Timothy's Thoughts

P eople are frustrated about this Phil Robertson thing. You can hear it in post after post on the internet. The thing that is frustrating them isn't so much that A&E dismissed Phil. People are used to their favorite shows getting canceled. And it isn't because Cracker Barrel removed products with Phil's image on them. Most people weren't aware that they carried those products. No, the thing that is frustrating people is that these corporate executives don't seem to be listening. First. You've got Nancy Dubuc, who dismissed Phil for quoting what the Bible says about homosexuality. It wasn't that long ago when people rallied behind Chick-fil-a after the had someone make a similar statement. If Nancy Dubuc had listened, she would have realized that she was starting a fight. Then there is Cracker Barrel, who in the midst of most of their customers taking a stand for Phil Robertson, pulls his picture off their shelves. If they'd been listening, they would...

P redominantly, the posts I have seen are in support of Phil Robertson and free speech, but FoxNews included the following Tweet in an article they wrote on the subject: Thank god A&E did the right thing, what Phil did was not a issue of freedom of speech but an immoral act, its 2013, stop being ignorant. - @LucVsZhVO of Chicago This is the type of mentality we are dealing with when we deal with the world. To this person, an immoral act trumps freedom of speech, so it is seen as perfectly okay for A&E to silence Phil Robertson. The problem with this thinking is that what @LucVsZhVO defines as an immoral act and what Phil Robertson defines as an immoral act are two very different things. That is why freedom of speech is so important. Without it, those who have the most power will define what acceptable speech is and define everything else as immorality. True supporters of freedom of speech realize that freedom of speech means that other people have the right to say things they...

W hen we think about the holidays, we might think that Halloween is the most wicked of them all. It is a celebration of the dead and often involves people dressing up as ghosts and witches and any number of evil things. If that isn’t enough, children go from house to house begging for candy. Christmas, on the other hand, is viewed as the very best of the holidays. We sing songs of peace on earth and good will to men. We watch the kids in the Christmas pageant at church. We read the story of Jesus’ birth in the Bible. What could possibly be evil about Christmas? For one thing, Santa. The way many people view the jolly old elf is far more evil than what most people do for Halloween. Many people view Santa Claus as the god of snow. Take the song “Snow for Johny,” for example. One line says, “God, tell Saint Nicholas to send a little snow.” While the kid in the song is praying to God, it seems to be saying that the weather isn’t in the hands of God, but in the hands of Saint Nicholas. Whil...

A fter listing four expectations their church has of their members, Steve Stroope, the lead pastor at Lake Pointe Baptist Church in Rockwell, Texas, states, “Every church you would ever join expects these things of you. The difference is that they just won’t tell you. We let you know up front what is expected. The only difference is communication, not expectation.” As I think about it, before I was baptized, I stood before the small church I was joining and we read through the Church Covenant. I was eight years old at the time, just old enough to grasp most of the concepts. Before I was permitted to join the church, I was asked to agree to that covenant. The next church I joined didn’t have a copy of the Church Covenant hanging on the wall. Some of the church members had never seen it and it even surprised one of the men the church ordained as a deacon, shortly after I became a member. But whether a church has the Church Covenant on display or not, every church has expectations of thei...

I finally decided to give up on my old flip phone and move up to a smartphone because the Nokia Lumia 1020 has a camera on it that is actually worth having. With the camera grip attached, it even feels like a camera with a cell-phone attached rather than the other way around. With that in mind, I decided I wanted to keep the grip attached, rather than just attaching it when I thought I would be taking pictures. (How am I supposed to know when I'm going to want to take pictures.) The problem with that is that there isn't a cell-phone case out there that is big enough to hold it. Small camera cases are too small. Larger camera bags are too big. And it seems that other people are having the same problem finding a suitable case. So, I thought I would write a post to tell people what I am using. . I am using the Lowepro 5.0 Navi Case . It is a little snug top-to-bottom, but it provides enough room otherwise to store ear buds and the USB cable (without the wall plug). It has a scre...

A recent discussion caused me to think about the public school system and the role Christians have in it. In recent years, there have been several well-known Christian leaders who have suggested that Christians should pull their children out of public schools. Most recently, Albert Mohler and John Piper have been pushing this idea. The basic argument is that parents shouldn’t subject their children to the liberal agenda of the National Educator’s Association (NEA). The problem I see with Christian parents pulling their kids out of public school is that schools are like a pan of salt water. If you taste the water and it isn’t salty, you add salt. If you start taking the salt out and putting it back in the shaker, it becomes less salty. In Matthew 5:13-16 , Jesus called us the “salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” Most of us will agree that public schools are lacking salt and light. And most of us will agree that the kids who are attending public schools have a great need fo...

O ur church is doing a new pictorial directory using this service called Instant Church Directory . The service makes pictures and addresses available through a mobile device app. Using your smart phone, or a tablet, you can scroll through the pictures and find the person you’re looking for. But what it doesn’t allow you to do is to access the information from a website. Okay, that’s not exactly true. What they will allow you to do is download a PDF, which most people will be able to use if they have Acrobat Reader installed. Okay, it’s great that they implemented it as an app, but what about people who don’t have one of the supported devices? Have we reached the point where those of us who prefer to use a PC are the dinosaurs of the technology world? Is the PC dead? No, an here’s why. If you do a lot of typing, you’re going to want something more than a phone or a tablet. If you are doing graphics of some kind, you’ll want a larger screen, and maybe two or three. If you are doing proc...

