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

by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

I needed (and need) faithful shepherding, not the glitz and glamor that has captured the soul of modern evangelical culture. I had to lean and lean hard on the full weight of scripture, on the fullness of the word of God,

I think that churches would be places of greater intimacy and growth in Christ if people stopped lying about what we need, what we fear, where we fail, and how we sin. I think that many of us have a hard time believing the God we believe in, when the going gets tough. And I suspect that instead of seeking counsel and direction from those stronger in the Lord, we retreat into our isolation and shame and let the sin wash over us, defeating us again.

I wondered: If my life was the only evidence that Christ was alive, would anyone be convinced?

Living according to God’s standards is an acquired taste. We develop a taste for godly living only by intentionally putting into place practices that equip us to live below our means. We develop a taste for God’s standards only by disciplining our minds, hands, money, and time. In God’s economy, what we love we will discipline.

Undisciplined taste will always lead to egregious sin—slowly and almost imperceptibly. Third, we find lack of mercy (“neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy”). Refusing to be the merciful neighbor in the extreme terms exemplified by the Samaritan traveler to his cultural enemy left to die on the road to Jericho (Luke 10:25-37) leads to egregious sin.

Pride combined with wealth leads to idleness because you falsely feel that God just wants you to have fun; if unchecked, this sin will grow into entertainment-driven lust; if unchecked, this sin will grow into hardness of heart that declares other people’s problems no responsibility or care of your own; if unchecked, we become bold in our sin and feel entitled to live selfish lives fueled by the twin values of our culture: acquiring and achieving. Modesty and discretion are not old-fashioned values. They are God’s standards that help us to encourage one another in good works, not covetousness.

When you die to yourself, you have nothing from your past to use as clay out of which to shape your future.

real learning depends on our quest for real knowledge, not its perpetual deferment in the form of endless doubt.

Whatever was God’s providence for me, it was his to lay out and mine to obey. No longer did I have to invent myself.

Betrayal deepens our love for Jesus (who will never betray us). Betrayal deepens our knowledge of Jesus and his sacrifice, obedience, and love. (Jesus was betrayed by his chosen disciples and by all who call upon him as Savior and Lord by our sin). Finally, betrayal deepens our Christian vision: The Cross is a rugged place, not a place for the squeamish or self-righteous.

God was teaching me how to hold the things of this world lightly. God was teaching me how to use my skills for the Kingdom. God was revealing himself to me through the details of my life and the choices that he put before me.

When I used my old worldview, my life felt like a cruel joke. But I knew even then that God’s providence was neither arbitrary nor fickle.

Even when faced with the blinding sting of someone else’s sin, it really is not someone else’s sin that can hurt us. It is our own festering sin that takes the guise of innocence that will be the undoing of us all.

Sexual sin is predatory. It won’t be “healed” by redeeming the context or the genders. Sexual sin must simply be killed. What is left of your sexuality after this annihilation is up to God. But healing, to the sexual sinner, is death: nothing more and nothing less. I told my audience that I think that too many young Christian fornicators plan that marriage will redeem their sin. Too many young Christian masturbators plan that marriage will redeem their patterns. Too many young Christian internet pornographers think that having legitimate sex will take away the desire to have illicit sex. They’re wrong. And the marriages that result from this line of thinking are dangerous places. I know, 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. The audience seemed a little shocked to hear

What we did, these students and I, for a whole academic year, is very simple. It is called “Sabbath keeping,” and my denomination values it highly. We simply took a day off from real life so that we could explore and expand our spiritual lives.

But how did the Prodigal Son come to his senses? The Prodigal Son didn’t repent of his sin because he got tired of living like and with the pigs. He repented because God gave him eyes to see. Until this happens, no personal experience can topple his critical perspective.

What is worse, when a Christian husband lords it over his wife in a harsh and unloving manner, he declares to the world that Christ rules over his church in the same way.

