Thoughts In The Aftermath Of The Paris Attacks

Can you please watch the video "rapping for Jesus" and tell me your opinion on it? Thank you!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA just watched it, and I have to say that I always get a kick out of painfully awkward Christian videos. I make fun of myself all the time, because we can be a pretty ridiculous bunch. For example, I love the "Sh*tuff Christian Girls Say" video and quote it aaaaaalll the time hahaha.. "God is love, enough said. Hashtag, BOOM." There was one problem with the "Rappin' for Jesus" video, though. They kept saying that Jesus is their "n****"!! I think it was a misguided attempt to emulate rap culture and slang but really ended up being pretty disrespectful. I would personally NEVER EVER EVER EVER say that word! I know some people who say it, and they're like "I'm just joking" and I'm like "that's not funny." It's made sooo much worse by the fact that they are just. so. white. haha So..yeah. I honestly didn't take it very seriously and therefore found nothing excessively good or excessively bad about it. Except the n-word thing. That's not cool. What did you think of it? :P  Peace and love! -Katherine 

Some good news for y’all right now Missouri has overturned their abortion ban!!!!

Thinkin' 'bout International Women's Day

I think it's super cool that we have a day to celebrate women, because any time there is time set aside and designated for a topic, it brings the topic to the forefront of people's minds. And I love celebrating International Women's Day by listening to Nicki and Bey and talking about feminism. A lot of the content I see is rather american-centric, i.e. It deals with feminism in the context of a western society. On *International* Women's Day, I think it's suuuuuuper important to also discuss a broader spectrum of feminism. There are still parts of the world where Female Genital Mutilation is a thing. There are parts of the world where girls are married off to middle aged men in their preteen and early teen years. There are parts of the world where women have chemical burns from acid thrown on them by abusive husbands. There are parts of the world where women cannot go to school. To me, that's what feminism is about. That's what International Women's Day is about. Check out The Girl Effect for more info. They're a cool crowd.

I've neglected the questions in my askbox for soooo long so I'm gonna answer them now sorry ok bye

10 Awesome Quotes from C.S. Lewis

“Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.”

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

“God can’t give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

What are your thoughts on casual drinking?

Funnily enough, I was talking to someone about this today! 

Okay so I have this theory that God tells us not to do stuff to protect us. I know I’m so brilliant, right? lol :P But I mean, he tells us not to get drunk (See Ephesians 5:18, Galatians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 6:10, and 1 Peter 5:8) and not to gamble, and to avoid sexual promiscuity. Now all of these things have a fair amount of risk associated with them. When you’re drunk you can make some pretty stupid decisions and hurt people and probably regret a few things down the road. And also of course there’s the liver damage. Gambling can lead to addictions which can destroy your finances, your family and your life. And sexual promiscuity can lead to unwanted pregnancies, STDs and a whole bunch of emotional crap that I mentioned here. So this theory is that everything God tells us not to do is for a good reason and we’re probably better off without it anyway! 

So basically, if God says not to do something, I trust that he knows what he’s talking about, and I figure that’s a good enough reason for me not to do it. By this logic, I choose not to get drunk. That being said, I see no problem with casual drinking. It’s all a personal decision anyway! I choose not to get drunk, but I always try a sip of my friends’ beers (it ALWAYS tastes disgusting) and I took a shot for my friend’s 19th birthday, but I’ve never consumed enough alcohol for it to have the slightest effect on me. Lots of my friends drink, and I’ve seen my friends get drunk. I’m not gonna tell anyone what to do, and if you drink I don’t care, that’s your business! If you’re a Christian and you drink casually, I’m not judging you. If you’re genuinely wondering my opinion because you are trying to figure out where you stand I say choose for yourself, draw your line and know your limit. 

Hope this helped! :)

Peace and love! -Katherine

The Law and The One Who Made The Law

On Sunday, I was helping out with the kiddies program in the morning church service. I LOVE being with the kids, but this morning I felt that there was something wrong. The lesson was about sin, and I think that the message the kids were supposed to take home was "Don't Sin." We told them stories about people who did drugs and stole stuff and ran away from homes and discussed the various mistakes these people made, and defined sin and then told them that the people in the stories met Jesus and cleaned up their lives and went on to do a whole bunch of really great things for God. 

I'm sure it sounds like a very positive message at first glance, but something really unsettled me about it: 

It's all well and good to tell the kids to obey their parents and tell the truth and share and don't do drugs and stay in school. However, why are we so focused on all these rules for how we should behave and not on The One who made the rules? 

