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

by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

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They were the kind of people that could handle someone else’s grief without taking things personally.

All of the testimonies that I had heard up to this point were egocentric and filled

with pride. Aren’t I the smarty-pants for choosing Christ! I made a decision for Christ, aren’t I great? I committed my life to Christ, aren’t I better than those heathens who haven’t? This whole line of thinking is both pervasive among evangelical Christians and absurd.

didn’t choose Christ. Nobody chooses Christ. Christ chooses you or you’re dead. After Christ chooses you,...

I explained that too often good Christians see sexual sin as merely sexual excess. To a good Christian, sex is God’s recreation for you as long as you play in God’s playground (marriage). No way, José. Not on God’s terms. What good Christians don’t realize is

that sexual sin is not recreational sex gone overboard. Sexual sin is predatory.

It won’t be “healed” by redeeming the context or the genders. Sexual sin ...

What is left of your sexuality after this annihilation is up to God. But healing, to the sexual sinner, is death...

I told my audience, why over 50% of Christian marriages end in divorce: because Christians act as though marriage redeems sin. Marriage does not redeem sin. Only Jesus himself can do that.

“Maybe churches are filled with hypocrites because you are not there. Or maybe churches are filled with hypocrites because you are there in pride and in self-promotion. Here’s my challenge to you: for those with church ties, start going to church in honest vulnerability.

I became convinced that the worship of the Lord was the most important thing that we can do.

But worship is the launching pad for life. And, through it, God equips us to do Kingdom work in the world.

Bushell points to exclusive Psalmody as the logical consequence of sola scriptura. Why? First because of the importance of the genre of the Book of Psalms within the scope of the canonized Bible. Second, because, as the high priestly prayer of Jesus in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John declares: it is the word of God alone that directs our lives and purifies our desires and our prayers.

While hymns and praise and worship music take up themes of Christian life, we are told very clearly here that we are sanctified by the word and by the word alone.

Themes may educate and inform, but only the word sanctifies and directs and discerns and convicts: For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged

How do we put Christ at the center? By intentionally holding all things captive to Christ, each moment of each day. By never daring to do anything without fervent prayer, seeking the Lord’s wisdom, counsel, blessing, and life-sustaining breath. I learned, during those years, that the idea that one is ever too busy to pray is delusion of the most dangerous variety.

We in the church tend to be more fearful of the (perceived) sin in the world than of the sin in our own heart. Why is that?

I kept thinking about how sometimes the surplus of our lives prevents us from saying yes to those in need. You know, holidays are such busy times. When your calendar is too full, it squeezes out mercy ministry. It is hard to fit in the stranger and the outcast.

might happen