Timothy's Thoughts

A co-worker was telling me his theory as to why God has blessed the United States. I should mention that my co-worker doesn’t have a Christian world view and is an Indian immigrant. Referring to the invention of the world, he said that the difference between the United States and other countries is that when other countries invent something they keep it, but he United States shares their inventions with the world. He mentioned, electricity, saying that its use was developed in the United States, but the whole world has benefited. He mentioned the computer and how one man discovered that one and zero are sufficient values for all the computing power we have, but the whole world has benefited from that discovery. He spoke of food, how the United States shares food with those in need in the rest of the world. My co-worker believes in Karma and came to that conclusion from that perspective. I think there is some truth in what my co-worker says, but coming from a Baptist background, I have...

I n today’s culture, to be offended often means that someone feels emotional discomfort because of something someone said or did. It used to be that to offend meant that someone had actually done something more grave than “stepping on someone’s toes,” but such is our world. The simple truth is that we have no control over what will cause people emotional discomfort. Take our political system, for example. If I were to get up and talk about how great trickle down economics is, most of the Republicans in the room would think it was a great speech, but the Democrats would be “offended.” So here’s the problem. If we remove the right to offend people, we remove the right to free speech. As people define it today, the Constitution of the United States guarantees a right to offend people. If we have any hope of defending our right to free speech then we must also defend the right of others to offend us. Yes, I said to offend us. Just because someone doesn’t agree with us doesn’t mean tha...