I'm Feeling Wistful.

Yo whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, you have to admit that the argument that goes like "what if the aborted baby could have cured cancer ???" is GROSS. If you are pro-life and you use that argument, I am disgusted with you. Like think about. Really think about it. Does it mean that a baby is only worth saving if they would have cured cancer? Does it mean that their worth is entirely dependent on their accomplishments? Is it really not enough to say that they're worth saving because they're a PERSON? This argument betrays your deep ignorance concerning your own belief of personhood. You're arguing that a baby is only worth what they may become later, and you're therefore implying that they are not worth anything now, which is absolutely antithetical to pro-life ideology! Besides that, the idea that people have to be useful to society in order to be valuable is revolting. A person's worth is not dependent on their achievements. A person has worth because they are a PERSON. If you're pro-life, you should know that. Stop using that "cure for cancer" crap.

My Commitment to You

I cannot fix everything, as much as I want to. I can't kiss it and make it all better or put a bandaid on it and magically cure all ailments. 

But I can be there. 

I have arms to hug you with. I have a shoulder for you to cry on. I have ears to listen. I have eyes to see you for who you truly are. I have lips to tell you all the wonderful things about yourself. 

I promise that I will never tell you that what you are feeling is wrong or invalid. I promise that I will always acknowledge your pain. 

I promise that I will always encourage you. I promise that I will always be a source of hope and optimism. I promise that I will remind you of why you are a beautiful human being. I promise that I will remind you that life is worth it. I promise that I will cheer you on. 

I promise that I won't give up on you. 

I promise that I will love you, fiercely, unconditionally, and inexorably. I promise that I will never stop loving you no matter what. 

That's what I CAN do. 

God is using this podcast to heal me and breathe new life into my queer christianity. Can't recommend it enough.

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

Has anything actually gotten better, for all the work you talk about doing? Or is it just treading water in misery forever?

Anon, ten years ago gay people couldn't get married in large parts of the US. AIDS was an almost certain death sentence when I was in high school. I was looking at job boards the other day and found a part time gas station job that had health insurance as a benefit, which NEVER would have happened 15 years ago. When I was a kid, hitting your child was extremely normalized in the US and my parents were the weird ones for not doing it. There is a vaccine for chicken pox. I didn't meet anyone who had transitioned until my 20s because it was so uncommon to transition in the aughts, and now there are some states that protect your right to have gender affirming care provided by your health insurance. It's not all states, but it's better than the number of states that had it in 2010, which was zero. THERE ARE TENANTS UNIONS NOW. WE HAVE A VACCINE AGAINST CERVICAL CANCER.

And all of that has been the work of a lot of individuals and organizations and research teams and activists.

are you allowed to wear clothes above the knee?

Yes, I suppose I am "allowed" haha :P the are no rules for what I should or should not wear. It's basically a judgment call for everything I wear. I have personal preferences: I don't like to show off my boobs, belly or butt so my clothes cover those essentials. My shorts usually come about halfway down my thighs and my tank tops have straps that are like two finger-widths thick, for example :P Yeah, that's all!Peace and love! -Katherine

Your answer about suffering was beautifully written! I'm actually curious, you said that suffering is unnatural, that it isn't a part of this world since God loves us. Could you elaborate a bit on that?

thank you!! suffering is unnatural: God did not make the world with suffering in mind. he also did not make the world with death in mind. last year i took a course on death and this was the consistent theme in it: death is not natural, because God did not create the world with death in mind, he did not create death, but rather death is imported into creation after the fact, by creation, by our choice. it is the same with suffering. when the world is created, God declares it טוב, tov, what scripture calls "good." God makes the world with this in his mouth. among other things, tov means agreeable and sensorially pleasant, ethically good, well knowing, valuable, better (than another thing), capable of pleasure, morally good, ethical goodness. the creative word exits the mouth of God and brings creation into being and it is good, so good is incapable of suffering because suffering does not exist. suffering is a human creation. if we believe that the real is God, then suffering is not part of the real: the real is goodness, which is God, and it is incapable of being inhabited by suffering. suffering enters the real through our own experience, as suffering enters the world through human choice. this is the profundity of the crucifixion: that God, the real, chooses to endure suffering, when he is so far from the concept of suffering that he is incapable of creating it. he is capable of loneliness, though. which is suffering in its own way. and isn't that the root of all suffering? loneliness? but that's not the point of suffering being unnatural. God was also not lonely until he created a creation to miss.