Paul speaks of the purpose for which headship has been committed to the husband in marriage. It is for the edification of his wife in all purity and holiness. Your role, then, as a Christian husband, is to nurture your wife in the faith, and to provide for her spiritual as well as her physical welfare. Christ ever lives to make intercession for the saints. You must, therefore, pray constantly for and with your wife. Christ nourishes His Church with the milk and meat of His word. You must therefore minister the word to your wife, and teach her to know the deep things of God.

Jesus is an equal opportunity Prophet, Priest and King: He equips, strengthens, forgives, comforts, and brings into fruition the reality of sanctification.

Jesus can equip anyone—no matter how lost or broken—for godly living. I’m living proof of that.

There is a biblical principle that lies behind my confusion: people whose lives are riddled with unrestrained sin act like rebellious children. Sin, when unrestrained, infantilizes a person. Here I had thought that I was so mature, so capable, so “important” in the world, and the truth remains that I didn’t even know how to act my age! After conversion, I was surprised to discover how old I really was.

That is, we know that no one is naturally “born into” the family of God. Being “born again” is the equal footing that we all need.

Adoption is not just a Christian metaphor or the process by which we became parents: adoption into Christianity is the process by which we claim our heritage.

When Christ is at the center of our marriage, we have been able to maintain a Christian household that ministers to others. When Christ is not at the center, all of our good intentions are swallowed up by selfishness.

I believe that there is no greater enemy to vital life-breathing faith than insisting on cultural sameness. When fear rules your theology, God is nowhere to be found in your paradigm, no matter how many Bible verses you tack on to it.

As people converted outside of covenant homes, we know firsthand that the covenant isn’t only for babies born to biological believers. Yes, the first three years of life are formative and the opportunity to parent a child from infancy into adulthood is a privilege. But, life is precious and children beloved not because they may heal and grow, but because God made us in his image. If that is good enough for God, it must be good enough for us.

In God’s amazing mercy, he used us to protect the baby! Isn’t that at the center of our prayers for our children? He didn’t hurt us to punish us. We were hurt in service to him.

Because we are Christ’s, we know that children are not grafted into a family to resolve our fertility problems or to boost our egos or to complete our family pictures or because we match color or race or nation-status. We know, because we are Christ’s, that adoption is a miracle. In a spiritual sense, it is the miracle at the center of the Christian life. We who are adopted by God are those given a new heart, a “rebirth.”

When we read in the book of Romans, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose” (8:28), we are not to be Pollyanna about this. Many of the “things” we will face come with the razor edges of a fallen and broken world. You can’t play poker with God’s mercy—if you want the sweet mercy then you must also swallow the bitter mercy. And what is the difference between sweet and bitter? Only this: your critical perspective, your worldview. One of God’s greatest gifts is the ability to see and appreciate the world from points of view foreign to your own, points of view that exceed your personal experience. That is what it means to me to grow in Christ—to exceed myself as I stretch to him.

Anything worth doing will take time and cost you something. We noticed, as our attention focused more on families and children, that many people in our community protect themselves from inconvenience as though inconvenience is deadly. We have decided that we are not inconvenienced by inconvenience. The needs of children come up unexpectedly. We are sure that the Good Samaritan had other plans that fateful day. Our plans are not sacred. Our house is open to children for after school care. No money is exchanged. The

Adoption is not a pathology that marks and plagues people and families for their whole life. But adoption is a complex paradoxical event that combines loss, brokenness, and rejection with gain, connection, and embrace.

We all grew in Christ in our opportunity to serve people who would otherwise be invisible to us because of our privilege or fear.

Compassion means “with suffering” and involves entering into the suffering of another in order to lead the way out.

Mercy ministry always comes down to this: you can help, but only Jesus can heal.

Jesus is the word made flesh, and our faith and our deeds of love puzzle together with the Lord of Lords and King of kings setting the sequence that makes the pattern of grace-filled life.