Timothy's Thoughts

W hat is the BMA? It took me by surprise when a church member asked me that question. But it also reminded me that we all come from different backgrounds. I have been involved with the BMA since before I remember. My love for the BMA is part of what led me to our church, but isn’t the experience of all of our church members. For many, they developed a love for our church first. The association was not a priority for them and for that reason they may still have only a passing awareness of what the BMA is. Because of my great appreciation for the BMA, I would feel remiss if I didn’t try to increase their knowledge. The BMA is an Association of Churches The Baptist Missionary Association (BMA) is an association made up of Missionary Baptist churches that are conservative in doctrine. To fully appreciate the importance of the BMA, we must first appreciate the need of churches to partner together in associations. The primary reason for the BMA is multiply the ability of the local church to...

O ur lesson on Sunday included an illustration. A professor put rocks into a jar until they reached the top. He asked the class, “is it full?” Then he poured sand into the jar, shaking it so it would fall between the rocks. “Is it full?” He then poured water over the sand. I’ve heard this illustration used by several preachers. Usually, they are saying to put God first, then add the other things in life. On Sunday, it was used to say that putting worldly things in your life can limit the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But today I saw a similar illustration on Facebook. A professor filled a jar with golf balls, then pebbles, then sand, and finally beer. He used it in much the same way pastors do, but when a student asked about the beer, he told the student that it was because there is always room to drink a couple of beers with friends. That’s the problem with object lessons. They give the appearance of proving our point, but two people can use the same object lesson to say ...

K eep us from messing up.” Those weren’t his exact words, but that was certainly the intent of our interim pastor’s prayer last night at the Pastor Search Committee meeting last night. Of all the committees I’ve served on, of all the positions I filled, serving on this committee is the one that makes me the most nervous. We have an amazing church. It is filled with great people who serve the Lord with gladness. I have great respect for the leaders within our church, both those who are serving on the committee and those who are not. Our church had a very deep pool of qualified individuals to pull from when they selected the committee. But if we were to select the wrong man as pastor, it could mess up all the good things that our church has going for it. It was good to hear that reminder last night. I’m not wrong in feeling nervous about my ability to select the right man for the job. Though I have great respect for the others on the committee, I’m not wrong in feeling nervous about the...

T his is Thanksgiving week, here in the United States. This is the week that we follow the Pilgrim’s example and pause to thank Almighty God for what he has so richly blessed us with over the past year. I been thinking about writing about the cycle of praise on this blog and now seems like an appropriate time. It works like this: God blesses us, so we praise him, because we praise him, he blesses us. It all starts with God, because without God choosing to bless us in the first place, we would have no reason to praise him and so he would have no reason to bless us. Take a look at Psalm 67. It begins by talking about the blessing of God. The stated reason for that blessing is “that thy way may be known.” It then talks about God’s people praising him. But in verses 5 and 6 we see this statement, “Let the people praise Thee, O God; let all the people praise Thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us.” It seems to be saying that our praise wi...

I love reading this list: love joy peace longsuffering gentleness goodness faith meekness temperance You probably recognize it as the list that Paul gave of the “fruit of the spirit.” I look around us today and it occurs to me that what we need is more spiritual fruit. When you think of spiritual fruit, don’t think of it as different kinds of fruit. Love isn’t one kind of fruit and peace another. The nine things in the list are attribute that describe one kind of fruit. Just like we as an apple is sweet, firm, red, round, etc. The fruit of the spirit is these nine things. And like an apple tree produces apples, the fruit of the spirit is what Christians produce. It is our actions. But not all of our actions can be called the fruit of the spirit, only those actions that demonstrate love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. I often seen people I didn’t know and thought, “that person has to be a Christian.” What caused me to think that was t...

