and not all of it is good.
It seems that AI can misdiagnose a problem creating “hallucinations,” meaning, AI is making stuff up. In one case, professors staffed a fake company with artificial agents. The AI agents were placed in an office to work together. The result was, “researchers wrote that agents are plagued with a lack of common sense, weak social skills, and a poor understanding of how to navigate the internet.”
From The Free Press, comes this headline, “AI will destroy what it means to be human. Are we ready?” To make matters worse, it seems that artificial intelligence researchers ran a secret experiment on Reddit users to make them change their minds and the results were creepy. Perhaps when it comes to intelligence we should lean into the biblical, not the artificial.
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
I was asked to address the Liberty University research week awards ceremony last semester. My comments were based on the famed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury who encouraged the maintenance of libraries and protection of free speech.
In part, I said,
“Every generation fights the same Bradburian cautions. We stand against all forms of extremism, no matter their origin. We are preparing ourselves to serve the culture, showing beauty, doing good, so that some will want to hear Truth. We submit ourselves to The Personal Eternal Triune Creator, Who made Himself known through the Person of Jesus and the proclamation of His Word from the writings of Moses through the Apocalyptic literature of the apostle John.
We are training champions for Christ not in the sense of We win but We serve.
And what better way to serve, than to do research that helps others.”
For Charlie, from Mark.
For us, Charlie is (not was), he passed over (he did not pass away), he lives There (though gone from here), his voice ripples through millions (it was not silenced), his work is finished (ours is not).
Photo by Dr. Brian Yates, Vice Provost for Residential Programs, Liberty University
This speech was delivered during the 2025 Research Week Awards Ceremony (30 April 2025). Many thanks for the kind invitation from Jeremy McGinness, Associate Dean, Research, Instruction, and Collections. Further thanks is owed to Dr. John Eller whose three-volume biography of Ray Bradbury I mined for background information. In addition, I thank The Ray Bradbury Center and my friend Dr. Jason Aukerman, its director, for the many hours of conversation about Bradbury while I worked at IUPUI (now, I.U. Indy). Most of all, I am grateful for Ray Bradbury, his many written works, and his commitment to libraries and free speech.
He had about him, the smell of kerosene. Guy Montag is a fireman. But he is not the kind of fireman we know. Montag starts fires, spraying kerosene instead of water. He is committed to burning books. The firemen work for the dictatorial state, the state which wants ideas, imagination, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism to be burned. Montag’s boss, Beatty, explains the world to Montag. He believes burning books stand against the people who want to “make everyone unhappy, with conflicting theory and thought.” In Beatty’s view, it is best, then, to be a fireman since books “Are like a loaded gun in the house next door. So burn them.”
Book burning by unknown Nazi authorities prior to World War II (n.d.)
Such is the premise of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, the temperature at which paper begins to burn. Inspiration for Bradbury’s literary fight against totalitarian thinking began when he saw reels in movie theatres, where Nazi soldiers burned books ahead of World War II. Later, Bradbury would witness the same kind of elimination of ideas, books being burned in the Stalinist Soviet Union or Mao Zedong’s Communist China. Bradbury abhorred censorship of thought, wherever it was found.
But firemen like Montag did not do their work round the clock. You see in his culture, which resembled the United States, people did not like to read. Burning books was not always required. Why? Because huge televisions filled the walls of homes. People were anesthetized to anything but what they were fed through visual stimulation. The citizens also used what Bradbury called “seashells” or earpieces which fed them a constant stream of propaganda. The people had become addicted to media. [Sidebar: None of this sounds familiar, does it? Let me pause here while I wipe the sarcasm from my chin.] During the second act of Bradbury’s novel, he quotes Matthew Arnold, the great Victorian poet, who spoke out against his own culture, a culture that cultivated only “sweetness and light” placing “faith in machinery” with these words from Dover Beach,
And we are here, as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Ray Bradbury (photo by Alan Light)
Every generation fights the same Bradburian cautions. At Liberty we speak up and stand against all forms of extremism, no matter their origin. At Liberty we read big books, think big thoughts, produce big research, and write big papers. At Liberty we are preparing ourselves to serve the culture, showing beauty, doing good, so that some will want to hear Truth. At Liberty we submit ourselves to The Personal Eternal Triune Creator, Who made Himself known through the Person of Jesus and the proclamation of His Word from the writings of Moses through the Apocalyptic literature of the apostle John. At Liberty, we are training champions for Christ not in the sense of “We win” but “We serve.” And what better way to serve, than to do research.
At the end of Fahrenheit 451 Guy Montag, who once set books on fire, then became a believer in reading books, finds Bradbury’s book people. Chased by the authoritarian regime, Montag finds respite with readers who are committing the Western canon to memory. I call them “book people,” because each person became a book so that books would not be lost. There is a restorative healing and hopeful conclusion to Bradbury’s cautionary tale. Not only have you been taught at Liberty to “hold fast the faithful Word” but you practice biblical blessing by your writing and researching.
