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This is nothing new.

It is a renewal.

The ten beliefs that have not changed, even after the death of our son (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

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At Tyler’s memorial I read these opening words: “That’s great, Dad.” These are the words Tyler said to me every time I told him of an article being published, a student’s life impacted, a new approach to teaching used, a video series launched, or an accomplishment of any kind achieved. “That’s great, Dad.”

Make no mistake. The awfulness of my son’s death has not hobbled my beliefs. No. It has made my thinking more vital, visceral, and vigorous. Prophets, those who speak God’s Words, are conditioned not with comfort or ease but with pain and hardship. Suffering I have endured in life, now intensified by Tyler’s homegoing, continues to shape my being. Chiseled by circumstances, Divinely ordained, my words will persist on behalf of biblical Truth. And so, in the spirit of Tyler’s encouragement and Jonathan Edwards’ resolutions, I renew these confessions.

1. Standing under the Authority of Heaven, I will continue to speak God’s Truth to my time and place.
2. My interpretive lens will be guided by Hebraic-Christian thinking, prompted by The Spirit.
3. Care for all people, no matter who, without condition, will be driven by the love of Jesus.
4. Loving people includes speaking the Truth in love without compromise or condition.
5. Words from pen or keyboard will be considerate of context and culture without compromising Truth.
6. Cultural communication will be spoken within the wisdom and warnings of Scripture.
7. Doing good for all people, as much as is possible, will be my daily undertaking.
8. Practicing benevolence and excellence will be my conduct through all my vocational endeavors.
9. As I have strength, I will endeavor to offer the gifts given to me to the benefit of The Church and culture.
10. And I will give myself more and more to Christian discipleship of any who desire to walk this road with me.

“That’s great dad.” My son’s words will always ring in my ears. My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

How does it feel

to live with paranoid schizophrenia?

Our son Tyler explains in this Truth in Two (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat, Toledo Museum of Art, https://www.toledomuseum.org/about/news/july-1-art-minute-chuck-close-alex

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Tyler once sent me a picture from the Toledo Museum of Art. The portrait was of “Alex,” from a Chuck Close art exhibit. Tyler told me, “Dad, this is how I feel inside myself. Fragmented.” The picture of a man’s face is created by Chuck Close out of dots, dashes, and abstract shapes. The painting is not of a human face as much as it may be, of a person’s view of themselves.

The fragmentation Tyler felt was represented in his house. If you had the good fortune of visiting Tyler in his home, you would see horizontal spaces everywhere – whether on tables or door frames – filled with broken things. His daily walks with his dogs would cause him to pick up shattered pieces of metal, plastic, or wood. What some creatives call “found art” was Tyler’s pursuit. He cared for broken things.

It has struck me since Tyler’s passing that his jars and spaces filled with broken things may have been statements about how he did not want anything left out, keeping them, perhaps, wishing, they could be put back together. A picture from above one of Tyler’s doors in his home is but one example.

One of the many poems I have written since Tyler’s death this summer honors both his fragmented mind and his care for Broken Things.

Collections / Round his house. / Exhibits from the / Streets of life.

Walking / He gathered / Fragments / Artifacts of life.

Remnants / Metal, plastic, wood / Remembered / Careful of life.

Horizontal / Spaces full / Museums / Bits of life.

Nothing whole / Parts missing / Puzzle pieces / Reflections of life

Picture complete / Now, not then, / Shard collections were / Albums of his life.

I kept a picture of “Alex” by Chuck Close along with other pictures of Tyler. I never want to forget how he saw himself and how different his mind is now resting in peace. My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from a poem posted on social media. Similar words and ideas can be found by a search at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son. My video series on “suffering” may also be of benefit.]

You comfort no one

when you do these five things.

Watch our Truth in Two (full text below) to understand.

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

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Her jaw radiated pain; her body shuddered. There was no relief. It had been an awful wisdom tooth extraction. Our daughter now had a dry socket. A week later another oral surgeon had to cut her gum line, looking for bone fragments. During the surgery he “tapped on her jawbone” to assess whether or not it contained an infection. The pain Chelsea felt was left over from the doctor’s bone “tapping.” She took Vicodin: two at a time. The pain was unrelenting. The hygienist told my daughter that pain after surgery can flash back three, four, or five days after the event.

But what about three, four, or five years? What of three, four, or five decades? People suffer the memory of calamity in multiple ways, over multiple years. Consider for instance,

* The Moore, Oklahoma landscape was chiseled clean by an F5 tornado in 2013.

* Or, pictures on the mantle of parents, spouses, children, or siblings that record loss.

* Or, economic downturns and duplicitous bosses that make job loss a disheartening reality.

* Or, some that suffer the constant pain of depression, schizophrenia, or head-trauma

Folks suffer when something or someone is taken away, whether possessions, stability, sanity, or in some cases, lives. So, how should we respond? Here are five things NOT to do in times of calamity:

1. Don’t compare: when someone tells you of their pain, do not bring up yours
2. Don’t complain: do not suggest to someone who has just lost everything that you lost anything
3. Don’t answer: folks want to vent and rage; your reply should be silence
4. Don’t leave: nothing replaces physical presence
5. Don’t critique: people cry, scream, swear, drink, smoke; be sensitive, ditch your sensitivities

Chelsea, the citizens of Moore, OK, the jobless, everyone who hurts, remembers the pain. We should remember the folks who have suffered calamity. We should never forget their pain. My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from an article I wrote in 2013 titled, “Calamity.” A number of other articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]

The will to continue

is delivered a blow.