I have some blogs in my feed reader that I don’t remember why I started following them. The other day, one of them caught my eye, 3 Way to Learn How to Win the Lottery . Even though I could read the entire blog in the reader, I chose to click through because I was sure it was some kind of joke. Yet, the best I can tell, the author believes what she has written. The simple fact is, you aren’t going to significantly improve your odds of winning the lottery by doing anything that she says in this post. Theoretically, you might gain a little by studying the numbers. No random number generator is truly random and if balls are used to draw numbers, the slight differences in the weight of the balls can cause one to be slightly more likely than another. But if they change the balls, your advantage disappears. Since the lottery is random, sticking to one game will gain you nothing. Some people have the idea that if they keep throwing their money at the lottery that eventually they’ll win. Gam...

D id you hear? Texas and fourteen other states are pulling out of the Union. That’s what they’re saying on Facebook anyway. Upon closer examination, what has actually happened is that individuals from fifteen states have filed petitions with the Obama administration to withdraw from the United States of America. In Texas, it is one Micah H. from Arlington who has filed the petition. I don’t know him. Other states are Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon and New York. Notice that there are some solidly Democrat states in that list. That should tell you how silly this is. Even if these petitions have the 25,000 signatures needed “for consideration” (I have little doubt they will), these states are a long way from being able to pull out of the Union. 15th largest economy in the world or not, even Texas would have a lot of issues to resolve before it could safely pull out. First, there is ...

U pon arriving home from work, I opened my mailbox to find an assortment of mail. A bill due next month. A check for the association. A few sale flyers. A gift catalog. This caught my eye. On the front of the catalog was the picture of a beautiful black girl in African garb, with a goat in her lap. I would guess her to be about eleven year old. I turned the page and there was another child with another goat. “Give a Goat” were the heading of the page and there was the price, $75 for a goat or $150 for two goats. They’ve certainly got the right idea. People don’t like giving money to a fund. It isn’t that they aren’t willing to give, but they want to know that their money is accomplishing something. Our church recently expanded our building. I think our building fund had about $200,000 or $300,000 that had accumulated over a decade. But once we started making plans to build, people gave. We would’ve built a $1,000,000 building debt free, if the contractor hadn’t misappropriated the mo...

R ob Sanders recently asked in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “When will the many become one?” He was referring to the Latin words on U.S. money, “ E pluribus unum ” – “out of many, one.” And also the election. Though a few states may fall one way or the other, the political map of the United States has blue Democrat states on the east and west coasts with a swash of red Republican states down the middle. We are a country divided. How do we unite it once more and work together? I’m reminded of the original thirteen states. They had their share of disagreement. We see part of this in the Constitution. The reason we have two houses of Congress is because of a disagreement. The small states didn’t want the large states to have too much power and the large states wanted power that was representative of the size of their population. The result is the Senate in which the small states have just as much power as the large states and the House of Representatives which is representative of pop...

W ell, the election is over and I can’t say that I’m completely happy with the results, but they are what they are. I keep thinking about President Obama saying, “wait until after the election” and I wonder just what we have in store for us. I suppose that is one of the problems with term limits. There is freedom in knowing that you don’t have another election to lose. But I’m also reminded of President Clinton. When he was reelected, there were a bunch of us who were convinced that he was going to use those last four years to do some very scary things. As it turned out, he went and got himself impeached. With everything that happened leading up to his impeachment and then the trial, he didn’t have time to do many of the things we thought he was going to do. I’m not saying that President Obama is going to be impeached like Clinton was. I’m not saying that President Obama has been spending too much time with White House interns. (I sure hope not, anyway.) But God is still on the throne...

T oday is election day here in the United States. This year, we're electing the most powerful man in the free world. But while all the attention is on the President, there are a lot of other people running for office. What I find interesting is that here in Texas as there are a lot of Republicans running uncontested for many of the races. I suppose in Illinois and California there may be several Democrats running uncontested. I'm not sure I understand that. Couldn't the lesser party (whichever one it is) come up with someone to run, even if it is just to put someone on the ballot? Granted, some people aren't willing to risk the possibility of winning the election because it would require them to take on the job they were elected for. If you are making good money at another job, you aren't going to risk it. But considering the number of people without a job right now, you would think that there would be plenty of people willing to put their name in the race, even i...

