be discerning.

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Blogs are strange things. Throughout my year in blogdom I've been amazed at the vast variety of different blogs out there, ranging in categories from lifestyle to photography to fiercely depressing poetry. I tend to read blogs that lean more towards the faith and Christian life categories (although I do occasionally look at some craft blogs, but promptly get tired and feel sucky at crafts and go back to apologetics). I've found some very interesting and inspiring writers out in my internet travels... and also some pretty bad eggs.

Here's the thing about blogging -- just like facebook, twitter, and any other type of social media outlet, it's possible to make yourself appear exactly like you want to appear, and the majority of the time, your readers will believe exactly what you tell and show them.

As such, writers hold a very weighty amount of power in their keyboard-tapping fingers. Not only can they easily convince readers that their lives are exactly as they appear in the about me section, but their chosen post topics and opinions have a far-reaching influence over every person who comes across their site.

This isn't such a big deal when it comes to photography blogs. You took a great picture, please share it! Your life probably isn't as great as that macro photo of a Starbucks latte makes it seem, but this won't really change how I think about life or how this plays into my walk with Jesus.

It's a different story when it comes to blogs that focus on Christianity. It's easy to draw followers when you've got a slammin' blog template and some CSS savvy. You might even be really good at writing! But what drives me crazy -- and I mean drives me crazy -- is when you take your opinions and your fallacious hermeneutical arguments and you prooftext the God of justice right out of the Bible. I'm aware that I don't have theological training, but I can still tell that something has gone wrong when you turn the mighty and majestic God of the universe into a total sap who sings you Taylor Swift love songs while ignoring your blatant rejection of His Word. And there are hundreds of girls in the most influential stages of their Christian walk reading your blog and drinking all this in and just loving it.

The Bible makes very clear that one of the marks of a fruit-bearing Christian is discernment (see pretty much all of Proverbs). This characteristic is even more important and necessary in a world where opinions and information are available instantly. There have always been people manufacturing their own interpretations of scripture and God and the resurrection and who Jesus is -- the only difference is that the Sadducees didn't have access to Blogger. Twisted truths aren't anything new, so this post isn't directed at bloggers who are rightly exercising their freedom of speech (although I would recommend reading your Bible and getting some facts straight before posting -- don't be an accidental heretic!), but more towards their readers. 

When you read something that doesn't quite sit right with you, try and figure out why. Read your Bible. See what other people are saying on the subject. Don't allow your critical eye to be won over by moody alliteration and pretty photos and social fads. Be discerning.

"Do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgement and discretion" (Proverbs 3:21).

the danger of tmi.

For those of you who aren't up to date with the slang, "tmi" (short for too much information) is a phrase used when a person is describing a certain situation or thing in overly articulate and graphic detail. For example, when your friend decides to fill you in on the intricacies of her cat's digestion issues, you could appropriately interrupt her with an urgent "TMI! Please stop talking, oh please stop."

Anyway. I'm not here to talk about the weird habits of felines, but on the far more important issues of scientific advancement, baby genomes, and Down Syndrome... and how having too much information forecasts dangerous change in our culture's moral and ethical standards.

As a prelude: Wayne and I like having little tea/coffee breaks on weekend afternoons or weeknight evenings after work and school is done for the day, and we'll often listen to the charming strains of Al Mohler's voice over the internet waves as we sit and sip. Albert Mohler serves as the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and produces a five minute podcast called The Briefing which provides "a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview" (We highly recommend having a listen!).

On a recent podcast Al talked about baby genomes -- more specifically the considerable headway that genome researchers have made over the last few years. For those that don't know, a genome is the complete set of genetic material of an organism and contains all the biological information within DNA needed for that particular organism to live and develop and grow (that's my non-scientific definition so it's probably not exact... sorry guys). Knowing the contents of a baby's genome can tell us all kinds of things, from the baby's gender to different health issues. Ultrasounds and blood tests offer a great deal of information and these tests are often used to screen in utero babies for things like heart problems and Trisomy 21 (a.k.a. Down Syndrome).