"Being a Christian doesn't mean you're perfect, it just means you're forgiven."

You know, sometimes I think we miss the whole point of GRACE. It’s not a one-time thing (thank God), like we become a Christian and we pray that prayer, and then in that moment, everything in our past is wiped away, and then we have to be perfect form that point on. Like all our past mistakes are forgiven but we’re not allowed to make any more.

See, I have this weird complex-type thing where I’m almost convinced that I have to be absolutely perfect and I can’t handle it if I’m not. And I think that among my peers, there are more people like me than I thought. So let’s all stop, take a breath, and accept the fact that we will fail. Let’s stop hating on ourselves because “I’m not patient enough”, “I don’t have enough faith”, “I doubt God”, “I’m a terrible person”. The last one isn’t even true, for anybody. And the rest of those flaws are not the end of the world.

Because, grace means that it’s OKAY that we aren’t perfect! That is the very reason why Jesus died. The blood he shed for us covers every time we slip. I KNOW I’m not good enough! So did Jesus. That’s why He gave us His Holy Spirit to live in us and complete us, to fill the areas where we are lacking, to give us the spirit of Christ, to adopt us into His family, and give us eternal life. In my weakness, His strength is revealed. I am not enough, but He lives in me, and He is. THAT is grace.

Grace means it’s okay to be human. GRACE is what distinguishes Christianity from any religion, because it means that we don’t have to be good enough. Thank God, I don’t have to be good enough, because I never could.

This is a journal entry of mine slash a letter I wrote to my friend from a couple years ago:

“March 5, 2011

That perfect girl I want to be…she doesn’t exist. That’s the truth. Let the truth set you free. Jesus knows us. He knows that our hearts are deceitful and wicked and betray our best intentions. He knows we’re gonna screw up daily..many times a day in fact. He knows that we haven’t the faintest glimmer of hope of being the person we think we’re supposed to be, but He doesn’t want us to be that person. He just wants us to be us and let Him use us. He just wants us to choose to give Him EVERYTHING, the good and the bad to Him, because He made us, and He doesn’t make anything He can’t use. That’s when our weakness is replaced by God’s strength.

If we were perfect, what would we need Jesus for? We could get to Heaven on our own then! But that’s not the point. We are accutely aware of our own inadequacies and failings and it is because of that that we can truly appreciate the magnitude of His infinite love and GRACE, and what He did for us on the cross.

So yes, don’t be comfortable with your mistakes. By all means, try your best to be the best you can be, but don’t hate yourself when you make a mistake, or when you feel like your character is flawed beyond repair. Instead, embrace the redeeming power of Jesus’ blood.”

One of my favourite quotes is from a song by Lecrae, called Background. The lyrics say “Cause if I do this by myself I’m scared that I’ll succeed, and no longer trust in you, cause I only trust in me.”

We are nothing without Christ. So why do we try so hard to be something without Him, and why are we so surprised and dismayed when we fail time after time? Embrace being imperfect, and embrace the grace that says it’s okay.

Queer Christians are on a whole other level. Queer Christians have faith you can't even understand. Queer Christians know God in such a deep and special way. Someone who realizes they're queer and STAYS a Christian has such a powerful belief in God and such an intimate acquaintance with His goodness. I wish homophobic, transphobic, conservative fundamentalist evangelicals could grasp even a tiny bit of the joy and peace and love that I experience through my QUEER relationship with God.

Hello Darlings! I'm doing the 30 Hour Famine in a couple weeks, fasting to raise awareness and accepting money to raise money for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization. Their programs span education, childcare, healthcare, and nutrition. If you would like to contribute to this fantastic cause, it would be much appreciated! Lots of love :)  -Katherine