The Bible: Different from All the Rest
I haven’t read The
Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield yet, but
after reading a few interviews with her, there’s one aspect of her conversion
from lesbian feminist professor to Christian that I can’t stop thinking about:
the role the Bible played in her conversion. It’s awe-inspiring seeing that book
through her eyes. Here are some examples from various articles:
"'I tried to toss the Bible and all of its teachings in the trash — I really
tried,' she says. 'But I kept reading it, reading it not just for pleasure, but
reading it because I was engaged in a research program trying to refute the
religious right from a lesbian feminist perspective. . . . After my second or
third, maybe fourth, pass through the entire Bible something started to happen.
The Bible got to be bigger inside me than I. And it absolutely overflowed into
my world.'"
"I
started reading the Bible. I read the way a glutton devours. I read it many
times that first year in multiple translations. At a dinner gathering my
partner and I were hosting, my transgendered friend J cornered me in the
kitchen. She put her large hand over mine. 'This Bible reading is changing
you, Rosaria,' she warned."
"I
went from being someone who felt that I was responsible and entitled to
interrogate the Bible to someone who believed that the Bible had authority over
my life and therefore had the responsibility and entitlement to interrogate me.
That truth—that the Bible interrogates me—does not stop with conversion.
Therefore, the post-conversion issues raised in Secret
Thoughts are in some ways proof of the fruit of Christian living,
insofar as they reveal a heart searching to have the Bible interrogate it."
"And
after two years of meeting with my Christian neighbors, getting to know
some of their church members, and reading the Bible multiple times through in a
year, I noticed something about this text.
It was different from all the rest.
It had an integrated revelation, a vast and capacious
philosophy about sin and redemption, and a God-man who was no effeminate runway
model or martyr…. The Bible promised understanding after obedience, not the
other way around (John 7:17). That stopped me in my tracks: Did I want to
understand why homosexuality was a sin from God’s point of view, or did I just
want to argue with Him? After two years of this, the Bible got to be bigger
than me. It overflowed into my world. I realized that the Bible was my holy
highway to a living God; that through it I could learn what God wanted of me
and why, and through it I could send my pleas to His throne of grace. The Bible
transmitted the language and lexicon of a Holy God, transforming me to grow in
His likeness. It truly was the only way."
The fact that we have access to a book powerful enough to
change us so completely is astonishing to me. The Holy Spirit moving through
the inspired words of God creates new people who know and love Him. We say we
know it’s the word of God, but do we really see it as Butterfield sees it? If
not, here’s her recommendation:
[S]ome powerful
things happen when you read the Bible many, many times in a year, from
Genesis to Revelation, and in multiple translations. I really encourage
Christians to do that, and not to read the Bible as though you’re reading your
horoscope. I don’t think it’s really meant to be read like that.