In tests where results return as positive for something like Down Syndrome, parents have the option of continuing with more invasive testing and can proceed to amniocentesis, a test in which amniotic fluid is withdrawn from the uterus in order to examine the baby's chromosomes. Studies show us that only 2-3% of women proceed past the initial basic screening test, and out of those women, 70ish% of them choose to terminate their pregnancies after receiving a definitively positive diagnosis for Down Syndrome (got my info here). Yes, I know. Stats are stats, stats can be misleading, and stats don't always show what's really going on... but I think we can safely say that there are indeed a great deal of babies being aborted based on the results of diagnostic testing.

Now imagine if you could know everything about that wee little baby safe in the womb -- everything from future hair and eye colour, disease and cancer development, athletic and intelligence aptitude -- everything. An article in MIT's Technology Review tells us that this is very much a possibility in the very near future. New studies show that simple blood tests can be used to completely decode a baby's entire genetic makeup. Though there are obviously good and positive and wonderful ways to use this information (like identifying and treating diseases before they can progress), the weight of power we could wield is almost unimaginable. Our culture's moral and ethical responsibilities would be put to a serious test. In this world's eyes, having a baby with Down Syndrome is not ideal -- so given the exact genetic information, what would stop parents from trying to engineer their ideals in even finer detail? "Hey Bobby, yeah, you had three older siblings, but we terminated the pregnancies because the oldest had Down Syndrome, the second was predicted to be diagnosed with leukemia by the age of 16, and the third was just... well, let's just say he was going to be two bricks short of a load. Then you came! Genetic perfection. But, no pressure bud."

Yes, I know, that's a tad overdramatic. But let's be real here -- when this diagnostic testing comes into play, what is there in place to stop parents from aborting their genetically imperfect babies?

Absolutely nothing.

"Come on Suzanne," you say. "No one would abort their baby based on potential academic performance." My response? I seriously hope not. But I would also say that women have aborted their babies for far lesser reasons than that. It's a woman's right to choose, correct? And having a kid who couldn't figure out their multiplication table would just be so inconvenient, but more importantly, too hard on the poor kid. The loving mother is just saving him from academic humiliation, that's all. We wouldn't want to have our kids develop character through hardship or anything like that. That would be silly.

In a time where "being yourself" is so embraced, where diversity is worshipped like a god, where individuality is shoved down our throats, where the word "tolerance" is shot around like a paintball -- the irony of this situation makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. You can't have it both ways, world. You just can't.

The thought of what we could lose (and already have lost) is horrifying. I realize I'm projecting a state of mind onto our culture that hasn't yet come to fully exist, but I'm just going by what I've seen, and to me, it's just the natural unfolding of moral and ethical deterioration.

If we lived in a time and culture where imperfection wasn't so taboo and where convenience didn't outweigh the life of a child, I would be completely overjoyed by the furthering of MIT's research. Yes, I'm extremely glad for the lives it will save and the people it will help, but the potential for much worse is there too. I suppose the danger isn't really in having too much information -- but more so what we do with it.

And what would our Uncle Bill say about all this?

"I was born that way." 

And we wouldn't change him for anything in the world. 

how to celebrate st. patrick's day

I'm not Irish. I don't claim to be Irish. I don't need to be Irish in order for my husband to kiss me. Nor is being Irish a valid excuse to be kissed by a random stranger. All this being said, I think Irish people are great. I know some Irish people, and they're really lovely. Plus, they have fantastic accents. I think the fact that Ireland has a holiday to celebrate St. Patrick and his life is quite nice. St. Patrick was a cool guy, and though not actually Irish, he worked really hard in a country he loved for the God he loved.

St. Pat was kidnapped from Britain and brought to Ireland as a slave. While there, he converted to Christianity. He escaped back to Britain, but felt called to return to Ireland to convert the Irish to Christianity. It was hard work. And the story about him driving the snakes out of Ireland? False. There were no snakes on the island to begin with. The water is too cold. I'd love to go to Ireland one day, but if I had to swim there, I probably wouldn't do it, so I can see why the snakes passed up on immigrating to Ireland.

