Timothy's Thoughts

W here do you draw the line? In recent months, we’ve heard stories of business owners with homosexual customers. They served them like they would any other customer, but then they came in and said, “We would like a cake for our wedding.” The business owners replied, “Gay marriage is against our beliefs, so we can’t do that.” Rather than just going down the street (or I should say, in addition to going down the street) to find someone who would supply the cake, the homosexual customers got mad and sued the business owners. Regardless of where the chips settle in court, where do we Christians draw the line on this? Let’s suppose we design a cake. It is seven layers with white frosting. We put it in the window of the shop and a customer walks in and says, “I want a cake just like that.” Even though we intended it to be a wedding cake, we don’t know what they’re going to use it for, unless they tell us. It’s a little different if the cake has a man and a woman on top and they say, “I want ...

W ho would’ve guessed that you could be kicked out of a church for not tithing? That seems to be the general sentiment of the comments concerning a news story titled 92-year-old Woman Kicked out of Church for Not Tithing . I really have no way of determining whether this was an appropriate action or not, so I won’t address that, but what I find interesting is so many people were quick to criticize the church for this action. Here are some examples: Dennis A. Gauger - money grubbers, go to another church Brenda Meggs Turner - That is why Jesus kicked the money changers out of the temple for charging people to worship. This is not God’s Church!!! Read your Bible people!!! Carolyn Guffey Crain - She doesn’t need that Church’…..A real Bible believing Church would not do that …. Colbey Newsom - Nonsense!!! No one should ever be kicked out of church..that’s prolly not a Christian church then Natalie Tabor McPherson - I believe that pastor needs to be removed because he is not a man of G...

Y ou’ve probably heard by now that Target is rethinking some of its in-store signage, removing gender based distinctions from toy aisles and children’s bedding. Men’s and women’s clothing will still be separated. It all seems to have started with a Tweet from Abi Bechtel about an aisle that Target labeled as “Building Sets/Girl’s Building Sets” rather than just labeling the aisle “Building Sets.” But now, my Facebook account is all lit up with posts from friends who are infuriated about what Target is doing. They see it as an affront to Christianity, akin to Bruce Jenner asking a church to let him speak from their pulpit. I’m likely to upset a few of my friends by saying this, but I’m not convinced that this is a battle worth fighting. I don’t agree with self-described feminist Episcopalian Abi Bechtel, and I don’t like it that Target said, “We heard you” when they didn’t even ask me what I thought about it. But in the end, what can we hope to accomplish with this battle? If Target ha...

T his thing about Donald Trump and Megyn Kelly got me thinking about how a man ought to treat a woman and why. I don’t know what they teach in New York City, but I was raised in Zalma, Missouri, where I was taught such things as a man should never hit a woman, a man should hold doors open for women, and a man should surrender his seat to a woman. And none of that had anything to do with how much I respected her, just the fact that she was a woman. Coming from that background, to see someone like Trump belittle a woman as he has done with Megyn Kelly, I am shocked. There are some lines that a man should never cross. From Trump’s perspective, he sees his comments as justified. It is his belief that Megyn Kelly had an agenda to attack him. Even though she used his own words to do it, he believes she was angry and was out for blood. Let’s assume he is correct. What’s wrong with him crossing that line and belittling her? It goes back to the reason boys are taught not to hit a girl. By the t...

R ussell D. Moore makes the claim in his book Onward that Christians in America are in the minority and probably always have been. He also makes the claim that if we really want to be like Jesus and make an impact on the world, we need to follow Christ in such a way that the world around us views us as strange. The world views what they are doing as normal, so righteousness is one of the strangest things they’ve ever seen. Like most Christians, I’ve read verses like 1 Peter 2:9 and said, “Yes, we’re peculiar,” but I hadn’t thought about how strange we ought to be and I hadn’t thought about just how much of a minority we are. Until this week. The news story was about a teenager registered on the sex offender list . This nineteen year old used a hookup website to find someone to have sex with, but the woman he hooked up with lied about her age. She was only fourteen. So, he ended up being convicted of a sex crime. My comment was that though I didn’t think he should be classified as the ...

Y ou see them everywhere. #BlackLivesMatter, #PoliceLivesMatter, #AllLivesMatter, take your pick. On the surface, they are all true, but somehow, the truth is getting lost in the argument. Perhaps, we need another one, #SinMatters. The problem isn’t that people are saying that lives matter, the problem is that many of the people who are saying that lives matter are actually accusing some other group of saying that life of a particular kind doesn’t matter. #BlackLivesMatter because some people felt that police didn’t value the life of black people. This got mixed up with violence against police, so people began saying #PoliceLivesMatter, as a way of accusing people of not valuing the lives of the police. Some felt that people were becoming too focused on one particular group and didn’t see the lives of other people as equally important, so we ended up with #AllLivesMatter. The result is that the racial divide in our country seems to be growing. But what is it that links all of these eve...

W hy are we more concerned about the death of a lion named Cecil than we are about seeing a human child separated into parts in a pie plate? Matt Walsh suggests that it is because we’ve built up a reservoir of outrage and someone gets the brunt of it. But why a lion instead of a baby? It starts to make more sense when we see the murderous spirit that runs through both. This isn’t a case where people want to murder children, but they don’t want to murder a lion. This is a case where people want to murder children and they want to murder a lion hunter. Their thought is a fetus gets in the way of a woman’s happiness, so destroy the fetus. Their thought is also a lion hunter kills one country’s national pet, so kill the lion hunter. But along with the people who have that murderous spirit, you also have people who have a love for life. The lion hunter did something he shouldn’t and the lion is one of God’s creatures, so the people who love life end up siding with those with a murderous sp...