Timothy's Thoughts

Last week, I mentioned the Rachel Held Evans sees 1 Timothy 2 as one of her least favorite Bible passages—in particular verses 11-14, so I felt I should discuss the passage more completely. She isn't the only one. This is one of the more controversial passages in the Bible. There isn't much controversy in what it says. Paul very clearly states, "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." You can go look it up in the Greek if you like, but that's pretty much what it says. The controversy is over what we're supposed to do with what Paul said. There are enough churches with women preachers to tell us that not all churches take this to mean that women should actually be silent at church. The range of ideas spans from this meaning women shouldn't say anything, to women shouldn't teach men at church, to this only applies to wives, to the passage doesn'...

O n Amazon.com I read a review for the book Evolving In Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans. When I saw the review, only 1 of 4 people voted to say it was useful, but I felt the reviewer presented some interesting points.   But after reading the book, I felt a bit sad for Evans. She doesn't seem too sure about anything really. She's not sure she's saved (pg.133), she's not sure there's such a thing as a biblical worldview (pg.193), and she's not sure that hell is eternal (pg.224). While I haven't read the book, I've watched the book video with the author discussing the book. The basic premise seems to be that she has found a way to hold onto her faith even though she has many questions about the things she had been taught. I'll have to say that as I watched the video and read the sales material I kept wanting to offer a quote from The Princess Bride , "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." In this case, ...

V eggieTales is one of the best children’s entertainment brands out there. One of the techniques they use in story creation is retelling Bible stories. Unlike the original stories, the VeggieTales version has vegetables as the characters. Obviously, they have to make modifications to fit their situation. Because they are operating in a world of fantasy already, it isn’t a far stretch for the writers to place the characters in which they are using swords to play out the skit one time and drive a car in another, giving them the freedom to follow the Bible version of the story quite closely. Things get more complicated when we try to fit a retelling into a realistic modern world, but the technique is worth considering. I used this technique in For the Love of a Devil and I’ll tell you that it wasn’t easy. We read the Bible and it doesn’t seem so strange to see a woman leave Hosea for other men, see him continue to care for her and eventually buy her back when she becomes a slave. We so...

B efore you do anything else you should write a brief statement about what your book is about. You shouldn’t write the first paragraph, the first sentence or even the first word without doing that. And when I say brief, I mean brief. Get it down to one short sentence. There isn’t a bestselling novel out there that can’t be summarized with one brief sentence. All the great movies can be summarized with one brief sentence. When you think about it, it makes sense. If someone asks someone about what they’re reading or a movie they’ve seen word of mouth is more likely to work if the reader can summarize the book in just a few words. What’s Beauty and the Beast about? It’s about a young woman who is forced to live in castle with a beast. The Hunt for Red October ? It’s about a Soviet submarine captain defecting to the U.S. without telling anyone what he is doing. But if someone asks us about a story and all we say something like “it’s complicated,” our hopes of them remembering the story ar...

W here do story ideas come from is a common question for authors. While an author may provide an answer when asked how he came up with an idea, the question takes on a completely different dynamic when the author is staring at a blank page. It’s simple enough to pick a plot from the ten or so basic plots and if the author is writing for a particular genre there are many similarities that all stories in the genre share, but simply copying what others have done does not a good story make. We look at the stories that are out there and see a hoard of stories that are pretty ordinary. We don’t want our story to be like that. We also see some stories that stand out above the rest. That’s what we want. It’s hard to guess what will do that, but that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. The Theme One potential starting point for a story is the theme. The idea behind this is that you as an author have something to say and you base your story around it. Before you knock this idea, consider that aut...

B y now you have probably heard that the largest Christian publisher has been bought by Kohlberg & Company. This transaction raises questions about the future of Christian publishing. I don’t know that anyone has the answers, but it’s still worthwhile to look at this transaction to gain a better understanding of how the publishing industry works. One of the first things to look at is the purchasing company. Kohlberg & Company is a private equity firm. In other words, they make money by buying and selling companies. According to their website, they focus on “middle market” companies with values between $100 and $500 million. They make money by implementing changes that increase revenue and cash flow, giving the company more value in the eyes of investors, and selling the company, either to another company or in the form of stock. They aren’t publishing experts by any stretch of the imagination, so it should come as no surprise that Michael Hyatt is still at the helm of Thomas Ne...

P op quiz: The Bible says that every knew shall bow and every tongue confess that____________________. If you answered “Jesus Christ is Lord” then congratulations on passing. Now, if you’ve recently listened to the song “Love Has Come” by Mark Schultz you might have answered “that God is love and love has come to us all.” I don’t intend to pick on Mark too much here because I suppose there is a remote possibility that everyone will confess that God is love. As far as I know, the Bible doesn’t say they won’t, but that’s not what the Bible says either. There is a huge difference between confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord and confessing that God is love. In talking about the background of “Love Has Come,” Mark Schultz references Philippians 2:5-11 as his source. This passage is clearly where he got the words “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess,” but it says we’ll confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, not that God is love. As I said, it is possible that Mark is right, so I’m not...