The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith

by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

There is a core difference between sharing the gospel with the lost and imposing a specific moral standard on the unconverted.

Ken and Floy didn’t identify with me. They listened to me and identified with Christ.

Good teachers make it possible for people to change their positions without shame.

Ken stressed that he accepted me as a lesbian but that he didn’t approve of me as a lesbian.

I learned the first rule of repentance: that repentance requires greater intimacy with God than with our sin.

I learned that we must obey in faith before we feel better or different. At this time, though, obeying in faith, to me, felt like throwing myself off a cliff. Faith that endures is heroic, not sentimental.

God sent me to a Reformed and Presbyterian conservative church to repent, heal, learn and thrive. The pastor there did not farm me out to a para-church ministry “specializing” in “gay people.” He and the session knew that the church is competent to counsel (to quote the title of one of Jay Adams’ useful books). I needed (and need) faithful shepherding, not the glitz and glamor that has captured the soul of modern evangelical culture.

How did the Lord heal me? The way that he always heals: the word of God got to be bigger inside me than I.