Timothy's Thoughts

H ave you ever thought of a story that you wanted to tell, but the concept was absurd beyond belief? For me, premature marriage stories are that way, but I enjoy reading them. The simple truth is that people simply don’t get married without realizing they are getting married or to whom they are getting married. It is absurd. So stories like this typically end up in historical novels or science fiction. How often have we seen the captain of a spacecraft visit a planet, enjoy the hospitality, and only later realize that he had participated in a marriage ceremony. But we enjoy these stories because of the high conflict as one or both people are trying to get out of the marriage and it doesn’t happen easily. One way to handle this absurd situation is to make it a marriage of convenience, but that isn’t the same as a person getting married without knowing it. But here’s a really cool thing about the suspension of disbelief: the less you try to explain the absurd, the more readers are will...

A few years ago, I suffered what I considered to be a great loss. Suffice it to say that because of that loss many of the hopes and dreams I had for the future vanished. For weeks, I questioned God about why he had allowed this to happen. Even now, I question why it had to be, though God’s will on the matter has long since been revealed. You know, people say that when God says no it is because he has something better planned. If that’s true, I haven’t seen it, but I will say I learned something about faith. Many people have the idea that if you ask God for something and have the faith to believe it will happen that it will happen. It’s kind of like the umbrella thing. People have the idea that if you pray for rain and believe it will rain then you’d better start walking around with an umbrella. Well, I can say that I prayed about it. I asked God to give me the thing. I even got to the point where I was convinced that he would give it to me, so much so that for a time I felt better ...

O ften, we think of novels as a form of entertainment. In fact, people may tell us that the reason they read novels is for pure entertainment and not to learn something. “If I wanted to be preached to, I would have bought a non-fiction book,” one blogger recently stated. So, if entertainment is such an important thing when it comes to writing novels, it might be helpful to consider what entertainment is. Merriam-Webster defines entertainment as “something diverting or engaging.” What we must ask is what it takes to provide a diversion or to engage someone. Recently, it seems that people have gotten the idea that entertainment has no educational value. Therefore, novels shouldn’t attempt to present the reader with a message. But is that a valid assumption? In a word, no. Thinking of those things that you wouldn’t classify as entertainment, what things can you think of that “divert or engage.” When you go to church, you wouldn’t normally think of the sermon as entertainment, but it d...

I wrote yesterday about how a Christian book should allow a Christian reader to learn from the failures of the characters so that the Christian will know how to stand when his faith is tried. I can’t help but think of Uncle Tom’s Cabin . That book showed us some very great failures that were happening in America. Uncle Tom was a Christian—a Baptist, if I recall—but he was a slave. He had a good master, but his master had to sell him. Throughout the book, Tom moved from plantation to plantation, sometimes treated well, but frequently mistreated. He eventually made it back to the good master, but it was too late and he died from mistreatment. People who read that book were able to learn from the mistakes that were made and it helped to bring an end to legal slavery in America. Some of the slave owners back then were not bad people. Some treated their slaves well. Though we remember the mistreatment of the slaves, many of the people of that day saw nothing wrong with what they were doi...

W hat makes a book Christian? In my way of thinking, what makes a book Christian is that it elevates the name of Jesus. Forget all this “Christian worldview” stuff. The real question is, does this book lift up the name of Jesus and promote the preaching of the gospel of the virgin born sinless Jesus crucified, buried, and resurrected the third day for the salvation of the world? Does it promote the mission of the churches, which is to preach the gospel, bring those who accept it into the fellowship, and then teach them what Jesus taught? If a book doesn’t do that, it isn’t Christian. Obviously, not everyone agrees with that. As far as non-fiction goes, they might, since most of the non-fiction Christian stuff deals with doctrine, church related stuff, or how to grow in the Lord, but when it comes to fiction we see a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit. The typical Christian novel is a romance novel, though some throw suspense into the mix. If you really want the whole shebang, look for an ...