Cause see, the gospel is not a behaviour-control program. The church does not exist to make sure that everyone is following the rules. And Jesus didn't die so that we would have to be perfect. 

What I'm trying to say is that instead of telling these kids what they can and cannot do, we should introduce them to Jesus, and tell them about his amazy-crazy, upside-down inside-out, spin-you-all-around LOVE. I think that we should tell them that Jesus knows them better than anyone else in the world and that He loves them more than anyone else in the world does. I think we should tell them that they are His precious treasure, His beloved son/daughter, the apple of His eye. I think we should tell them that He has an awesome plan for their life and that He's gonna do great things in them and through them. Finally, I think we should tell them that He loves them so much that He died for them, so that their sins would be repaid and they could go to heaven. Don't you think that such a message would be far more effective than "Don't do this. Don't do that." I feel like if they knew the one who made them and loves them, they would be naturally less inclined to seek fulfillment in thrills, drugs, alcohol and sex ANYWAY, and we wouldn't have to try and hammer it into their skulls so much. 

Don't get me wrong, we do tell the kids all the stuff I said up there. We tell it to them all the time. My church is not remiss in informing the children of their infinite value to their creator. I just think that if Sunday morning's service was the only one a child had ever been to, they would think that church was just a list of Do's and Don'ts. So I believe that instead of just talking about sin, we need to prevent a more holistic view of the relationship between God and humans. I think we need to present the gospel to these kids in BIG BOLD ITALIC CAPS every single time we see them, because knowing the love of Christ is infinitely more important than knowing the rules. 

That's all.  Peace and love!  -Katherine

What's Really Going On When Men Call Women 'Crazy'

I did have a few breakups I would qualify with, "I don't mean 'I can't be bothered to figure out where things went wrong, I mean that she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder," but for the most part, "crazy" meant "acting in a way I didn't like." I didn't realize just how damaging this attitude was in the way I related to women.

I am lying here thinking about how I literally cannot fathom that we live in a world that actually makes people feel bad about who they are. Like, this actually boggles my mind. That with 7 billion humans on this planet, some humans tell other humans that they’re being a human wrong. There is no wrong way to be a human. Sometimes, when I take a moment to come up for air, and I have this brief shining clarity, I am overwhelmed with outrage. Because how is it possibly acceptable for someone to feel inferior due to the traits that make them unique? Someone please try and explain this to me. I dare you to try and make this make sense. Out of all the glorious diversity of human life, some traits were labelled “right” and some were labelled “wrong”, and due to these completely arbitrary and 100% fake standards, humans give themselves the right to discriminate against other humans. Are you hearing this? Are you understanding the sheer absurdity of the world we live in? The worst part is that it’s not even anything these people have a choice about. It’s not like they did someone really shitty to deserve some kind of negative reaction. No no, this is literally how they were born and they have no control over it. And our world now somehow works in such a way that they are made to feel that that’s bad somehow?! Stuff like skin colour or gender or sexual orientation? That stuff is the stuff that condemns you?! All things that - really - at the end of the day, don’t matter. Things that are used to divide people because we’ve created these false barriers between one another. This is literally insane! This is complete and utter madness! This makes zero sense at all! The world is so messed up! How the heck did we manage to created a world wherein people actually feel like they cannot be who they truly are? What have we done?! WE MESSED UP! Oh my gosh I hate this world so much.

Whats your opinion of bisexual people?

Hey :) Thanks for your question! How shall I put this? Bisexual people fall under the umbrella of “all people” and I have only one single opinion on all people: All people are beautiful and wonderful and lovely. All people are worthy of love and respect. All people are treasured fiercely and intimately by their creator. All people are loved by God and by me. 

Regardless of age, gender, colour, creed, religious views, sexual orientation. Regardless of their past. Regardless of whatever they might think is wrong with them. 

That is the only opinion I will ever offer on people, in general. And really, it is NONE of my beeswax who other people love/are attracted to/sleep with.

I have talked a bit more in depth about the conflict between homosexuality and the church here, here and here.  In every single one of those questions, I and the question-asker both specifically used the word “homosexuality”. Now that I think about it, I suppose you could generally apply the opinions expressed in those posts to anyone of the LGBTQ community. In conclusion, it doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what you believe or how you live. My job is to love you. Period. And that’s what I’m gonna do. :)  

Thanks for the question! Peace and love! -Katherine