Timothy's Thoughts

G eneral Custer was known as an Indian fighter. He died fighting. The story is told that he and his men found themselves surrounded by a large number of Indians. One of his men said, “General Custer, look at all those Indians we can kill!” Though that attitude didn’t serve him well at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, it is the same attitude that David had when he face Goliath. “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” If not for the fact that David won his fight against Goliath, we would say, “That’s awfully foolish of him,” just as we would say it would be foolish for General Custer to be thinking about how many Indians he could kill when he was out numbered. But hasn’t our God called us to foolishness? “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27). We’re facing our own Goliath right now in the form of Islam. To hear a lot of my friends talk, Islam is the scariest thing there ever was. We dare not ...

W hat do we do with Psalm 109? You may have seen posts on Facebook suggesting that we should pray for our President by praying Psalm 109:8, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” Of course, verse 9 gives us a clearer picture of what the psalmist means, “Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.” While it might seem funny to tell people that we’re praying Psalm 109:8 for our President, Psalm 109 is nothing to joke about. These are the words of a very downtrodden person, desiring the death of his enemies. Some people, such as C.S. Lewis, have suggested that it is best to leave Psalm 109 and other similar psalms alone. That seems to be the wrong approach when you consider that Peter didn’t stay away from these psalms when he quoted the book of Psalms as saying, “Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his office let another take.” He saw it as the inspired word of God and so should we. He saw it as something to use for guidance and so ...

T he picture shows what one of my favorite gifts of all time. It helped shape who I am today. I spent hours with this thing, running wires from one component to the next, first following the schematics in the book and then trying out different things. By the time I was working on similar project in college, I knew enough to teach some of the other students in the lab. What could I do with this thing? Well, I would make some lights turn on and off. I could make a radio. And yes, I could make a clock. If you’ve been watching current events, you probably know where I’m going with this. A fourteen year-old kid took a prototype clock to school to show an engineering teacher, but the kid was arrested and suspended because another teacher thought it was a bomb. There have been mixed responses. Oddly enough, some of the same people who cried foul when a kid got in trouble for shaping a Pop-tart to look like a gun are saying, “It looks like a bomb to me; he should have been arrested.” Some are...

A n atheist asked me, “So, the people in India, who don’t get the gospel, are doomed, because that’s part of [God’s] plan?” Though an atheist asked the question in an effort to shake my faith, it’s a question that many Christians have asked as well. What about those who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel? Paul seems to address it in Romans 2. In Romans 2:12 he declares, “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law.” He goes on to say in Romans 2:13, “For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.” He also explains that even the Gentiles do the things contained within the law, proving that the law of God is written in their hearts. The lie of Satan is that if a person sins without knowing it is a sin, then they shouldn’t be held accountable. We get this idea that these people in India or Africa or South America or New York City or Fo...

L ast week, I attended a youth meeting at which there were no youth. It was a church association meeting and the attendance was fairly good. There were elders who filled every position that the youth would’ve filled, so the meeting went so well that you wouldn’t even notice that there weren’t any youth present. I think it is worth noting that we met in a building that was once a two room school house, until the little farm schools were consolidated and the Missionary Baptists took possession of the building. The more I think about that, the more it disturbs me. When I was a teenager, I was the president of that same youth organization, so I speak of it fondly. Since I was the only youth at our church that was the only “youth group” I had. That’s probably why local associations started having youth meetings in the first place. The association of churches could provide something for youth that a tiny church could not. Isn’t that why we have SOAR in the BMAA? No one BMAA church would put ...

F ourth grade. 1984. Wednesday. Sunshine. The day I got caught cheating. We had these desks with four legs and separate chairs. Not the kind where the books fit under the seat. I’d figured out that you could take the list of spelling words, hide it just inside the front and if you pushed back just enough, you could see the words as the teach called them out. I’d done it a couple times before, but this time I leaned back a little too far or something and she cause me looking. It really upset me when she caught me at it, because I really liked my teacher. I never cheated on a school test again. Oddly enough, the Wednesday test was just a practice test. The real spelling test was on Friday each week. But the people who made spelled all the words right on Wednesday didn’t have to take the test on Friday and they got to chew gum in class on Friday morning. I cheated, just so I could chew gum. It seems like such a little thing now. My mother would’ve bought me gum, if I’d asked, but that w...