A came up to me and asked, “Are you saying I’m fat? I wanted to ask you about that e-mail you sent out about green tea.” I stared back at her with a dumbfounded look on my face. “I didn’t send you an e-mail like that.” Though I hadn’t sent the e-mail, it is very likely that she received an e-mail with my name on it. Here’s why: E-mail messages are simply a block of data with a header specifying who should receive the message, an optional subject line, and information about who sent the message. Unlike what most people seem to think, there is nothing that prevents someone from sending an e-mail with someone else’s e-mail address in the from field. A lot of people think they’ve been hacked when their friends tell them about e-mails from them that they didn’t send. This is typically not the case. A much more likely scenario is that a spammer has received an e-mail that someone has forwarded to their whole e-mail list. You’ve seen e-mails like that. “Forward this if you love Jesus.”...

S ome friends and I got into a discussion about 1 Timothy 2:12. On the surface, it seems pretty clear, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” And yet, I’ve rarely found two people who agree completely about what it means. For that matter, I’ve sometimes questioned my own understanding. As the saying goes, I won’t know what I believe until I’ve blogged about it, so I’m blogging about it. Is It Still Relevant? First, I will not entertain the notion that the verse no longer applies, either because the social climate is different today or because Paul was talking about one particular church. There are people who have tried to make that argument, but I tend to think they just don’t like what the Bible says. So, going into this, my assumption is that there is at least one woman living today who should not be teaching at least one man who is currently living. Is It Just a Husband and Wife Thing? One of the arguments I’ve heard is that ...

T here’s an article going around titled What Happens When Computers are Cheaper Than LEGO Block? . The premise is that because computer hardware is so cheap there will be a renewed hacker movement. You can literally walk into Radio Shack and walk out with an Arduino board for less than $40. And yeah, that probably means a trip to Radio Shack is in my future. Let’s be honest. For most people, this means nothing. If you’re hoping to replace your PC, this isn’t what you’d buy. But if you want to build a robot in your garage, or if you want to create a special controller for your Christmas lights, this might be the brain you need for the project. This computer is for hackers. And those hackers just might be fathers working with their sons on a really cool project in the garage.

W hen defining a character, it is more important to ask what the character won’t do than to ask what a character does. We often question what motivates a character to take a particular action. The problem with that is that we end up thinking of some action and then struggle with finding something that would persuade the character to take that action. What, for example, would cause a woman to kill her children? Or what would cause a man to leave a wife that loves him? It isn’t easy to come up with an answer. So how does turning the question around help? For one thing, it causes us to develop the motive before the action. Suppose a woman has spent all day listening to her children yelling at each other. What will she not do? Most women won’t kill their children in that situation. But they might be short with their husbands. Now, consider who we are as people. We might talk about the things we do, but the things we don’t do are far more interesting. What if a person were born without ...

T o catch you up, a few days ago a press release from The Civil Rights Agenda (TCRA) claimed victory over Chick-fil-A, saying that “In meetings the company executives clarified that they will no longer give to anti-gay organizations.” This left many of us scratching our heads and asking the Chick-fil-A company for an explanation. Chick-fil-A obliged us with a lengthy statement that I will summarize as saying, We’re going to continue with the same policy we’ve always had. [1] Within that document is the statement “The Chick-fil-A culture and 66-year service tradition in our locally owned and operated restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.” That statement is not new, but it is essentially the same wording that TCRA references when claiming victory. What is Really Going On? The last part of the statement just clarifies what they mean by “every person,” so it really comes down to wh...

I n recent years, there has been a push among some Baptists for elder ruled churches. Even among some BMA pastors, I’ve heard people say, “it’s the biblical way.” So, I went looking to see if I agreed with that claim. I found that there are some rather lengthy papers written about it. I intend to get to the point much more quickly. What Is An Elder? When referring to elder rule today, most people are using the term elder to indicate a church member who serves on a board that oversees the business of the church. You won’t find this definition in the Bible. The only support you will find in the Bible for anything near this definition is 1 Timothy 5:17, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the Word and doctrine.” The thing that makes this verse controversial is the word especially . Some people believe that it implies that there can be those who rule while they “labor in Word and doctrine” and those who rule, but don’t “lab...