C heck you’re e-mail and you’re likely to find a few spam messages. We’ve come to expect it and when the spam filters let some of it through, most of us hit the delete button and away it goes. Or maybe we don’t read our e-mail at all because most of it is stuff we don’t want to see. Many of us communicate more through Facebook than we do through e-mail. Unfortunately, Facebook has its own problem with spam. Worse, many of us perpetuate it without realizing what we are doing. Let’s take a look at how Facebook spam works. Troll Linking One of the most obvious forms of spam is the work of trolls and can result in click-through profits for the troll. It works like this: first, the troll finds a Facebook page that has several thousand followers. He then adds a comment to the page along the lines of “That’s interesting, but you should check out http://e4htWos.jnk.com.” The people curious enough to follow the link will be taken to a site advertising some product and the person who placed the ...

S ome people are asking why Robin Thicke isn’t taking the heat that Miley Cyrus is for their raunchy performance at the VMA show. And quite right—he should be taking heat for the performance and not just from his mother, who has been quoted as saying, “I can’t unsee it.” That fact is, you don’t put on a show like that without a lot of planning and practice. Based on her comments, it appears that Robin Thicke’s wife was forewarned about the raunchiness of the performance. In a nutshell, Robin Thicke is every bit as responsible for the performance as Miley Cyrus is. One comment I saw online summed it up for me, “I don’t know who Robin Thicke is.” The reason Robin Thicke isn’t getting hammered in the media is because he hasn’t alienated his fans (other than his mother). Miley Cyrus, on the other hand, has turned her back on the fans she gained from Hannah Montana and those fans are mourning that loss. So many people thought they knew her. She was that kid who found plenty of ways to make...

B y now, you’ve probably heard about Jase Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame being kicked out of New York City’s Trump International Hotel. [1] The story is that Robertson asked one of the staff where the restroom was and the staff member showed him the way out the door instead. Robertson attributed it to “facial profiling.” The staff member assumed Robertson was a homeless man. I don’t know that we can blame him. They probably encounter several unshaven men who are homeless and if not shown the door, would hang out in the lobby. I believe the lesson we can learn from this story is that how we dress is important in our interaction with other people. In the Bible, we see the statement, “man looketh on the outward appearance, but he Lord looketh on the heart.” [2] We tend to look at that statement and say something along the lines of “we should all look past the outward appearance.” So we should, but let’s not miss the truth of the statement, “man looks on the outward appearance.” At best,...

How the Organic Church People See Themselves I ’ll admit it; I don’t keep up with all the latest fads. When the organic church came up in a conversation with my pastor the other day, I was pretty clueless and then showed my ignorance by opening my mouth. So, I went looking to see what I could find out about this thing called, the organic church . The first thing I came to realize was that the words in the name have little meaning unless you understand how the people using it are defining the terms. As a friend pointed out, to be organic, something has to contain carbon compounds. That’s probably not what is intended by the use of the term. Neither can we use the etymology of the word church . The word originates from a word used to refer to a place of worship. (In other words, a “church” is the building, not the people.) In looking for a definition I found the statement, “an Organic Church is born out of spiritual life, not constructed by human institutions and held together by religi...

P icture this scene: a group of people are gathered in a room. Someone, the president, gets up and calls the meeting to order. A few reports are given. Some miscellaneous business is discussed. Then the people begin getting up and giving ten-minute speeches on various topics. What organization is that? If you are in the business world, you might say, “That sounds like Toastmasters.” And in fact it does sound like that well respected organization in which people learn leadership and speaking skills by doing. But the scene I described comes from a monthly youth meeting I attended when I was a teenager. The churches of the Cane Creek Baptist Association held these meetings (still do) and called it the Youth in the Harvest. At one point or another, I held most of the jobs within the Youth in the Harvest. I had to give “a part.” I was elected treasurer. I led the singing. I was vice-president. I was president. And not once did I think, “I hope they elect me.” Not once did I think, “I hope o...

I n our Wednesday evening services, our church is discussing the book, I Am a Church Member . Our pastor asked how we should plug in a new church member to a place of service. There were several answers, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the answer, “They can plug themselves in.” That is most certainly true. There are some people who join a church and whether the existing membership knows how to use them or not, it won’t be long before they’ll be busy doing something. In some cases, they end up doing things the existing church members wouldn’t have thought of. This is the case with the lady who made the observation. Since the time they joined the church, she and her husband have been asked to serve in various ways, (and they have done so willingly) but they ministry they are most known for is one that they were the first to see the need for. As a church member, I feel that I have a responsibility to “plug myself in.” Whether someone asks me to do something or not, I have a resp...

A few years ago, in a Sunday school class I was teaching, one of the students asked the question, “Who is my enemy?” At the time, he and I came to the conclusion that we really didn’t have anyone we could call our enemy. Oh, there were people who didn’t get along with us as well as they should’ve, but they weren’t our enemies. It’s a lot easier to follow Matthew 5:44 when you don’t have any enemies: …love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you… After the week we’ve had, that verse has taken on a whole new meaning for me. I put a few comments out there in the social media channels concerning gay marriage and abortion, both of which were heated topics this week. It was like holding a lightning rod over your head in a storm. And yet, the comments directed at me were tame compared to what I heard some other people had to put up with. One blogger mentioned that he had received a threat via e-m...

D ear friends, As you know, I am single, but what you may not realize is that I’m content with that (most of the time). Don’t get me wrong; I have no desire to remain single my whole life, so I appreciate your questions. "Are you dating anyone?" "There’s this girl I met the other day. Would you like her number?" "Have you tried these online dating services?" They show you care, even though I sometimes think they are the most hurtful things you could ask. So let me explain my situation. I have as much of a desire to share my life with someone as anyone, but I am more convinced than ever that I should be highly selective in who I date. Dating individuals that I know I would never marry is just a distraction from the things that are really important to me. Relationships take a lot of time, and since I believe I am serving the Lord in the way he wants me to serve him, I want to be a good steward of the twenty-four hours a day he has given me. I ask that you al...