St. Patty's day is celebrated in a variety of ways. Google has enlightened me to the following methods of celebration:

Use shamrocks as much as possible. Everywhere. Irish lore says that St. Patrick used the shamrock to symbolize the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not sure if that's true, but it works well.

Be Kate Middleton and wear super fantastic and fashionably festive clothes, and hold pretty flowers. And smile really big.

Have a hearty Irish feast...

Go to a fun St. Patrick's Day parade in Ireland!

Eat some Irish soda bread, yum.

Be Kate Middleton and pass out shamrocks to the Irish Guard and a huge wolfhound, aka scary monster dog that reminds me of Mr. Rochester.

Go to Chicago to see the river dyed green. I still find this slightly odd.

Have a Guinness!

Panic over your completely devastated March Madness Bracket, and go to bed far too late because it's necessary to stay up and watch a game whose outcome depends entirely on your viewing participation... aldjfo;aigalflkj;lajfg;hijl ARGH! Upsets galore this year! I'm sleepy.

Or, if you're really cool, you can travel to London, Ontario, and take part in a totally pointless, violent and dangerous St. Patrick's Day riot composed mainly of overly inebriated college students who believe that a holiday isn't complete without throwing beer bottles at cops, causing $100,000 of damage to public and private property, and setting vehicles on fire, then standing too close and being surprised when it blows up in your face, and hoping that the doctors in the emergency room will believe you when you say you just had a serious run-in with birthday cake candles, then posting it all on facebook and being surprised when you get arrested. How did they find out it was me!??!

Excuse my sarcasm. These people are ridiculous.

Other than the embarrassing show put on by my dear fellow Canadians, I hope your St. Patrick's Day was full of fun, and that your March Madness bracket is in better shape than mine.

will you be my (super inappropriate and degrading) valentine?

I found this on pinterest this week. It made me feel sad inside. Then I read the comments underneath the image, and felt not only sad, but somewhat disappointed by the majority of the comments which praised the card, calling it funny and perfect and the best valentine ever. The few people who showed any kind of negativity against the card were called out for having no sense of humour and for taking everything too seriously -- after all, it's just a card.

Or is it?

I recently read David Batstone's book Not For Sale which is basically an analysis of the global slave trade in the 21st century, aka human trafficking. Before reading it I had a vague understanding of human trafficking and knew that it was going on somewhere... out there... outside of my comfortable happy world... but learning the extent of its far-reaching, horrific arms put a large dent in my aforementioned comfortable happy world.

The global slave trade impacts everyone. There are more than 30 million slaves in the world today (more than ever in the history of civilization), and human trafficking rings are going on everywhere, all the time. Overseas, in South America, even here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. You may have unknowingly eaten at a restaurant where the kitchen workers are actually slaves who are forced into labour with the threat of being turned over to the police as illegal immigrants breathing hotly down their necks. Those women who work in sketchy massage parlours that you think badly of, those women who should get some dignity and get real jobs -- there's a pretty huge chance that they're under the stringent control of a brain-washing, greedy pimp and have extremely limited options for escaping the way of life that they've been tricked into living. That 12-year-old girl you don't even know about in southeast Asia -- the one whose value lies only in her virginity and the fact that a john will pay a huge sum of money for it -- chances are she's been kidnapped, or even more tragically, sold into this way of life by her parents.

The book doesn't touch on the subject of drugs much -- oftentimes when trafficked slaves are in a foreign country illegally, the threat of law enforcement is all it takes to keep them from escape attempts. That may seem like an empty threat to you, especially considering the illegal nature of the trafficker's business, but when you've been dumped in a strange country, can't speak the language, know absolutely no one, and are told that the police are the "bad guys", it's easy to see why there are so few traffickers being brought to justice.