The famed cover for the book (Wikipedia)
You and I and Liberty’s faculty and JFL staff stand with Bradbury’s commitment to libraries and free speech. Here I offer you, Liberty students, ten “Research Week” encouragements:
Defend free speech as Ray Bradbury did, rejecting tyranny, no matter its origin. God’s Truth, sourced by the Holy Spirit, planted as seed, fertilized by prayer, has been and will continue to be the wellspring of human freedom.
Leave people with a choice, clearly articulating both sides and the consequences for each of any issue, seen or unseen. Allow your communication to pattern itself after Jesus’ repeated phrasing, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” Allow your communication to be cautionary not confrontational. Remember, you are not the Holy Spirit.
Live with the tensions of life, as Paul aptly said, “If it’s possible, as much as it depends on you, live at peace with all people.” So speak against armed conflict because human dignity should be preserved, and prepare for war because human depravity is ever present. Your research, as much as it depends on you, will seek to serve the flourishing of your culture.
Love of neighbor includes protection of neighbor. Better to be prepared in self defense and never need it, than to need it, and not have it. Your research may protect your neighbor.
You are the watchmen on the wall in Ezekiel 33. When you see danger coming, warn your generation of the potential harms. Your research may warn against media saturation and encourage the cultivation of our humanness by reading.
Neuroscience research shows over and over that the reading of print material and writing with a pen on paper is best for cognitive development and memory growth. Your research will encourage reading, writing, and thinking, biblically.
Libraries are the repositories of memory, of a peoples’ collective consciousness. We bear the responsibility to preserve and protect the wealth of physical and mental collections. Your research will serve to preserve history, which is the very basis for our worldview.
“Don’t forget” and “always remember” are two phrases that dot the landscape of the Bible’s testaments giving us the charge to repeat, remind, and retell Hebraic-Christian teaching and its benefit for all people. Your research will work toward the future, harnessed by the past.
As good Book People, you now bear the responsibility of internalizing what you have read and researched, which is akin to what the prophets declared, “I ate Your Words, and they were the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” Your research suffused with biblical thinking will have people asking, “What makes you different?”
You are the future, the bulwark against extremes, working within the tension of human dignity with depravity, calling people to the cross, the resurrection, and Jesus’ return. Your research will be lived out in your vocations, laced with the principles of God’s Word, and weaving Transcendent wisdom through creation.
Joining the book people, Montag must now memorize one of the Bible’s books, the book of Ecclesiastes. I smile when I think of Bradbury’s choice. The book of Ecclesiastes, my favorite Bible book, leaves people with a choice. Choose a human-centered, “under the sun” view of life which ends in vanity, or choose a God-centered view, marked by the repeated phrase, “Enjoy life because it is a gift of God.”
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
Picture credits:
Dr. Brian Yates, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Liberty University
(1) I will *never* apologize for communicating a biblical mindset.
(2) I will seek to begin with Scriptural doctrine applied to life.
(3) My starting point will always be theological, then, sociological.
(4) I will speak to cultural-political issues across a wide spectrum, founded in and submissive to a biblical-theological position.
(5) I will be glad to engage with individuals and their thoughtful ideas in a venue which suits us both. I will be judiciously honest when we disagree. I will celebrate our agreements while clearly identifying our differences
(6) I will seek to be irenic (peaceable) not polemic (combative) in my approach.
(7) Participating in verbal fights on social media is not my calling. Instead, I will care for wisdom (generous prudence), meekness (strength under control), and peace (not to be confused with weakness).
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
Thanks for spending a minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
I titled my talk to a men’s group, “Eating Salt Together: How Men Become Friends.” I got the idea from Aristotle who said,
“Friendship requires time and familiarity, men cannot know each other till they have ‘eaten salt together’ until each has been found loving and trusted by each other.”
“Eating salt together” means people have gone through hard times, they have linked arms, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder in battle. Camaraderie, trust, honesty, reliability, and forthrightness is the result of shared work, shared suffering, and a shared life. Sometimes that life requires prayers, texts, emails, and phone calls at 3 a.m.
Take a moment to reflect on your friends and the kind of friend you are. Revel in and smile at the memories and rejoice in having friends who Proverbs says, may be closer than a blood relative. Be glad that you have friends who have eaten salt with you.
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
The Bible is good for people. It seems that Harvard University might agree! The question is raised, “Is religion a determining factor of public health?” Yes, says Harvard Public Health.
“Documentation suggests that weekly religious service attendance is longitudinally associated with lower mortality risk, lower depression, less suicide, better cardiovascular disease survival, better health behaviors, and greater marital stability, happiness, and purpose in life.
No other ancient text has a Personal, Eternal Creator. Transcendence and immanence both pour from the biblical God. He was at once separate and other-than while at the same time demonstrating caring compassion. Only from One whose authority was autonomous and absolute could spring the framework of a well-ordered world. Creation works. Stability makes life livable. Harmony flows throughout every established system. The Bible’s God cascades benefits from His personal nurture.
Common grace is goodness shown through all creation.
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
“Give Me a Minute” is an ongoing effort to simply, clearly, and quickly explain aspects of true Truth.
Gratitude, as always, to my longtime friend, videographer, and tech guru Josh for his continued service.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.