This video shows the development of the human body from conception to birth. Truly, only God can do this.

W ho is your audience? Many times, we an author sits down to write, he thinks of someone to whom he is writing. As he weaves his yarn, he thinks of that person sitting across from him and he is just carrying on a one-sided (usually) conversation. But though we might write to that person, that person is not the audience who will receive the book. I began thinking about the average church size. 59% of the churches in America have fewer than 100 people who attend. There’s nothing wrong with that. I have known many small churches and have a great love for them. But think about the Christian books you’ve read that were written to help in the ministry of churches. How often do we see them reference things that we simply do not find in small churches? Occasionally, you’ll find a book written specifically for small churches, but I’ve read some of those and have often thought that the author didn’t get it. Instead, what you find are books written to churches with hundreds in attendance. Th...

— A federal judge threatened “incarceration” to a high school valedictorian in Castroville, Texas, unless she removed references to Jesus from her graduation speech. — City officials prohibited senior citizens in Balch Springs, Texas, from praying over their meals, listening to religious messages or singing gospel songs at a senior activities center. — A public school official in St. Louis physically lifted an elementary school student from his seat and reprimanded him in front of his classmates for praying over his lunch. T hese statements all just three of some 600 in a recent report on religious hostility. The report claims, “America would be unrecognizable to our Founders.” I’m not sure that true. Our founding fathers were no strangers to religious hostility. I remember reading about Patrick Henry attending a trial in colonial America. The story goes that two Baptist men had been arrested because they were preaching outside of the authority of the religion in that area. P...

I t is not the responsibility of a leader to decide where to go, but to show people how to get there. I’ve used this space to talk about leadership before. Not long ago, I wrote about the misuse of the word vision by Michael Hyatt, Jack Welch, and John Maxwell. I argued that vision in the truest sense is a vision sent from God. But let’s take a step back and look at their kind of vision. As you know, a lot of people are trying to develop a vision. We hear about things like vision statements . Once you have a vision statement you are supposed to cast a vision . Then people are supposed to follow you like cows to the feed trough. While that sounds good, people don’t always do what you tell them they ought to do. Take church, for example. For centuries, we’ve been telling people they ought to go to church. Some do. Some don’t. But I’m reminded of the wagon trains that used to head out west. Who in their right mind would leave Missouri to ride across Kansas in a wagon? And yet, ther...

O ur God isn’t big enough. When I pulled into a parking space at church, I noticed a single white flower growing next to the parking curb. The rest of the grass was trimmed to perfection, but there was that one lily that sprang up in the night and had bloomed. It was a beautiful flower, though it grew where no gardener would’ve planted it. Later, I saw about ten of these wild lilies growing in the median. They were bunched in a cluster right next to the road. They were not centered in the way a landscape designer would have placed them. They were just there. Ask a child who attends Sunday school how they got there and he’ll likely respond, “God planted them.” Now we, being older and wiser, know that a seed must have fallen on that ground. The seed grew and the flower bloomed. When the seed fell, they fell in a cluster around where the first seed had fallen, giving us those ten lilies growing in the median. But we smile and assure the child that “yes, God planted them.” In our wis...

L ast Sunday, our church celebrated 55 years with Gaylan Henry as our pastor. That was also the date of his retirement. 55 years is a long time, so we made a big party out of it. I filmed the worship service and the celebration service and my plan is to make a commemorative DVD. Currently, I’m in the process of securing permission to use the music from that day on the DVD. There are also some images for which I need to secure copy permission. Individuals or groups sang or played songs on ten different occasions. There was also a slide presentation with music in the background. The congregation sang three songs. But some of the songs were actually medleys, so rather than one song they were two songs arranged in to one. And while our church often uses live instruments, we also make use of sound tracks for some of our music. For one medley, I’m not dealing with just one copyright holder. Let’s take a look at who I’m dealing with. First, there is the person who holds the copyright to t...

