Christianity Stands Or Falls With Its Revolutionary Protest Against Violence, Arbitrariness, And Pride

Insecurity  Four-part Rant of the Day Part 3

I’ll return to Biblical womanhood gladly. Because Biblical womanhood is Deborah being called by God to lead the nation of Israel into victory. Biblical womanhood is Jesus choosing a woman as the first person to whom He revealed His identity as The Messiah and making her the first evangelist. Biblical womanhood is Jesus revealing himself first to women after His resurrection, trusting them with the task of telling His disciples. Biblical womanhood is Jesus inviting Mary and Martha to sit at his feet to be taught as disciples, valuing their presence there with Him instead of busying themselves with meal preparation and “women’s work.” Biblical womanhood is Paul calling Lydia and Priscilla his coworkers in Christ. Biblical womanhood is Priscilla teaching Apollos (a man) and her name being listed before that of her husband, Aquila, when the couple is mentioned in scripture. Biblical womanhood is Paul referring to Phoebe as a minister and a leader. Biblical womanhood is Lydia founding the church in Phillippi. Biblical womanhood is countless other examples of women, valued and empowered by Christ, teaching and leading right alongside men. 

Biblical womanhood is not a few taken-out-of-context verses, written to specific audiences and wrongfully universally applied, about women remaining silent in church and not having authority over men. 

For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son to die for your mean neighbor and your crazy roommate and the picketing bigot and the racist blogger and your gay friend and all the politicians and our crazy parents and the pastor down the street and the uptight religious folk and the girl at work you can’t stand, because Jesus didn’t just die for the people you like, but for people like you and me.

I'm pretty unexceptional looking...

And I'm about to tell you why that statement means absolutely nothing.

Most people would not describe their appearance as special or extraordinary. If someone were to ask you if you're attractive, you'd either say no, or you'd proceed to give a vague, equivocating description of your mediocre beauty. Even supermodels and movie stars have acute and sever insecurities. There's not a single person in this world who legitimately views themselves as head-turning attractive. In fact, I think we're all too comfortable with the idea of looking "average". We style our hair the way everyone else is doing it. We wear the same clothes every one else does. We all just want to blend in and not draw undue attention to our person. Our fondest wish is to look like everyone else. Do you deny it? 

HOWEVER, not one of us believes that we really are actually like everyone else. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing is not for me to decide, but you know that you're unique. You know you're different from every single other person around you. If you do think that's a bad thing, I'm here to tell you that it's not. You have interests, skills, talents and passions that are unique and entirely your own. And that's awesome and super cool and you are special and amazing specifically because you are not like any single other human on the planet. 

But here's my point. Judging by appearances is literally the dumbest thing ever because the outward appearance gives absolutely no indication of who someone is. Too often we get too caught up in the outward appearance and it consumes us. We narrow our minds to the here and now, the tangible and touchable. Even though the physical body is present and right in front of us right now, it is a meagre representation of the person inside. Every single person is exceptional and extraordinary. People who look perfectly average and even might look "boring" have entire galaxies inside their heads. They have unwritten novels and unheard music and unknown inventions inside of them. They have love stories and ancient histories and imagined eternities in their hearts. So even though we spend most of our time trying to blend into our surroundings, our characters make us stand out from the crowd because of our various vibrant and dynamic personalities. 

That was definitely not as deep as I thought it was. I wish I could impress upon you how incredibly important this is to me. I don't even know if that made sense, I just really really wanted to tell you all my thoughts on this topic. 

Peace and love!  -Katherine

The Friend Zone  Four-part Rant of the Day part 2

Do you think God or Jesus would get mad if someone had sex before they got married?

No, I absolutely do not think that God would get mad. Because, you see, God is very consistent, and all sin is equal to God. Sex before marriage is just as bad as murder, but also just as bad as saying hurtful words. And you don’t see God smiting me with lightning every time I lose my temper. Thank goodness for that!God loves us. He knows that we’re going to screw up. And yes, our screw-ups separate us from His perfection and His glory, but He didn’t want that, so He made a way for us to be close to Him even though we’re imperfect and corrupt. That was the cross. God’s grace is infinite! It’s like a tidal wave that crashes over you and snatches you up in the inexorable current and tumbles you head over heels in it’s wake. It submerges you completely, until you don’t even know which way is up anymore. But that’s okay, because unlike real life water, God’s living water makes you feel like you can finally breathe again, and that there’s no weight pushing down on you at all. It makes you feel like you can fly, like you’re soaring high up in the atmosphere, weaving in and out of clouds, and you haven’t a care in the world! God’s grace is vast enough to handle our mistakes. He will not get mad at us for having sex before marriage. He wouldn’t necessarily be delighted with us, but I picture Him as the father who’s all like “I’m not mad…I’m disappointed." I know, that kind of makes me want to crawl into a dark hole and never come out again. BUT! Here’s the really big, gigantic, ginormous, massive, humongous BUT! When we go to God and we’re like "I know I screwed up, and I’m sorry. Please forgive me and make me all perfect and beautiful and spotless again." He does! The bible says that He will throw our sins into the "sea of forgetfulness" - that expression comes from Micah 7:19: 

 19 

You will again have compassion on us;    you will tread our sins underfoot    and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

The bible also says that He has removed our sin from us as far as the east is from the west in Psalm 103:12: 

12 He has removed our sins as far from us    as the east is from the west.

So basically, never be afraid of God if you feel like you’ve done something He wouldn’t like. Because the minute you approach Him in contrition, He is so ready to hug you and say “It’s okay, I forgive you and I love you.” That applies to any and every sin out there! Peace and love! -Katherine 

"We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us."