Find out why by watching our Truth in Two (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

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Pistons explode from shoulder to fist to face.  In a boxing bout the word “jabs” describes one opponent snapping his adversary’s head back with each blow.  This is Job 3.11-26.  Job then picks up an automatic pistol, firing controlled bursts of bullets expressing the subject of his agony.  Every single line and each nuance of meaning in the Hebrew throughout this chapter depicts the ferocity of blows and bullets.  The power of this gut-wrenching groan that reaches a roar at the end of the poem constantly repeating in verses 11-26, “Why? Why? Why?” I would encourage every listener to stop the video here to read Job 3:11-26. And I should warn you, these verses are not for the faint of heart.

Job “piles on” the words for death: death will be a repose, an anticipated rest, lying down, be at peace, tranquility, what we call “the big sleep” or “the long dirt nap.”  Death is better than life to Job because life is full of trouble. Job makes a long list that says life is nothing but trouble, in every way, for everyone.  Pick a social group, they are all represented here: the powerful, rich, leaders, wicked, the weary, slaves, forced laborers, prisoners, the small (underprivileged) and the great (the privileged).  Right in the middle of this grouping is what Job would have wished for originally—to be stillborn, dead at birth. Why does Job suggest death is best?  Because it releases us from life’s miseries.

Psychologists and physicians alike tell us that suffering produces questions of purpose and the will to continue in life.  Our best to response to anyone who is in pain is simply to listen and then do as Paul says, “Weep with those who weep.”

My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from a sermon I preached on Job 3 at Zionsville Fellowship (Indiana) the spring of 2008. A number of articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]

Hurting with others means to sit with them

In their deepest, darkest depths of despair.

Find out why the “hurt” of Job 3 is necessary to understand human suffering by watching our Truth in Two (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

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Johnny Cash famously sang a song titled, “Hurt,” where he said, Everyone I know, Goes away in the end. And you could have it all, My empire of dirt . . . Cash has it right. Sometimes suffering makes what we have seem meaningless. In the Bible, Job chapter 3 reflects the honesty of our hurt, pulsating with profound passion and pain. We may not comprehend another person’s specific grief. But what we can say is we have all experienced some of what Job 3:1-10 is saying. I would encourage every listener to stop the video here to read Job 3:1-10. And I should warn you, these verses are not for the faint of heart. 

Job’s lament begins as a curse from the womb, an anti-birthday-birthday. Job’s “birthday” was his “death-day,” an awful day, an awful event, one he wished had never happened. Job wishes he had never been born.  “Curse the day!”  The only way to do this is to wipe his birthday off the calendar. Job is in the deep throes of outrageous pain, wailing and moaning.  If we saw someone like this we would probably say, “They’re beside themselves!  I’ve never seen them like this before!”  This is Job’s state as he curses or removes the celebration of his birth.  It does not mean that Job has lost control.  Job is expressing the deepest, rawest of emotions a person can express.  There is no shame or sin here, only humanness.

In the Coen brother’s film O Brother, Where Art Thou? one song provides the underlying refrain: “I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow.”  This is Job’s song, the lament of Job 3:1-10.  Johnny Cash knew it. And if we’re honest, we know it too.  Caring for others means we must sometimes sit with them through the deepest, darkest depths of despair.

My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from a sermon I preached on Job 3 at Zionsville Fellowship (Indiana) the spring of 2008. A number of articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]

When suffering strikes

Lament is our response.

Watch our Truth in Two to find out why (full text below)

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Photo by Luis Santoyo on Unsplash

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Blindsided.  In American football, the word means the quarterback who is about to throw the ball to one side of the field is hit from his blind side. He never sees it coming. Being blindsided accurately describes unexpected grief in life. The awfulness of having one’s job taken without notice or reason, suffering the death of a loved one, or being given the diagnosis of cancer are only a few of the many ways humans are blindsided.  Moments like these are times when we question unjust suffering and God Himself.

Undeserved suffering may be the first reason to reject belief in God.  But if, as many First Testament scholars think, Job is the oldest book in The Bible, it would seem God addresses the problem early.  Of course, the fact that God deals with the issue up front is no solace to our bereavement.  Here is the onset of our grief.  We can know our theology.  But we still hurt, suffer, wail, howl, and scream our sorrow.

In the First Testament, lament is a poetic devise, a structure for expressing humanity’s crisis, travail, anguish, or despair. Ancient and modern people groups have their own laments—grief and outrage at humanly unjust circumstances. Job’s first verbal response to his situation in Job 3 is common to everyone, everywhere.

Lament is honest to who we are as humans.  Lament acknowledges our weakness, our deficiency, our common experience.  To be a Christian does not mean we stop being human.  Being a Christian accentuates our humanity.  We are committed to a righteous response to undeserved injustice.  And we are committed to the raw, rasping recoiled reaction to pain when it happens to us.

Job was blindsided.  There are times when each of us stands in line next to him.  We share the suffering Job utters. Job’s cry in Job 3 is our own. Scripture gives our pain a voice in lament. My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from a sermon I preached on Job 3 at Zionsville Fellowship (Indiana) the spring of 2008. A number of articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]