H ave you ever asked God for something and he didn’t give it to you? Of course, you have. I encounter many authors. Most have been praying for years that God would help them get a publishing contract. There are couples who have been praying to have children. There are singles who long to meet the love of their life. There are people who pray for healing that doesn’t come. Whatever the need, they’ve prayed and questioned why God hasn’t met that need. Can’t he see how much pain it is causing? They’ve listened to the sermons on why God doesn’t answer and questioned whether they are asking for the wrong reason or if it is because of sin in their lives. They’ve knelt at the altar. They’ve cried themselves to sleep. They’ve spent hours in prayer and read their Bibles from cover to cover to find an answer. How long? While asking out of lust or asking for something when our relationship with God isn’t where it should be can prevent us from receiving the fullness of God’s blessing, I highly ...

I f God already knows our need, why do we need to pray? Some people have said that our prayers unleash the power of God, but consider Isaiah 65:24, “And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” That day isn’t here yet, but it doesn’t look like our prayers are necessary to unleash God’s power. God’s power isn’t on a leash. He can answer our prayers before we pray. God knows our prayers before we do. God wants the best for us. What then is the purpose of prayer, since we aren’t telling God something he doesn’t already know and we aren’t asking for something he doesn’t already want to give us (assuming we’re praying a prayer he will answer)? It all goes back to the Garden. When Adam sinned, he decided he didn’t need God. Ever since, our natural thought is that we can get by without God. If God were to give us everything we needed and/or desired without us asking for it, we would think we were God. Think about it. If you ...

H ow do you praise God when life is tough? That was our discussion in Sunday school last Sunday. Our adult Sunday school classes are studying the book of Job and last Sunday we looked at the passage in which four servants came one after the other to tell him of the loss of his livestock, his servants, and his children, but we’re told that he worshiped God and didn’t charge God foolishly. It is here that we see that well known statement, “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21) I think a lot of people get the wrong idea when we talk about praising God in the hard times. People look at 1 Thessalonians 5:18 and conclude that we should thank God for whatever happens to us, even the bad things. That may be easy enough to do with some things. “Thank you Lord for my car not starting this morning; I could’ve been in a wreck.” But how do you thank God for taking away y...

I s it just me or is the so called Sanctuary Cities Bill misnamed? My understanding of the bill is that it found prevent Texas State money from going to cities that prohibit officers from asking detainees about their immigration status. From the name, you would think that the bill attempts to establish Sanctuary Cities, but it actually does the opposite. To be honest, I don’t like the idea of cities trying to get around state and federal law by telling their police officers not to ask about immigration status. But I’m not so sure that I’m opposed to the concept of Sanctuary Cities. In the Bible, Sanctuary Cities were established for people who accidentally killed someone, so that they would be protected from the avenger of blood. Today, that kind of sanctuary isn’t needed because all people who kill someone are given a day in court to see whether it was murder or not. But the immigration issue is not so cut and dried. By the letter of the law, an alien who is in the country without t...

T he atheist who stopped by my blog to tell me that “God is not love” got me thinking. In writing, we talk about how we should show, don’t just tell. That’s nothing new. God knew that a long time before we did and yet, we have this statement in the Bible that says, “God is love.” I thought it might do us good to take a closer look at that. The statement appears not once but twice in First John 4. It is in verse 8 and again in verse 16. In verse 8 is says, “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” In verse 16 it says, “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” In context, what we see here is that John isn’t trying to tell us that God is love. John writes this in such a way that we see that he took the statement “God is love” as a known fact. It is similar to someone saying, a green leaf is not the sky because the sky is blue. What John is saying is that we know that those with...

D o you ever do the what-if thing? I’m currently working on a book that may have a target audience of 130,000. Just imagine if all of them purchased the book. Even at $1 per book, that would be a lot of money. Considering the nature of the book, $1 is actually on the low side. And if I sold that many copies, I’d have publishers and agents beating at my door trying to sign me. I know it isn’t realistic, but what-if. But what would be more realistic? I happen to know that the 130,000 number may be over inflated because it is the number of times a particular piece of software has been downloaded, not the number of people using the software. Let’s suppose that the average user has download the software five times. If so, the number of users is 26,000. That’s not quite as impressive, but I wouldn’t mind selling that many copies. If the price is set right, I could make a nice sum from that. What-if? We know that not all of the users will buy the book. What if 5,000 bought it? Depending o...