O ne of the most basic doctrines of Christianity is that though we are born sinners, there is a way for us to change. That’s a scary thought for some people. How often have we heard people say, “I was born that way” or “I couldn’t help myself?” They say the words hoping that we’ll say, “we understand. It can’t be helped. Keep doing what you’re doing.” But that’s not what a Christian says. Instead, the Christian says, “I used to think that way. I used to think that I couldn’t keep from doing the things I did. But then I met a man who changed my life. You don’t have to continue doing what you’re doing.” Recently, there has been one sin that has gotten a lot of attention and some people have said that it is “hateful” to tell people that they can change. But why should our focus remain on that one sin? I suppose it is more difficult for us to think that we were “born that way” when we talk about other sins, and yet, we do tend to be predisposed to other sins as well. No child is born a...

A fter 55 years, the pastor of our church, Gaylan Henry stepped down from the pulpit yesterday. I don’t know if it is a world record for a pastor to pastor one church for that long, but it is certainly a difficult feat to accomplish. Few people are anywhere near that point. For me, it was a busy day. We had more people at church than we’ve ever had. It looked to me like we had about twice as many cars as we have parking spaces. The sanctuary was filled to capacity and we had an overflow area where they had to bring in additional chairs because we hadn’t set up enough initially. I filmed the worship service and the celebration service in the afternoon. I’m planning on putting it all on DVD, so I have quite a bit of work left to do. My next task is to acquire permission from the copyright holders to use the music. I suspect that won’t be a problem, as long as I’m willing to pay the royalties. But it requires different licenses for a DVD than it does to use music in a worship service....

I keep hearing that our society is a post-Christian society. In others words, we used to be a Christian society, basing much of our lives on what churches taught, but not anymore. While I’m sure that’s true, isn’t it time for us to stop thinking of ourselves as a “post-Christian” society and begin looking at ourselves as a “pre-Christian” society? What’s the difference? Sure, it doesn’t change anything about our society. Many people will still be antagonistic toward Christianity. The difference is one of hope. When I think of us being a post-Christian society it makes me think, “Things just aren’t as good as they used to be.” When you turn it around and see it as a pre-Christian society, I begin to think “Things aren’t great, but with work they will become better.” Our goal should not be to survive in a post-Christian society, but it should be to change our world in such a way that our society is once again a Christian society. What we once were, we can be again. Just because peo...

R ecently, I’ve heard several stories of businessmen who have taken a stand for the their Christian faith. In each case, there have been people trying to pressure these men to change the way they do business. There have been pickets and boycotts and whatever they thought would work. An yet I keep seeing one simple statement, “business is booming.” We must not forget what a great God we serve. Our God can take the actions of a lost world and turn them to our good. Let us not forget that “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) It should come as no surprise to us that business is booming at companies where the enemies of the Christian faith are in opposition to the views of the owners. So let this be a lesson to the rest of us. Let us not compromise on our walk with the Lord. It won’t be easy, but if we are serving the Lord as we should, he will bless us and use the actions of our enemie...

W atchers – characters who work from the sidelines, influencing other characters to take action. Dr. Who is one example of a character like this. Though he is also the main character, his actions are such that he watches out for the people of Earth and makes an appearance when they need him. He always has people with him who he encourages to take action, putting them in danger, when he himself really has nothing to fear. That’s one of the interesting things about watchers. They usually have more knowledge of the situation than anyone else and yet they seldom reveal what they know. If we include a watcher in our own writing, we’d better have a reason why the character doesn’t reveal what he knows. Perhaps it is because he doesn’t want to worry people. If you knew that the world was about to explode, would you create panic by telling them or let them go on their merry way? What’s the point of making their last few minutes miserable? Or maybe the character is the type who is trying to ...