Anyway, back to the image up at the top -- basically, it's not funny. Not at all. Let's see what other human and social plagues and addictions we can joke about.

Excuse my poor photoshop skills, but yeah. Totally not funny.

So -- as you swap valentines, load up on chocolate, and kiss your sweetheart during the upcoming week, remember that there are people out there who have no understanding of the love that you are able to experience. Don't mock them for it with some crappy pseudo-creative valentine's card. Do something about it. Learn about it. Because when you're ignorant, everything can be funny. Don't be ignorant. Just don't.

roe v. wade

I'm not sure why I'm attempting to approach this topic. It's a huge deal. It's a great big twisted knot of politics vs religion vs women's rights vs morals. It can get really complicated… or it can be kept really simple. In my mind it's simple -- God, the Creator and Sustainer of all life, does not support the abortion of children. Unfortunately the simple version isn't what the current culture likes to hear about -- nor do they think it even pertains to the topic. God -- whether or not He does indeed exist -- should have no place in determining what a woman does with her body.

But I will approach this topic because it matters to me, and I think about it a lot, especially with the development of recent newsworthy events. This past Sunday marked 39 years since the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a Texas law that prohibited abortion except for the purpose of saving a woman's life. A week ago today in the Toronto Star, a story was published summarizing Dr. Rajendra Kale's editorial "It's a girl!" -- could be a death sentence in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Kale's article discussed how female feticide is growing more common on Canadian soil because of the migration of cultural practices and expectations of immigrants. He argues that revealing the sex of a baby should be postponed until after 30 weeks of pregnancy, when an unquestioned abortion is basically no longer possible. Since the gender of a baby is medically irrelevant, it shouldn't matter whether curious parents find out at 18 weeks or 30 weeks. "It is discrimination against women in its most extreme form," Kale wrote. I agree. How could anyone who pushes for women's rights view this developing trend with complacency?

Many, it seems.

I had forgotten (silly me) that included in the pro-abortion stance was the idea that a fetus is not a human being. Therefore, gender is inconsequential since what's being aborted isn't seen as a life, but just a lump of tissue. Women choose abortion for a variety of reasons, and gender is just one of those reasons. Aborting a female fetus is just the exercising of a right.

If you hadn't surmised by this point, I'm pro-life. Definitely and absolutely and whole-heartedly. I'm fully aware that this isn't the popular stance -- I realized that rather quickly at pro-life rallies my parents used to take us to as kids, where people driving by screamed nasty obscenities at us. It was all very educational.

No, I'm not going to assault you with grotesque images of infant limbs, or whip out arguments filled with CAPS letters and excessive exclamation marks. From what I've seen, these strategies do absolutely nothing but proliferate the idea that pro-lifers are crazy, possessed freedom-haters. I know all the arguments. I've read and researched them, back and forth, over and over… yet I remain a staunch supporter of the pro-life movement. No matter what angle you argue from, or what stats you have to back you up, the argument is always, and I repeat always going to come back to whether or not the fetus is considered a human life. Don't believe me? Read this book. And if you need a couple other things to think about, read this.

I believe a human life begins at conception. I believe that women's bodies were designed to bear children, and that's a blessing, not an inconvenience. I believe that there are consequences which are a result of our actions, and getting rid of the consequences by blurring moral lines and building convenient "rights"-centred arguments is irresponsible. I'm not claiming to be a deep thinker or philosopher here... just a couple of thoughts from a 24-year-old female pro-life lump of tissue.

"Even if it became illegal, abortion will happen anyway", they say. "Back alley "doctors" will be back in business and women will be putting themselves at more risk than ever." This is all true. Abortion will continue to happen, no matter what bills get passed in Supreme Courts. This isn't just a problem of legislation. It's a problem with the heart of our countries -- with the heart of all creation. We're sinful. The world is full of evil as a result of our sin. Pro-life rallies and pamphlets can only do so much. We must humbly continue to ask Jesus to change our hearts -- it's only through Him that these things can be accomplished.