Timothy's Thoughts

W hat is the theme of the Book of Ruth? I’ve heard that it is several different things. Some say that the theme of the Book of Ruth is that of the kinsman-redeemer. They base this on the doctrine of Jesus being our kinsman-redeemer. The concept of the kinsman-redeemer is one that comes from the old traditions and the basis on which Jesus could be our propitiation. Had Jesus not be a man, his sacrifice could not have been applied to our debt. Certainly, that is a very powerful and important doctrine that is discussed in the Book of Ruth, but is that the theme? Some people refer to the faithfulness of Ruth to Naomi and say that faithfulness is the theme of the Book of Ruth. Some say that the theme of the Book of Ruth is the Lord’s provident protection of the faithful. Here, with Boaz a stand-in for the Lord, we do see the Lord providing protection, but is that the central theme of the Book of Ruth? I would like to suggest that the primary theme of the Book of Ruth is something else. ...

R ecently, KTVT ran a segment on Christianese. What they seemed to be saying was that Christianese is a bad thing because people outside of Christianity. Christianese is a type of jargon that Christians speak. Part of it comes from the Bible, while other parts of it come from the way Christians do things or from music they sing. KTVT is the first to say something against its use. Those who have criticized it range from Atheists who are making fun of Christians to pastors who are speaking from the pulpit. There are even some videos on YouTube that make fun of it. It is easy enough to criticize it because non-Christians don’t understand it, but as I started putting together a list of Christianese terms, it occurred to me that it is pointless to try to eliminate it completely. I suppose that is always the case with jargon. Consider the statement, “My WIP is up to 80,000, but it’ll go up because it has a lot of telling.” If you’re a writer, you know exactly what I’m saying, but if you ar...

J esus said that the whole law rests on the first two commandments, namely, to love God and to love each other. If people would obey those two commandments, they wouldn’t do the things they do to each other. Think about envy or if you prefer, covetousness. Why do we become green with envy? It doesn’t take much to show that envy is a result of us not loving our neighbor. Consider this: Your brother goes out and buys a new car. He brings it over and shows it off. You tell him how nice it is, but all the while you’re thinking, “I wish I could buy a new car.” But what if we really loved our neighbor as ourselves? Suppose you’ve saved up some money and you have enough to buy a car. The one you’re driving still runs, but you would like a new one. But you know your brother needs a car and he can’t afford one. Perhaps you buy a new car and give him your old one. That seems like a nice thing to do. But maybe you keep the old one and give him the new one. Most of us would do the first over the...

W hen a friend found out just how little I make from writing books he asked why I would put so much time into writing a book when I make so little from it. I sometimes wonder the same thing and yet I find myself at the computer typing away on that next book. I’m sure the answer is different for everyone. I frequently hear of people who have lost a job and have decided that they’re going to write for a living. Anyone who knows much about the publishing industry knows this is an unrealistic goal for most people, but I think I understand it. Writing is one of those jobs that people feel they can do and they don’t have a boss to report to. So it gives them the feeling of control over their situation. But that’s not the reason I write. Writing is a form of communication. When I write, I hope to communicate, but I see many indications that that is not my primary goal. If it were, I would do more to give my books away. You can’t communicate if you don’t get the book into people’s hands, s...

It's Thanksgiving. What are you doing here?

A week ago, some of my work was on another site and today is the day that people should find out that it was my work and they may be clicking through to this site, so I thought I’d use this space to respond to some of their comments. The general response seems to be that it piqued their interest, but they thought it drug on too much without going anywhere. I thought it was interesting that one person said it was realistic and another person thought I should do more research to find out how a security guard would actually respond in this situation. I have worked for more than one large company that has had guards posted at the front gate. I even did a small amount of work for the security department of the company I worked for in college. I cannot with any certainty say that this is the response you would get if you tried this at any one of the companies I’ve worked for, but I see this response as plausible at some company. The problem may be that the scene is too realistic. Most ...

