Timothy's Thoughts

I keep saying that I’m not going to review any more books unless I really like them. I’m compromising today by reviewing Rooms by James L. Rubart because I mentioned it in a previous post, saying that I intended to read it to see if there was any truth to the reviews showing up on Amazon.com as a result of people who read the free version. In a word, this book is weird . It is about the owner of a software company who inherits a house on the beach. The house is modeled after the man’s heart. We later discover that the house is demon possessed, so perhaps that means the man is also demon possessed, but that isn’t made clear in the book. In any case, the more attached the man gets to his life at the house on the beach the more he loses of his previous life. People who were once a big part of his life become as if they had never met him. He has memories of these things, but they don’t. I might as well tell you that it’s a case of deus ex machina all over the place. I found the book par...

B ook signings are on of those things that authors are supposed to do. One of the notions is that by doing book signings an author will sell more books. I’m not sure where this notion came from, but the evidence doesn’t appear to support that. Stick an unknown author behind a table at a bookstore and he might sell one or two books that he wouldn’t have otherwise sold. Follow the advice of some people for the author to go around the store begging people to buy his book and he might sell more, but he probably won’t get many repeat customers. As a reader, I’ve attended a few book signings. Dan Quayle showed up on campus one time when I was in college. I paid for his book and stood in line with hundreds of other people waiting for him to sign their books. I then went and listened to him speak. I’ve also gone to book signings to support fellow authors. What I have never done is purchase a book by an author I didn’t know because the author was having a book signing. So let’s get one thing cl...

A s I was driving to work the other day I saw a city bus. The lights were on inside so I could see all of the seats. They were all empty. But there was the driver, following the route, not knowing whether there would be someone at the next stop or not. I wondered how he feels about that. Does he feel like he is wasting his time? Sure, he gets paid, but what’s the point? It made me thing of writers. Most writers have very few readers and it make you wonder what’s the point? There’s no money in it, so the bus driver has one up on us, but we keep on writing. I suppose we do that because we hope that it will turn into something great and sell a bunch of copies, just like the bus driver hopes that someone will get on the bus at the next stop. But see, the bus driver’s job isn’t to drive people from stop to stop as much as it is to provide the opportunity for people to ride the bus. If the driver quit because no one was on the bus then people wouldn’t be able to make the choice one day to le...

I n the Washington Post , Kathleen Parker states a strong opinion about the Christian doctrine that the only way to God is through Jesus Christ. She took aim at Franklin Graham who was jilted by the Obama administration for his belief that non-Christian religions such as Islam and Hinduism are evil because they pull people away from the truth. She sites statistics saying that 47% of Protestant pastor view Islam as “a very evil and very wicked religion.” I actually find that shocking. I expected it to be higher. Have we learned nothing from 9-11? She also sites a survey that shows that nearly two-thirds of evangelicals under 35 believe non-Christians can go to heaven, vs. 39% of those over 65. She also mentions a study in which it is revealed that our brains light up the same way when we pray, no matter to whom we pray. I have a few things to say about this. That’s a scary thought if two-thirds of young evangelicals believe that non-Christians can go to heaven. Why is that scary? Becau...

R ight there at the end of Paul’s discussion of the role women are to have in church is an interesting comment. You remember what 1 Timothy 2:12-15 says: But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobermindedness. Now, most of the discussion we see about this passage deals with the first part in which Paul makes the claim that we can know that woman are not to teach or have the leadership over men in the church because God created man first and then woman. He then gives an example of what happened with the role was reversed. The woman was deceived, but Adam followed her lead anyway, resulting in sin and death being brought upon all of us. But we see this statement saying that the woman will “be saved in childb...

R ose Fox asked an important question the other day. “Have you ever noticed how many protagonists are writers? ‘Write what you know’ can be taken too far.” Rachelle Gardner also asked a question about what writers give up for writing. I don’t think the two are unrelated. Many people give up a great many things so that they can “become a writer.” Writing becomes a lifestyle. I think this is the wrong approach. If what you want to do is write about writers or librarians or bookstore owners, by all means give up what you are doing and become a “professional” writer. But there are plenty of books about writers out there. A better approach is to keep doing what you’re doing and write about what you are doing. You may not think you have time to do that, but think about it. You don’t have to do research on something you are already doing. That’s why people write so much about being writers. They know how to do that. But when a writer wants to writer about stuff that’s happening away from the...

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...