RIP, Jonathan Tjarks

The world was better with him

Most of my life, religion and I have had a contentious relationship; I grew up with a father who was overtly hostile to religion on account of growing up in a fundamentalist Pentecostal household, and as a result my formative years were mostly sans religion. I went here and there, mostly weddings & funerals with a trip to the churches of my grandparents interspersed a couple of times within. My mom’s mother went to a church that was about inclusiveness and love, I could deal with that; my father’s parents went to services that were about fire & brimstone, that I did not enjoy. My parents wanted me to make my own choices, my memory is that they did a pretty good job of hiding their personal preferences, and to use a recently-more-loaded phrase I did a lot of my own research. Sometimes it was talking to friends, sometimes it was my own reading, sometimes it was taking courses at UT (philosophy of religion stands out as a favorite). I tried to figure out where I landed, and at the end of the day it was a nominally agnostic spot. My wife calls me atheist and I guess that’s close enough, but being an engineer at heart I understand just how little of the universe I understand so I know there’s no real way I can 100% rule out being wrong about an omnipotent creator - if there was a being out there who fit the description, I accept I wouldn’t likely comprehend their presence - so I’m maybe a step short of actual atheism.

But mostly, I spent my years growing up not wanting to be bothered by religion; I don’t really care what people believe in their personal lives, so long as acting on their beliefs don’t actively make life worse for their fellow humans. If they follow the general idea of “love the sinner, hate the sin” and they don’t actively try to convert me, we’re probably going to be fine. As someone who has lived all of my life in the minority in this particular respect, I don’t pretend that my secular lifestyle is going to be the mainstream, I’m just looking for people to let me live my life while they live theirs. (This outcome is always in question when you live in Texas, and probably always will be.) Call it a bit of religious libertarianism, I guess; you do you while I do me. If we can hang out and get along without getting into each others’ beliefs re: heaven, things will be fine. A truce, or maybe a cease-fire, call it what you like.

I always knew Jonathan Tjarks was religious; he had a way of operating that you knew it was a central part of his life. If you didn’t read his writing, you still knew he was a firm believer; it’s hard to put a finger on it, exactly. Maybe it was his general aversion to cursing relative to me (which is admittedly a low bar) or a vibe in hindsight I would describe as ‘pious’, there was a gentleness to him that comes from a specific strain of believer. (Maybe he reminded me a bit of my grandmother in this respect, who was as sweet as the day was long.) He occupied a space where friendliness and good temperament coincided into a nexus of positivity, even when he was being sarcastic it was the nicest kind of sarcasm imaginable.

To wit, this is the last text he ever sent me, and it is about as mean as he ever got:

He never brought up religion though, maybe because he could read the room in a way I never could. It wasn’t until I read his non-basketball work that I got a sense of how deeply he felt a connection to his Lord. His writing has displayed his relationship and the twists & turns it has taken since his diagnosis. I’m still learning now, as the tributes pour in for him from writers all over. Read these tweets from Shea Serrano:

Shea Serrano @SheaSerrano

not too long after hurricane harvey destroyed houston i got a phone call — it was from tjarks — i figured he was calling to check on me and my family because that’s just the kind of person he was — i answered it — he said something like “hey how are y’all” — i said “we’re good”…

Shea Serrano @SheaSerrano

he said something like “okay good well i’m in houston” — confused, i said “what are you doing here” — he said something like “i heard people were hurting and needed help so we drove down to here to help we’re gonna go gut some flooded houses you should come”…

Shea Serrano @SheaSerrano

then he helped gut a bunch of flooded houses over the course of however many days — because *that’s* the kind of person he was — even when you thought you knew how nice and kind and thoughtful he was gonna be he would show up and be six times as nice and kind and thoughtful

Tjarks lived his Lord’s word to the fullest; he was in service to his fellow human, without question, without hesitation, and without advertisement. The fact that he didn’t see 35 years old is inhumane, not just to his family & friends but to the world at large; it’s darkly ironic that him passing this early makes me less likely to believe his view of the universe while also making me hope more than ever that I’m wrong. Someone like Tjarks deserves an afterlife that rewards him in the next realm for his behavior in this one.

Kyle Boone @Kyle__Boone

These words of wisdom from Jonathan Tjarks last month (in an interview with @ChrisCarrino) on his perspective of life and the prospect of death were so moving and continue to stick with me. He knew what and who was important to him, and lived it with clarity and purpose

Tjarks was a wonderful writer and a better human. In a cynical world, he was an optimist to the end. The world is poorer for his departure, as evidenced by the staggering amount of money being raised for his wife and son on his GoFundMe page. There are donations from Texas, Australia, and a hundred places in between. This kind of outpouring is a testament to the mark he left on the world, a sign that sometimes a person can be a force multiplier for good just by being themselves. He will be missed.