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)

Okay, so say you've met someone and you guys fell in love. You want to wait till marriage for sex. He isn't a virgin but is willing to wait. Would you still be with him? Why? Or why not?

When talking about that issue on its own, yeah I would still be with him. There are many factors affecting any relationship, but for me, one’s sexual history is not one of them. 

The main thing I look for in a potential husband is a deep and abiding love of Christ. I want someone who will always put God before me; someone who listens to the voice of the Holy Spirit before mine. Someone who knows how to love himself and love me because he understand how God loves us. So I will marry a devout and practising Christian. Probably a charismatic Christian because someone who’s not charismatic might get a teensy bit freaked out by the whole “speaking-in-tongues” thing. 

What happened before they met Jesus really doesn’t matter to me. Whether my future husband was raised in the church and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’s known Jesus for years or maybe right now he still hasn’t met Him. Maybe he did drugs and was involved in gangs and committed all sorts of crimes and slept with hundreds of women. Maybe he struggled with depression and low self-worth and faced cutting and suicidal thoughts and all sorts of awful stuff. 

I dunno. But I do know that when you meet Jesus, it’s now just that your life is changed…it’s literally like dying and being reborn as a new person. In church we call it being “born again”. Because God will take your old life and your old identity and give you a brand new one. He will open your eyes and your mind to His vast, unconditional love. Love that is stronger than life and death. Love that stole the keys to the gates of Hell so that you and God could be together for eternity. Love that is stronger than anything that’s happened to you in the past. Stronger than anything you’ve done. Stronger than habits you want to break. Stronger than your own self-deprecating thoughts. 

And God, being divinely and supremely perfect, is the only person in the entire existence of everything who could possibly judge you for your past mistakes. And He doesn’t. He tosses your past transgressions into a sea of forgetfulness and it might as well be as if they never even happened. So who am I to hold them against you? 

If this potential husband were a born again, orthodox, hardcore, practising Christian who is on fire for God and respects me and is willing to wait for marriage, the fact that He’s not a virgin means less than the number of freckles on his elbow. Thanks for the question! Peace and love! -Katherine 

I love your blog, Katherine! and I had a question myself. I was wondering, do you think God has a specific person picked out for us to spend our lives with? (like a soul-mate per say). I (as you know) am a christian and I believe the Lord does have someone for each and every one of us, but there are people who get divorced or never get married, etc. I was just wondering what you thought? :) God bless, Michaela <3

Hey gurl! Thanks so much and right back atcha! :) This is a very, VERY interesting question! My mom thinks that there are any number of people out there that you could be compatible with and given the course your life takes, you might marry any one of them. I mean, if you’re just looking at physical chemistry, personality compatibility and common values, then yes, I imagine there are lots of people out there that I could marry. I personally hope that there’s only one that I will marry, but who knows what’ll happen. In my most sappy moments, I like to believe that my mom is wrong and there is one person that God has “ordained” (if you will) for me and he’s made just right for me and that we’ll go perfectly together like two halves of a whole. 

And if you think about the fact that God has a plan for each and every one of our lives, it makes you wonder if that plan includes a spouse. But then that also depends very heavily on the nature of the plan. Is it a plan like “Katherine, I will use you to inspire people”, or “Katherine, I will use you to feed the hungry” or is it more like “You will work for this company from the 12th of september, 2022 at exactly 11:32:56 am until the 23rd of april, 2036, at exactly 5:44:21 pm”? I dunno. Cause here’s where my brain starts doing gymnastics. Because, like, I’ve heard of God giving people very specific instructions. Stuff like, “go talk to that person.” or “go to this church.” Also, it says that every single day of our lives were “written in His book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16) but what does that mean? Does that mean that He can already see all the choices that we’re going to make? See, the concept of time is very difficult to talk about in relation to God because He is just so OUTSIDE of time that it’s practically pointless to even try to talk about the two of them together. Time might as well not exist for Him because it’s such a very finite measurement of things happening. So I kind of picture God’s view of life not as a timeline but more of a web of consequences. Like He can see all the decisions that people make and how that brings them into contact with other people and how we affect each others’ lives and stuff like that, but not in a linear fashion the way we see time.

So MAYBE, God gives us passions and talents and stuff for a more general plan and then our choices affect the way that plan unfolds, you know? Because what’s the point of giving us free will if our destinies were completely mapped out for us from the start? I absolutely do not believe in destiny. I believe that we create our own destiny. And even though God has a plan for us, we may choose not to follow it. Of course, I think that His plan is the best version of our lives that we could possibly live, but I think it’s highly dynamic and highly variable based on the decisions we make. Maybe God doesn’t actually have a specific person picked out for us, maybe that just depends on what we choose, and He takes it on a case-by-case basis, you know? 

Because He is very much involved in our daily lives. He’s right there with us every step of the way, and we can hear his voice if we listen, even in the most trivial matters. So I’m sure He has an opinion on the person we’re gonna marry, I just don’t think I necessarily believe that He has one picked out for us. 

I know that was so long and maybe a little complicated, haha. I just wanted to give you a good understanding of why I believe what I believe :) Thanks so much for the question! Peace and love! -Katherine