Timothy's Thoughts

T here are some people who will take every opportunity they can find to criticize the Bible. On one of the Amazon.com forums, someone asked the question “What is the most overrated novel of all time?” Among the divers answers, someone wrote, “The Bible.” Someone else wrote, “As a NOVEL, the Bible is actually quite good. It’s just a shame that people waste time reading it as nonfiction.” It should come as no surprise that people hate the Bible, and Jesus, and us; Jesus told us it would be so. But why is it people hate it so much? With most books, if the topic came up, someone might say, “I didn’t really care for that book.” Even with the Koran, even though some Muslims think we’re out to burn their holy book, people who don’t see it as a holy book mostly ignore it. They don’t go on a forum that is discussing another topic to talk about how much they dislike it as a book. The same is true of the Book of Mormon. There’s plenty of people who have taken the time to state what is wrong wit...

It would cause so much less pain if more women were to see Jesus as their true Husband. W hat?! I saw this statement on another blog. I’m purposefully leaving off the name of the person who said it. If you really want to know, Google it. Women are supposed to see Jesus as their true husband? Do people even take the time to think about what they are saying? First, where does the Bible say that Jesus is to be women’s true husband? It doesn’t. What it does say is that the church is the bride of Christ. Now right now, that applies to each local individual assembly that can rightly be called a church. By the time we get to the marriage supper, there’s only going to be one assembly. The church is the first and the only bride of Jesus. Second, if Jesus is a woman’s true Husband, that makes her a bigamist. Third, if Jesus is a woman’s true husband, then what is Jesus to a man. Is Jesus the man’s true wife? Is the man also the wife of Jesus? The whole thing breaks apart when you try to ma...

T he other day, I got into a discussion about women under appreciating the contributions of their husbands. It started with Kristin Billerbeck saying that many housewives see their life as not far from slavery. I’m sure she meant that tongue in cheek—at least I hope she did—but it highlighted an attitude that I don’t believe is beneficial. I do think that some women have the attitude that because their husbands aren’t helping with the housework that they aren’t doing anything. I’m reminded of my mother telling me that she had to resist the urge to dump us kids on Dad when he got home. Here, he’d been at work all day, he comes in the door ready to sit down and read the newspaper, but what she wanted to do was pass us kids off on him because he hadn’t been around all day. Now, in some cases, women are working outside the home. My grandmother was a schoolteacher and my grandfather was a carpenter. Some women in that situation think that it isn’t fair that they still end up taking care ...

O ne of the banks I do business with tells me that if I will sign up a certain feature, they will plant a tree in my honor. This is one of those things that looks good on paper, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. As I stated on Facebook, since they aren’t going to plant it in my yard, I don’t see the point. Now that might upset some of you green hugging environmentalist types, but have you really thought about it? Suppose for a moment that I signed up and sure enough, they plant a tree in my honor. Now, you realize that banks don’t have workers who plant trees. So to plant my tree, the bank will pay someone to plant a tree. That’s what makes it sound so great. We need trees, don’t we? The more the better, right? But who are they going to pay? The stated goal of the bank is to plant 25,000 trees. If they are planting the trees 12 feet apart, they will need about 83 acres for the trees. I very much doubt they are planting them on the lawn at corporate headquarters. Instead, I su...

Y ou’ve probably already heard about high school students walking out on a lecture by “anti-bulling expert” Dan Savage when he launched into a diatribe against Christians and the Bible. In fact, his remarks are quite viscous and were aimed at the Christian students who were in the room. This from someone who has been described as “President Obama’s anti-bullying czar.” Obviously, President Obama would do well to try to distance himself from Dan Savage. This type of thing is what has bothered me since the beginning of this emphasis on anti-bullying. The problem I see is that people are not as concerned about bullying as they are about someone disagreeing with them. Also, there is the problem that bullying is not clearly defined. I’ve read that 71% of people believe Dharun Ravi using a webcam to show Tyler Clementi involved in homosexuality is bullying. That’s what the news media called it from day one, so that number doesn’t surprise me. But how many of those people would be able to s...

H ere’s a shocker. When Steve Laube posted the list of Christian Book Award winners on Tuesday, I saw the names of nine authors only two of which were women. And one of those women was the last of three names that co-authored a children’s book, the other two were men. That works out to be 22% for the women and 78% for the men. The thing that makes this a shocker is that to hear a lot of people tell it, Christianity is dominated by women. Some people seem to think that it’s the women who go to church. It’s the women who work in Sunday school and youth ministry. It’s the women who sing in the choir. Why without the women, the churches would fall apart, or so I’ve heard. (Perhaps they would.) Then look at all the Christian writers conferences. There’s no question that those are dominated by women. Women easily outnumber the men there by a margin of ten to one. I really don’t believe Christianity is as dominated by women as some people think. That certainly isn’t the case at our churc...

S ometimes we see discussions about things that some churches call sin and others do not. It often centers around how much involvement a church allows people involved in that sin to have. Often we see churches trying to be more accepting of people, no matter what sin they might be involved in. I was thinking about one of these discussions. In this case one well known preacher was criticizing another well known preacher for not speaking out against one sin that it has become taboo of late to speak against. I think you know which one it is. In fact, the pastor had no problem with two men of that persuasion to serve in the church, except one of them was still married to his wife. Rather than try to sort through that mess, I’ll leave it at that. I’ll just say, the pastor mentioned above has said that people of a particular persuasion have stated going to his church because other churches are not accepting of their lifestyle. As I thought about it, I began to think, you know, I have no ...