O n my way home from work the other day, I saw a rainbow. I was traveling East along I-20 and there it was, a double bow. One half was on one side of the road and the other half on the other. Science tells us how they are formed, but you’ve got to read the Bible to know why they exist. The Bible tells us that God put a rainbow in the cloud as a sign of his promise that he would never destroy the earth by flood again. Science tells us that rainbows are formed by light. There are two reflections and refraction. But when I was a kid, it was easy to think of a rainbow as an object you could find. Back then, there was a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. I miss those rainbows. But I like that the Bible says that God put a rainbow in the cloud. God put it in the language that we can all understand. If he were to tell us what it takes to put a rainbow in a cloud when there wasn’t one before, even our greatest scientists would seem like idiots. Sure, they know how to shine light on a...

I t’s so hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way or so the saying goes. Humility is a strange thing. It is prized by God. The Bible says we are to humble ourselves. But I question whether we understand what humility is. By “we”, I really mean me. Someone once said that humility isn’t about us. In other words, humility doesn’t mean you have to go around telling people what a worm you are, but it is seeing the greatness of others. If you’ve accomplished something in life or if you have some special ability, you don’ t have to go through life playing it down like it is unimportant. That would be dishonest. The humble person simply doesn’t spend a great deal of time talking about that stuff. If he has won an award, he may talk about it if it comes up, but what really distinguishes the humble person is that he is quick to talk about the accomplishments of others. When someone is better than he is at something, he says something about it. In our relationship with God, what t...

H ow much should a book cost? Some people get upset if a Kindle book costs more than $2.99. Some hardbacks cost $25.99. I’ve paid $100 for a text book that was smaller than most novels. I remember some romance novels Mom had with a price of 69¢. Today, those same books would bring about $6. I saw somewhere that the production cost of a hardback is only 50¢. The same source said the production of an e-book is $4.05. But e-books typically go for less than a hardback. Are publishers overcharging us for hardbacks? Are we paying too little for e-books? How can we figure this out. First, production and delivery costs shouldn’t matter to the consumer. There are a lot of people out there who think Kindle books should be priced very low because the publisher doesn’t have to pay to print them. In truth, printing is not the major drive on book pricing and there are plenty of costs for e-books that publishers must consider, but as a consumer, I have no reason to be concerned with that....

A fter years of writing books and never understanding why people say writing is hard, I’ve decided that if writing isn’t hard, you aren’t doing it right. Now, that’s not to say that we should make writing difficult, just so we have to suffer for our art. And it’s not to say that everyone who finds writing difficult is a good writer. But no one achieves greatness by doing what is easy. This is true in any field. Imagine the great concert pianist. He is performing in Carnegie Hall. He walks out on stage. All eyes are on him as he sits down at the piano. He rests his hands on the keys. They raise ever so slightly as he prepares to hit the first note. Then with one finger he plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star . You don’t get to Carnegie Hall by being the best at playing easy stuff that any five-year-old can play. The same is true of writing. When you consider that there are millions of would be authors out there who are willing to write the easy stuff, no matter how well you write easy...

Now here’s another one. Suppose someone offered to give you all of those pennies ($10,737,418.23) or they will give you only those things you need in any given day. After having been burned by the pennies, I’m sure you will assume the second is the better choice, but you may not know why. Without having been burned, you would likely choose the money. With money, you are in control. You get to choose what you buy. You don’t have to rely on the other person knowing what you need. The thing is, as we go through a day, there are relatively few things that we use at any given time. Look around your house and think about how many things you have that you haven’t touched today. Other than the joy of knowing you have it. You could have gone through the day without it. Tomorrow, you might need it, but not today. Look at the food in your pantry. How much of that will you eat today? What about your car? You drive it for maybe an hour or two and the rest of the time it is parked. If we looked at...

