You Can Do Whatever You Want Forever.

God is...

This is a description of God I heard read at a leadership conference once. I, obviously, had to go google it. I love it, and wanted to share it: 

He is the First and Last  The Beginning and the End  He is the keeper of Creation and the Creator of all  He is the Architect of the universe and the Manager of all times  He always was, He always is, and He always will be  Unmoved, Unchanged, Undefeated, and never Undone  He was bruised and brought healing  He was pierced and eased pain  He was persecuted and brought freedom  He was dead and brought life  He is risen and brings power  He reigns and brings Peace  The world can't understand him,  The armies can't defeat Him,  The schools can't explain Him, and  The leaders can't ignore Him.  Herod couldn't kill Him,  The Pharisees couldn't confuse Him,  And the people couldn't hold Him.  Nero couldn't crush Him,  Hitler couldn't silence Him,  The New Age can't replace Him,  And Oprah can't explain Him away!  He is light, love, longevity, and Lord.  He is goodness, Kindness, Gentleness, and God.  He is Holy, Righteous, mighty, powerful, and pure.  His ways are right,  His word is eternal,  His will is unchanging,  And His mind is on me.  He is my Redeemer,  He is my Savior,  He is my guide,  And He is my peace.  He is my Joy,  He is my comfort,  He is my Lord,  And He rules my life.  I serve Him because His bond is love,  His burden is light,  And His goal for me is abundant life.  I follow Him because He is the wisdom of the wise,  the Power of the powerful,  The Ancient of Days,  The Ruler of rulers,  The Leader of leaders,  The Overseer of the overcomers,  And the Sovereign Lord of all that was and is and is to come.  And if that seems impressive to you, try this for size.  His goal is a relationship with me.  He will never leave me,  Never forsake me,  Never mislead me,  Never forget me,  Never overlook me,  And never cancel my appointment in His appointment book!  When I fall, He lifts me up.  When I fail, He forgives.  When I am weak, He is strong.  When I am lost, He is the way.  When I am afraid, He is my courage.  When I stumble, He steadies me.  When I am hurt, He heals me.  When I am broken, He mends me.  When I am blind, He leads me.  When I am hungry, He feeds me.  When I face trials, He is with me.  When I face persecution, He shields me.  When I face problems, He comforts me.  When I face loss, He provides for me.  When I face Death, He carries me Home.  He is everything for everybody, everywhere, every time, and every way.  He is God, He is faithful.  I am His, and He is mine.  My Father in heaven can whip the father of this world.  So, if you're wondering why I feel so secure,  understand this...He said it and that settles it.  God is in control, I am on His side,  and that means all is well with my soul.  Everyday is a blessing for GOD Is.

Do you think your parents would disallow you from reading books such as fifty shades of grey, go ask alice or crank?

dude man bro! I’ve read Go Ask Alice and I had forgotten it until this very second. That was such a sad book :( and I googled Crank and would probs totes read it just for educational purposes. [sidenote: this recent affliction I’ve acquired of abbreviating perfectly functional words such as probably and totally is shocking and will be cured as of right now.]

Now my ducky, as for Fifty Shades of Grey…why, I ask you, would I want to read a book whose contributions to the literary world are phrasal gems such as “kinky f***ery” and “puckered love cave”? I mean, I’m not into porn but I imagine that if I was I’d like something a tad more well-written.

All that being said, I wasn’t allowed to read Harry Potter until I was 13 and I wasn’t allowed to read Twilight until I was 16 because my mom was worried about the effects on my young impressionable mind. Having since read all four Twilight books, I think she was quite in the right. The relationships in that book are unhealthy, co-dependent and bordering on emotionally abusive. Harry Potter, on the other hand, is and will remain one if my favourite series. Anyway! It’s not that she didn’t want me exposed to the pain and evil in the world, she just wanted to make sure I was mature enough to put everything I read into it’s proper place in my brain. And I think we’re quite past that point now. My brain is far less malleable nowadays, and I think she recognizes my ability to use discernment when selecting reading materials.

And that ability is why I will NEVER read Fifty Shades of Grey. Haha..

Thanks for the question! Peace and love! -Katherine

Dress Codes and Modesty Culture: It’s more complicated than a few well-placed buzz words.

All across North America, from Labrador City, Newfoundland, to West Jordon, Utah, students are protesting dress codes which they deem sexist and inappropriate. There are many people camped out on the other side of the line professing that it is actually an issue of self-respect. 

Sexist? Yeah, probably. 