I f you don’t have a clear vision, no strategy will save you. – Michael Hyatt G ood leaders create a vision, passionately articulate the vision, and relentlessly drive the vision to completion. – Jack Welch I believe that there’s no such thing as a leader who doesn’t have a vision. – John Maxwell R ecently, my employer went through the mid-year review process. They also combined it with career discussions, so I had the opportunity to sit down and talk about the direction of my career with my boss. There are a couple things it made me realize. First, I’ve had very little say over the direction my career has gone. I’ve moved from position to position within the company because they needed someone willing to do the work, not because I felt like a change in position would be good for my career. The second thing I noticed is that not only has my career not had any direction, I don’t know where I want it to go. That’s probably not the best thing to tell your boss, but it is true. If I...

I n a 2010 debate between Delaware Senate candidates Chris Coons (D) and Christine O’Donnell (R) there was a disagreement concerning schools being permitted to teach creationism as a competing theory to evolution. Coons made the argument that the First Amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to imply separation of church and state. O’Donnell interrupted and the following was the exchange: O'DONNELL: "Let me just clarify, you're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?" COONS: "'Government shall make no establishment of religion'" O'DONNELL: "That's in the First Amendment?" I’m conservative, a Christian, and I voted Republican straight down the ticket in the last election, but I’ve got something to say to my fellow conservatives. When we become so focused on winning the argument that we fail to consider what we’re saying, we are in danger of losing the freedoms we hope to ...

S ome of the families of those killed in that Colorado theater have said that they “do not want” the death penalty for the man who did it. Good for them. At least I think it is good for them until hear some people say that they think it would be better for him to spend the rest of his life in jail thinking about what he did. It makes me think that they don’t believe he’ll have to think about what he did if he goes to hell. But that is more of a faith problem and has nothing to do with whether the man should be executed for his crimes or not. While the Bible tells us in Genesis 9:6, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” it also says in Numbers 35:31, “Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death.” Often, it seems like people have the idea that murderers should be executed so the families will get justice. God doesn’t take satisfaction in the death of a murderer and neither should we or the families of the victims. Instead o...

A church website hosting company recently posted an article stating that web hosting is the biggest cost of a church website . It became clear that they were promoting their own services when I saw the following list: Take these example costs from a variety of church website providers. The number you see is the monthly cost. Mychurchwebsite.com: $49-$119 Buildachurchwebsite.com: $54-109.95 Clover sites: $20 Siteorganic.com: $99-299 Faithpulse.com: $59.95 Sharefaith: $14.99 (Best Value) My first thought when I saw this list was that these are annual costs because my own church is paying about $80 a year for web hosting and I know there are other hosting companies that have even more economical rates, if you are really looking for the lowest price. But these are monthly rates and that means that Sharefaith is charging more than twice as much as you really need to pay. Even so, $180 a year isn’t really that bad if you’re putting the website to good use. But is that really your biggest...

T oday is Chick-Fil-A Appreciation day. I’m looking forward to a chicken sandwich for supper. But if they have so many people stop by that they run out before I get there, that would be okay too. I really like this, because instead of having to show my support for Christian values by not doing something, I get to show my support by taking action. I’ve always hated boycotts because I don’t shop at many of the places that I’m supposed to be boycotting anyway. But I can go buy a few more chicken sandwiches. And though I don’t think I could eat chicken sandwiches all the time, one of the things that impresses me about Chick-Fil-A is that they serve quality food. Their sandwiches are among the best. Their ice cream tastes like homemade. Their lemonade is the real stuff. Even their diet lemonade tastes good. Where else can you get diet lemonade? And it isn’t enough that they just have it; it is good. So it doesn’t put me out at all to buy a few more chicken sandwiches. It’s a little out ...

N ever do today what can be put off until tomorrow.” I don’t know who first said that, but I often find myself doing it. I set up these tasks in Outlook to remind me when it is time to do certain things. That’s helpful when it may be a year between each time the task must be done. The only problem is that Outlook has a snooze button. Rather than doing the task when it pops up, I put it off a few days. I have one task that I’ve been putting off all summer. One task was scheduled to show up at the first of July. I didn’t actually do it until yesterday. The thing is, I hate procrastination. I put something off and the whole time I’m telling myself that I need to get it done or it will be late. It is so much easier when I just do the task and get it out of the way. I know this, but I still put things off. And it’s not like there are other things that are pressing for my time. Occasionally, that is true, but I could make time for the things I need to do and then I would be free to relax w...