“ I just love it when a plan comes together!” Hannibal Smith used to say as the A-team brought victory from the jaws of defeat. Well, I’m at the point where I want to say, “I just love it when a story comes together.” I’ve been fighting this thing for several months. It started out as a simple logline. It sort of flashed into my mind, but once I thought of it, I knew I had to try to do something with it. I’m not ready to reveal what it is in a wide public forum, but I will say that what fascinated me about it is that it takes one of the worst situations you can imagine and then implies that the solution makes it even worse. Not this, but something along the lines of “She thought their divorce was the worst thing that could ever happen, but then they reconciled.” After thinking about it for a while, I went ahead and started the story. I had an idea of what might be worse than the worst thing, so I headed in that direction. But then it didn’t work. The story involved a couple of par...

W hat one word sums up everything that every successful writer has ever written? What one word tells us what every reader it is looking for? Think you can’t do it? Think you can’t come up with just one work? I think you can, because that one word is hope. Hope is what it is all about. Take the bestselling book Heaven is for Real as an example. It has turned into a chase cow for Thomas Nelson. But why? What is it that people expect to find in its pages? Hope. Many people are fearful that maybe heaven isn’t real. They’re fearful that the Bible isn’t true. So they are turning to a little boy named Colton Burpo to give them hope. If he went to heaven and saw it, then it must be there. My fear is that he’ll let them down. I fear he’ll revise his statement later and say, “I made up most of that because I thought my parents wanted to hear it.” Read the book and tell me you don’t see that coming. What about a novel, like Harry Potter . Don’t we look to characters like Harry with hope, wis...

H ere is a book trailer that works. Let’s look at why. 1. It entertains - Even if you never intend to prepare a sermon, this video is fun to watch. Who can’t imagine what must be going through the poor assistant pastor’s head when he receives an e-mail saying he’d better be ready to preach on Sunday. And then to look at all the things he tried, before typing in the phrase “How Sermons Work.” It’s kind of funny to think that a man would do that, and yet we’re all guilty of doing something similar. 2. It shows why you need the book - It first shows us a problem and then it shows us that the book is the solution. But if you look closer, you’ll see that it follows the outline of a story. There is a problem, which the character tries to solve. The solution isn’t what he hope. He tries again (with the book) and all is well. 3. It is simple - A video like this shouldn’t burden us with all of the reasons we should buy the book, but it should give us one very specific reason. If the v...

Y esterday, I mentioned a discussion I had with someone about the color or Francine Rivers’ novel Redeeming Love . I also described For the Love of a Devil as being green and moving into the territory of forest green or even black at points. There is another book that I’ve been working on some and I think of it as a brown. Not a dark brown, but it had definite earth tones to it, with a tinge of yellow that brightens it. Why are we able to think of stories in terms of color? Some are a fiery red. Some are as black as night. Some are a cold blue. Some are a soothing green. Some a relaxing teal. Some are a cheery yellow. Some are soft and tender pastels. What is it that allows us to say that? Color moves us emotionally. So does music, but music is active. Color is more static. Color tells us the state of the environment. The gray of a cloudy sky gives us the impression that it is a dreary day. The black of night hints at dangers lurking in the darkness. Blue is a color of authority....

I love when people disagree with me, especially when they stick around long enough to have a good discussion. The other day, I got into a discussion with a woman about the color of a novel. It started with a literary agent asking me what kinds of books I thought were missing in Christian literature. I answered that it seems like most of what is out there is either pastel, as is the case with romance and other forms of women’s fiction, or it is the dark browns and black of stories about demonic forces taking over the world. There isn’t much in between. In another part of the discussion, another commenter said something about Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love . I said that I had read the book and I saw it as being primarily aimed at women and it is more pastel. The woman disagreed, so I thought she was disagreeing about Redeeming Love being aimed at women. I went into some detail about how Francine Rivers’ had fashioned Redeeming Love in such a way that the woman had the primary lead a...

H ow do you describe a woman’s beauty? In part, a woman’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A man in Africa is likely to see beauty where a man in Japan does not. If you were to ask the man in Japan to describe the beauty of a woman, he would probably describe something very different than a man in India. And look at what they say is beauty on television. Apparently, a woman isn’t beautiful unless she has nothing covering her long thin legs and her breast are the size of melons. If that is what you’re thinking of when you’re asking how to describe a woman’s beauty, that isn’t hard. Just talk about legs and breasts and cleavage and people will know what you’re talking about. But is that true beauty? A woman like that has made herself a slave to the men she is trying to impress. If you find that when you are trying to describe the beauty of a woman, your mind’s eye focuses on those things that are below the neckline, you aren’t focusing on the true beauty of a woman. There’s nothin...