On the one hand, it is true that the length and width of boys’ clothes are not policed as strictly as girls’ and that the reason girls’ clothes are being policed is because they are told that the sight of their exposed skin will be “distracting” to the boys in their classes. Both of these facts support the platform that the entire dress code system was essentially created for males’ benefit, which opens up a number of other issues. For example, doesn’t this kind of system propagate the idea that women’s bodies are men’s property? If men are telling us what we can and cannot wear in order to keep them...docile....we can’t help but hear the message that our bodies exist only to please them, and what we want to wear doesn’t matter, because it’s not about us. It’s not about the way we want to express ourselves or our comfort level, it’s about keeping everybody flaccid. Right? Wait...

But what about self respect?

On the other hand, everybody wants affirmation. And depending on how much you value your own opinion of yourself, and what that opinion is, your threshold for affirmation will be lower or higher. If you have a high threshold for affirmation, you will value affirmation which is “expensive” to obtain: praise for your hard work, or someone’s appreciative insights about your soul. If you have a low threshold for affirmation, you will seek affirmation which can be more cheaply won. And the attention you get for your body is cheap: easy to obtain, freely given, and next to worthless in terms of earning respect. And we all know how to get that kind of affirmation. And for some people, that might be the reason you like showing a bit more skin. If you’re one of those people, I just want to tell you that your own opinion of yourself is the most important one, and I hope that you see yourself for who you are: smart, powerful, beautiful and above all, worthy of respect. If well-meaning modesty pushers feel the same way I do about cheap attention, I can see why they would encourage young girls to cover up, and to seek only more valuable forms of affirmation. 

Wait, THAT’s your definition of self respect?

The problem here is that I’ve read phrases like “your body is a priceless treasure, waiting to be found by the right person, and dress codes only suggest that you keep it in the chest until then.” OKAY. Once again, metaphorically referring to a girl’s body as a treasure is another form of objectification. It is literally directly comparing someone’s corporeal form to a box full of rocks and metal. Our bodies are not something that anybody can possess. It’s a physical manifestation of ourselves, it’s the vessel with which we navigate this natural world. AND THEN. It says “waiting to be found by the right person.” Okay so, not only are our bodies somebody’s possession, it’s not even ours? We are not the ones who get to take ownership of the treasure WHICH WE INHABIT? We are waiting for someone to come along and possess our bodies? What? 

It’s. Just. Not. That. Simple.

What I would like to say to both anti-dress-coders and pro-dress-coders is this: It’s just not that simple. 

It’s not enough to simply say that it is sexist to police girls’ clothes and not boys’. 

It’s not enough to simply say that it’s not about sexism, it’s about self-respect. 

And here’s why:

I will use myself as an example to explain why. I am a fiercely independent, wickedly stubborn, feminist hippie free spirit. In my personal life, I will wear tank tops and shorts and skirts as I see fit, not as any male tells me makes him comfortable. HOWEVER, I do so with this knowledge:

Biology is a thing. Psychology is a thing. Culture is a thing. It has been scientifically proven (I’m sorry, it really really has.) that individuals born with a penis and high levels of testosterone respond with arousal moreso to visual stimuli, which individuals born with vaginas and high levels of estrogen respond with arousal moreso to everything else (auditory, olfactory, touch, and emotional stimuli). Furthermore, as taught to us in most introductory University Psych courses, people can be conditioned to have a specific biological response to a specific neutral stimulus if that stimulus is always followed by a stimulus which is biologically pertinent. The dogs hear the bell then they get fed. Result: the dogs salivate when they hear the bell. Men see breasts then they have an orgasm. Result: men become aroused when they see breasts. AND WE LIVE IN A CULTURE THAT HAS DEVELOPED IN SUCH A WAY TO PORTRAY THE NUDE FEMALE FORM IN MEDIA AND ADVERTISING ONLY IN HIGHLY SEXUAL CONTEXTS WHICH CREATES AN INEXTRICABLE CONNECTION BETWEEN FEMALE NUDITY AND SEX IN OUR BRAINS THAT HAS BECOME SO DEEPLY ENTRENCHED THAT WE THINK IT’S BIOLOGICALLY HARDWIRED FOR MEN TO BE AROUSED BY BREASTS. 

So I make clothing choices with the full knowledge that I cannot stop men from looking at me. And that depending on the man and his personal preferences, there is a good possibility that my cleavage could cause some increased bloodflow. It’s up to me to decide whether I want that to happen, whether I don’t want it to happen, or whether I simply don’t care. But I am always aware, as I get dressed in the morning, that I do live in a world wherein someone could call my cleavage “distracting”.

Oversimplification ignores the real issues. 