D o you respect other people? Do you respect their right to have a different opinion than you? Of course you do. But do you respect their opinions? Before you say yes, stop and think about that one. We respect people because they are our equals. We all came into this world with nothing and we will leave it with nothing. When it is all said and done, we’re all the same. We respect people’s right to have a different opinion because we recognize that we ourselves are sometimes wrong. Even if we know that all evidence supports what we believe, we can appreciate that other people may have trouble accepting the proof that exists. But respecting another person’s opinions is something different. Respect refers to esteeming or admiring something. It carries with it the idea that we value the thing we respect. It makes sense for us to value people. It makes sense to value a person’s rights. The question is, how do we measure the worth of an individual opinion? The court system has no probl...

I left a comment on a recent news article, “I was not aware The Jim Henson Company supported homosexuality. I’m very sorry to hear that.” This brought the ire of some homosexuals who had also read the article. But they used words like bigot and homophobic . One of them took it upon himself to tell me that no one cared about me either. This after he had already told someone else who had commented on the article that no one cared about him. I’ve come to the conclusion that some people hate me. They really, really hate me. And they don’t even know me. How are we to deal with this? By now, you’ve heard that the Bible teaches that we are to love everyone. If you haven’t, just go look at your enemy’s website. He’ll be sure to tell you that. But let’s look at what Jesus said: Ye have heard it said, “Thou shalt love they neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully us...

M any Christian authors have the idea that they will use their skill at writing to win the lost for Christ. It may be that they don’t like the idea of knocking on a stranger’s door or maybe they fear teaching a Sunday school class, or maybe the just feel that is the best way to use their talent. I can’t say it is a bad idea, but how do we do it? I’ve seen a few bad examples. Overall, I enjoyed Lori Wick’s novel, The Princess , but I hated the come to Jesus scene. It seemed to me that everyone in the book was saved, so somewhere in the middle of the book Lori Wick introduces a character who isn’t. He is a young boy and he has a family member in the hospital. He does little to move the plot along, but he gives the main characters the opportunity to tell someone how to be saved. I particularly hate that because during what could arguably be the most important scene a reader could read, the reader is anxiously wondering how long before the author will get back to the story. How do we f...

H ow often have we heard that the reader must identify with the protagonist? He must be a likeable character—save the cat and all of that. But what about the villain? We often see villains as evil itself. And as we think about the perfect villain we may come up with a character that we despise in the worst sort of way. This is not the way to write a book. The villain is the most important character in a story. Even when he isn’t in a scene, he is driving what happens. Look at Satan, the great villain of the Bible. Remove him and the story would be very different. Eve would’ve never eaten the forbidden fruit. Job wouldn’t have suffered. Israel wouldn’t have turned against God. Jesus wouldn’t have died. Victory over dead would have never occurred. But with him there, we see how great a victory it is that Jesus accomplished. We may question why God has allowed Satan to do what he does, but that may be our answer. Satan shows us contrast between evil and good. Now, stop and think why t...

T hose of you who read yesterday’s post know where I stand on the Chick-fil-a issue. I’ve probably said more than enough on the core issue, but as a writer, I see something more interesting at play here. Who is the villain? Often, we think of the villain as the bad guy who eats nails for breakfast and has no purpose other than to make the life of the hero difficult. In real life, that character doesn’t exist and we certainly don’t see it in the Chick-fil-a situation. Let’s look at the cast of characters. First, there is Dan Cathy who said nothing about homosexuality at all, but stated that they were guilty as charged in their support for the traditional family. There is the news media, who took that statement and turned it into a statement about homosexuality. There is Lisa Henson of The Jim Henson Company who has decided to terminate The Jim Henson Company’s relationship with Chick-fil-a. Lastly, let’s consider Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who today is taking heat from the Boston Herald...