A s you may know, I'm not married nor have I ever been, so I'm not the ideal person to offer marriage advice. But Christian novelist Colleen Coble recently celebrated forty years of marriage and one piece of advice she offered recently is "Appreciate all the things your spouse does for you. Verbalize it in front of others too." And then she said, "Focus on your spouse's good qualities." Good advice. When was the last time you said something in public about something you like that your spouse does? Some people are so quick to tear criticize their spouses in public. I'll probably get in trouble for this, but it seems to me that women are the worst offenders. If nothing else, you can hear it in the tone of their voice when their husband does something they think is childish or silly. You don't see many men who will say something like, "You'll never guess what my wife did this week. She went out and bought a purse to match her shoes. Then ...

O ne of the popular things for literary agents to do on their blogs is to post first pages (with the author’s permission) and then provide comments and/or allow their readers to provide comments about what works and doesn’t work with the piece. The concept is that since agents typically see nothing more than the first page before rejecting a novel, the first page is very important. I’ve participated in these and have enjoyed doing so, but there’s a point where it isn’t fun. The other day, an author submitted a first page and it was brutal. You can usually find something good to say, but this was a case that I felt like I was lying to the author by mentioning the good parts. There wasn’t much hope in saving it. All of the people who responded were nice about it, but I couldn’t help but thing that if I were the author reading those comments I would cry. But then I looked at the author’s website. This particular author has a few books out, is a public speaker, and she gives writing cl...

W riters are often admonished to Show, Don’t Tell . My roots are in the Show Me State, so I’m all for showing, but I think there’s enough confusion about the topic that some writers just don’t get it. I don’t know if it will help anyone else, but when I think about this topic I think in terms of revealing , rather than showing . That may be confusing also, since you can reveal something by simply telling someone, but I imagine that there is something hidden behind a curtain. While the curtain is closed, I can’t help but wonder what is back there. Someone pulls back the curtain a little ways and I can see something. There is a table back there and something is on it, but I’m still not sure what it is. Then they open the current all the way and I can see, that a magician’s top hat is on the table and he is about to pull a rabbit from the hat. In a story, it isn’t just about action versus narrative. Narrative has a way of slowing down the story because it stops the clock, but the real ...

R esearch isn’t always good thing. I’ve seen some authors talking about all the research they did when they wrote their books. You open up the book and there it all is. One author was talking about visiting a farm and talking to the owner about all the stuff he did in a day. She rattled off a list of stuff he told her. In the book, it was pretty much all there. The problem is that when you’ve never lived in that environment, you might place high importance on something that the person you are interviewing sees as unimportant. You might assume that something he mentions is common when he is actually telling you about it because it is rare. And the truly ordinary stuff—the stuff novels are made of—may go unmentioned because it is so ordinary that he didn’t think you would want to hear about it. One reason people like reading novels is because they give us a view of what other people consider ordinary. It isn’t ordinary to us, because we don’t live in that environment, but it is for ...

I s divorce worse than losing a spouse through death? Unless you’ve experienced both, I don’t think you can compare the two. Even if you have, it is likely that your experience may be different than someone else’s. I’ve never been married, so I’m in no position to say. But what about that saying, “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?” Perhaps that isn’t true. I can tell you straight up that I would rather spend my whole life single than to go through a divorce. As for whether divorce is worse than the grief from losing a spouse through death, logic tells us that it is. The widowed person has the memories of the good times to look back on. The divorced person is unable to enjoy those memories as much as he should. He can’t look back a the times his wife did something nice for him without wondering if she really did it because she loved him or if she was just going through the motions. But here’s the thing: It really doesn’t matter. The person whose spou...