A n atheist stopped by my blog the other day. He seemed to think it was important that I be told that “God is not love.” He had a long list of adjectives to describe what he saw God as being in the Old Testament, one of which was jealous. I couldn’t agree with all of the adjectives he used, but I could agree with that one because God describes himself as jealous. He wants our worship and doesn’t like it when we worship something else. My atheist friend appeared to think that was a bad thing. To me, that is at the very heart of sinfulness. Compared to God, man is nothing, but so many people have this idea that they are so special that it would be wrong for God to tell them what to do. God made man from the dust of the ground. You can’t get any lower than that. We are dirt. Break us down into minerals and we’re worth less than $5. If we could see all of the Universe, we’re just tiny specks on a tiny planet near a tiny star in a tiny galaxy. What arrogance for us to think that God has a...

S teve Laube recently posted an article on average book sales . The figures he posted are interesting and yet, most authors never sell that many books. Across 10 authors and 51 books, he came up with a figure of 12,455 copies. Someone else came up with a figure of 5,000 copies. Most of the one million books published in the United States each year will never sell more than 100 copies. Why the differences in numbers? One thing we have to ask when trying to find the average is what we really mean by the average. As you are probably aware, there is more than one way to calculate an average. The most frequently used method is to calculate the mean. This is done by taking the total books sold and dividing by the number of titles. This is what Steve Laube did. But the mean has little meaning when a few books have very large numbers and the rest are smaller. For example, if we have three books with sales of 5,300, 7,000, and 1,000,000, the mean will be 337,433. We wouldn’t tell an author wh...

T he Bible says that every sin is a sin against God. How can that be? We see an example of that with Joseph. When he refused to sleep with Potiphar’s wife, he asked how he could commit this great sin against God. We know that’s what it says, but we question how what goes on between two people could be a sin against God. It might be easier to understand if he had said it was a sin against Potiphar, but he didn’t; he said it was a sin against God. One way in which it is a sin against God is that it fails to recognize that God is in charge. If God says adultery is wrong and we decide it is okay, then we’re saying that we have more right to control our lives than God does. If your boss told you to do something but you decided you wanted to do something else instead, he just might be upset with you. Another way that it is a sin against God is that it breaks the fellowship with God. God is holy. In fact, that appears to be his foremost attribute. God is not able to look at sin. When we d...

M y cup runneth over” is an expression we sometimes use in reference to the blessings of God. God blesses a person so much that they just don’t know what to do with all he has given them. What a wonderful thing it is when the Lord blesses us that way. The thing about a running over cup is that the excess spills out over the side. It may run across the table and if you don’t catch it quickly, it might soak any papers you have lying there or it might spill onto the floor. If you had another cup sitting there, you might be able to catch the excess in it. God’s blessings aren’t much different than that. Sometimes, we look at the lives of people and see that God is blessing them, but when we look at the people around them, we see that they too are benefiting from the blessing that God is giving to that person. If God is blessing a mother, her children and her husband are also receiving a blessing, as is her church. Anyone who happens to interact with her, even if it is someone she encou...

W hy are there girl power movies, but we don’t see boy power movies? So many books and movies have a theme in which a young girl does things to show that she’s able to do just as much as any boy can do. They’re usually cute stories that encourage girls to see how special and beautiful they really are. There’s nothing wrong with that, but why aren’t their movies for boys like that? And what would one look like if there were? I think part of the problem is that there is a tendency to lower the bar. While people say that girls can do anything that boys can do in order to encourage girls to live their dreams, they downplay many things that boys can and should be doing so that it looks like girls don’t have as far to go. That might help to encourage girls to take charge, but it has the opposite effect on boys. Tell a boy that something he’s doing is easy enough a girl could do it and it no longer seems like it is worth his time. Tell a boy that something he does that we wouldn’t encourage...

I keep hearing that women are more educated than men these days. From what I hear, colleges have more women than men. I have no reason to doubt that, since the numbers don’t lie, but then I saw an interesting picture. It was of some Engineering interns at a particular company. In this picture, there were fifteen young men, but only two young women, who had worked for the company during the summer months. Now before you start talking about sex discrimination, let me say that from what I know of the company, that isn’t likely. The only reason I can think of why there weren’t more women in that picture is because there were so few qualified women who applied. So here’s the thing: though there are more women than men attending college, when you look only at the hard jobs, it appears that men still outnumber the women by a substantial number. In other words, while there are a substantial number of men who don’t act like men, it is still men who are accepting the great challenges of life. ...