And here’s the issue: people who protest dress codes want to pretend that we don’t live in that world, and people who promote dress codes want to pretend that the fact that we live in that world is not a problem. 

The dress codes are just the tip of the iceberg. I understand that women want to wear what they want, and do what they want, and sleep with whom they want. Part of the current liberal feminism is sexual liberation. However, the dress code is a prominent example of modesty culture. Modesty culture suggests that girls have the responsibility to prevent men from being aroused by them. This is less severe instance of victim blaming, which originates in rape culture. Rape culture suggests that girls have the responsibility to prevent men from raping them. In both of these situations, the blame is sadly misplaced. Rape Culture and victim blaming exist because we live in a Misogynist society. The means that we live in a society that discriminates against women, belittles women, objectifies women, and violates women. It’s all well and good to say that women should be allowed to do, say and wear what we want, but the fact is that we live in a society where that is unsafe for us sometimes. 

So the moral of the story: If you protest dress codes, you need to realize that the dress code is not the problem. It is a symptom of a systemic illness of society, and like a fever, this symptom might actually be manifesting itself to protect you. And if you promote dress codes, you need to realize that the fact that we even need dress codes is indicative of a much bigger problem in our society. My advice to both of you is that you’re fighting on the same side and you don’t even realize it. Instead of fighting for or against dress codes, let’s all focus on unlearning harmful philosophies and behaviours to create a safer environment for women, and then dress codes wouldn’t even be that much of an issue. 

If you could ask God one question what would it be?

ONE question? Haha ahhh I have so many. They pass in and out of my head several times a week, and for some reason, I never think to write them down. Okay so here’s how I picture it: Right now, I’m a human, and I’m young human at that. Which means I have a mortal, finite view of space and time, which is by definition extremely limited. On top of that, as my mom says to me, “you can be as smart as you want, but until you have lived as long as I have, you will know nothing.” And it’s true, I’ve lived 19 years in a cute, white-picket-fence, sheltered, caucasion, north-american, privileged life. I know nothing!  So I picture me getting to heaven and it’s like my soul, that right now can only kind of taste the infinite, is completely freed of my brain and my emotions and my body and now I’m infinite, I’m free-floating, outside of space and time and none of the restrictions that bind me here on earth exist anymore. I’m part of infinity, I’m living in infinity and I can see everything. All of space and all of time, and I picture it as one huge “OHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" moment. Suddenly you can see a gazillion and one connections between seemingly randomly events in your life, and you can see how a butterfly flapping their wings affects the death of a star on the other side of the universe, and you can see how a trivial choice someone made on the other side of the world generations before you affects your life. And you see, woven through everything, is God’s overriding, all-consuming, overwhelming love and grace. You can literally see his fingerprints in the planets and everything just clicks and you’re like “how did I never see this before?” And then I won’t have any of the questions I have now because I won’t be missing the pieces of information that my poor, human head is currently incapable of containing and comprehending. So it’s not like I’m waiting to see God so that I can ask him to explain this one mystery that’s been bugging me my whole life. However, I will share with you the latest mind-bender I was contemplating, just this morning. So there’s a theory that the curse of original sin is passed on through the father. Because Jesus had a human mother, but was conceived through the Holy Spirit. So He didn’t have a human father, and He was perfect and sinless so obviously, He wasn’t affected by the original sin curse like all other humans. And yet He was fully human and fully God. So I’m sitting there musing about this interesting idea and then I’m like, where did the other 23 chromosomes come from??  Like yeah, the immaculate conception was a miracle, but God uses science and nature as His tools, and Jesus was obviously a fully functional human, so He had to have 46 chromosomes…right? So what were they and where did they come from? Hmmmm. And I said to myself, I really will have to get God to explain that to me when I see Him. So there you go! :) Peace and love! -Katherine 

Don't you think that a physical relationship and sexual chemistry are a big part of a relationship too? I understand the principle of celibacy but I feel as if the physical connection is also very important in a serious relationship and it's something worth exploring before marriage.

YES. ABSOLUTELY, the physical aspect of a relationship is suuuuuuper duper important! You can’t have a healthy, functioning relationship without it. However, I don’t think that you need to have sex before marriage to figure that out. For me, I can tell if I find someone attractive the first time I look at them; I can tell if we have good chemistry the first time we flirt; and I can tell if I want to have sex with them the first time we kiss. Sooo I think that the physical chemistry and sexual tension is evident very early on in the relationship, and you don’t have to have sex to figure that out.

Also, in my ideal world, both I and my husband will be virgins on our wedding day, so we’ll sort of..embark on a journey together wherein we learn and try new stuff and experiment together. Kind of like…a blank slate. So we go in to he marriage open-minded and with an empty canvas and it ends up being a masterpiece. I think our marriage will be stronger because of that.