S ome people may disagree with me, but I think men understand love better than women. Take for example, the cases where a man loves another man and a woman loves another woman. Two women that love each other will go shopping together. They’ll call each other on the phone. They’ll visit together. They’ll talk about their kids and their husbands. But when men love each other, you see none of that. Oh, two men might occasionally have reason to shop together. They might go on a hunting or fishing trip together. They might sit around and talk about their kids and their wives. But that isn’t love. Most men would do those things with just about anyone, whether they loved them or not. If hunting is his thing, what man would pass up a chance to go? Who cares who he is going with? When two men love each other, you know it because they work together. Some men will spend a whole day helping a friend repair his car. Some men will take the a Saturday and use it to help a friend move. It may not be...

I saw a video that ABC News put together the other day that talked about how the US government is spending a lot of money to make dollar coins but people aren’t using them. They’re even building a new warehouse to hold them. So maybe they’re making too many of them right now, but from my perspective, it seemed like an odd piece. I use the dollar coin all the time. Many vending machines have prices that are near or over a dollar, so anytime I buy something from a vending machine I use the dollar coin. It may be true of men more than women, but the dollar coin is easier to use because it is easier to find a dollar coin in a front pocket than it is to retrieve a dollar bill or a credit card from a billfold. I think this is just another case where the news media is failing to paint the whole picture. They have a point they want to make. Picking on the dollar coin is fun because seems to show that the government is wasting money even as they make money. But give it time. In a few years,...

W hile looking into the word nevertheless for yesterday’s post, I came across an interesting story in the Bible that I felt would make a good post by itself. It comes from Ecclesiastes 9:12-18. This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me: There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good. I immediately thought of how this passage applies to writing. No matter how brilliant your writing is, if you don’t have a platform, people will doubt what you say. On the oth...

N evertheless is a word that appears 97 times in the King James Version of the Bible. It’s an interesting word because it ties two thoughts together with the second thought being related, but doesn’t obviously follow the first. The word first appears in Exodus 32:34, “Therefore now go, lead the people unto [the place] of which I have spoken unto thee: behold mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.” In context, this verse comes just after the people sinned by making a golden calf. You recall how they danced around it and said it was God. Moses went to atone for the people. Moses even went so far as to say that if God didn’t forgive them, he might as well blot Moses out of the Lord’s book. But the Lord said he would blot out those who sinned against him. The purpose of the nevertheless here seems to be that the Lord is telling Moses to go ahead and lead the people to the promised land and the Lord would lead them, but do...

S omeone once questioned whether we can claim to have faith if we pray for rain and don’t carry an umbrella. As I indicated in yesterday’s post, just because we pray for something doesn’t mean God has to give it to us and yet, he wants us to make our requests known to him and he often gives us what we request. That causes me to question whether we should measure our faith by whether we carry an umbrella or not. When we have a problem that causes us to worry, whether it be a lack of rain, the desire for a child, or the health of a loved one, Philippians 4:6,7 tells us that we can make our requests known to God and he will give us peace. Sometimes that peace comes from God giving us the thing we asked for. I’m sure the church had a lot more peace when Peter showed up at the door than when they were praying for his release from prison. We might fault them for being surprised that he would show up, but they were probably hoping he would be released the next day or sometime that week. The...

O ften, when people talk about prayer, what they really want to know is how to get God to do what they want. There have been a number of studies that have attempted to see if prayer could be used for medicinal purposes. The result has been mixed. Some studies indicate that people come through surgery better when people are praying for them while others indicate they don’t or even do worse when people are praying for them. But no matter what the study results show, the goal of the prayer was to get God to do what we want. And that’s just a little silly, when you think about it. God is bigger than the Universe. Our expecting God to do whatever we want is similar to an ant walking across our kitchen counter asking us to put out some sugar for him, when we’re more likely to squish the little creature, and rightly so. We are nothing compared to God. And yet, the lines of communication are open between us and God. Jesus did that for us on the cross. The Bible encourages us to pray. What then...