That’s just me :P Peace and love! -Katherine

I have an issue with this.

Okay so, recently I watched a video that is a spoken word detailing the difference between false religion and true Christianity. It’s fabulous. It’s a concise, articulate, theologically sound (including references to the old testament) poem which explains what we really believe, and I love it. It talks about not judging and good stuff like that.

My issue is completely separate, but is related to it indirectly. It stems from the fact that one of my friends shared this on Facebook, one whose lifestyle does not reflect a relationship with Christ. So when he shared this video on Facebook, one gets the impression that he feels that this video justifies his point of view. In fact, it does not. Yes, religious people have no right to condemn anybody because none of us are perfect and Jesus loves everybody and so should we. But there’s a difference between loving you and agreeing with you. Ever heard the expression “love the sinner, hate the sin”? Well, loving people is not people-pleasing. So we can hate religion all we want, because religion refers to hypocritical and self-righteous traditions all designed to create the illusion of someone who is “holier than thou.” But that doesn’t change the fact that there are some things that are not okay. Not drunkenness, or taking the Lord’s name in vain, or sex before marriage, or pornography, or lying, or cheating, or jealousy, or pride. I don’t discriminate, I have a problem with all sin equally. And I struggle with some of those. And yes, the grace of God covers all sin, but there’s a verse that says “so should we keep sinning so that God’s grace can just keep multiplying?” The answer is a resounding “NO!” That’s holy inflation. That’s cheapening God’s mercy and compassion, taking it entirely for granted and reducing it to having no value. In fact, God’s mercy is something so valuable, it should knock us on our faces in complete awe and submission of the Lord who saves our sorry souls. It should make us acutely aware of our own inadequacy and of the infinitely generous gift that God is giving us. See it all comes down to a sermon by Pastor Glen Newman that I heard over the summer: You can’t have grace without truth, and vice versa. Because the truth is that WE’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. And truth alone will make you hopeless and bitter, facing a lifetime of futile strife trying to live up to an impossible standard. But the grace part says THAT’S OKAY, I AM ENOUGH. And grace alone will make us complacent, feeling secure in the knowledge that Jesus loves us so we don’t have to try. It’s a very delicate balance between accepting God’s love and living according to the lifestyle He requires of us. Soemthing else I heard over the summer was by Brad Noel and he said that “Jesus can only be your savior if He is your Lord.” Which means that salvation is not a one-moment thing, it’s a way of life that involves completely dying to the old you and turning your back on everything you once were so God can transform you into something new and beautiful, in His likeness.

I guess my point is that, if we hate religion and love Jesus, how do we show that we really love Jesus? How do we show that we’re 100% sold-out, on fire, passionately in love with the God who rescued us from ourselves? Do we just update our Facebook status?

Ayo! 

today i met a christian guy who tries to follow the rules of the bible really well and i asked him if he is against gays because of Leviticus 20:13 and he told me no, he doesn’t because of Matthew 7

and he added that he would never judge anybody on their believes or way of living because only god can judge the people

this guy man

where do you shop?

Shop like clothes? Or shop like in general? ....if it were in general, it would undoubtedly be Dominion, the grocery store where I work because it you look at my bank statement it's just all Dominion. I guess I buy a lot of food. Go figure :P Well, I also buy stuff like makeup and shampoo and books and movies and sometimes clothes there :P But mostly food. 

I'm pretty darn sure you meant clothes though, which is unfortunate because I'm not a very good person to answer that question. My closet is home to everything from WalMart to Bench and everything in between (much to my shame because I'm like 99.9999% sure that the vast majority of my clothes were made in sweatshops, wehh :( ) Ummm...one of my friends gives me her clothes when she grows out of them and my mom sometimes buys me clothes for no reason because she knows that I have no discernible sense of style and because I don't really wanna spend money on clothes anyway. I always get the most compliments on the stuff she buys me, cause she has way better taste than me. If I really need to buy like a specific article of clothing, I'll just go to one of the two malls in St. John's and wander around til I find it :P

If I were shopping online, it'd be a different story. I bought a wackload of stuff on shop.thehungersite.com a little while back, and I looooove threadless.com and their super fantabulous graphic tees, and metowestyle.com. I bought my last purse at this super cool fair trade fair at my school, and my preferred footwear is TOMS (or BOBS), although I'm beginning to have niggling fears that they are not doing quite as much good as I would like to believe. :( 

Anyway, yeah. Sorry I couldn't really give you a proper answer hahaPeace and love! -Katherine 

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