The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert

by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

As an intellectual, I was working from a historical materialist worldview, but Christianity was essentially a supernatural worldview.

The Bible makes it clear that reason is not the front door of faith. It takes spiritual eyes to discern spiritual matters. But how do we develop spiritual eyes unless Christians engage the culture with those questions and paradigms of mindfulness out of which spiritual logic flows? That’s

I learned the first rule of repentance: that repentance requires greater intimacy with God than with our sin. How much greater? About the size of a mustard seed. Repentance requires that we draw near to Jesus, no matter what. And sometimes we all have to crawl there on our hands and knees. Repentance is an intimate affair. And for many of us, intimacy with anything is a terrifying prospect.

I’ve discovered that the Lord doesn’t change my feelings until I obey him.

Obedience comes before understanding. I wanted to understand. But did I actually will to do his will? God promised to reveal this understanding to me if I “willed to do his will.” The Bible doesn’t just say do his will, but “will to do his will.” Wanting to understand is a theoretical statement; willing to do his will takes action.

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.

we find wealth (“fullness of food”) and an entertainment-driven worldview (“abundance of idleness”). 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. God did not create us so that we would, as the title of an early book on postmodernism declares, “amuse ourselves to death.” Undisciplined taste will always lead to egregious sin—slowly and almost imperceptibly.

Our hearts will become hard to the whispers of God if we turn our backs on those who have less than we do.

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.

we have too narrow a focus about sexuality’s purview. Sexuality isn’t about what we do in bed. Sexuality encompasses a whole range of needs, demands, and desires. Sexuality is more a symptom of our life’s condition than a cause, more a consequence than an origin. Importantly, we don’t see God making

Jesus’ injunction that God is more greatly grieved by the sins of those who claim to know him than by those who know him not, struck a chord for me. There is a fairness and capaciousness to Jesus’ words that simply is not reflected in modern evangelical culture.

The truth is, outside of Christ, I am a manipulator, liar, power-monger, and controller.

sin roots not in outward behaviors, but in patterns of thinking. I

A sin is treason against a Holy God. A

“Hermeneutics” is an old Greek word that refers to how we interpret life, text, and events. That is, hermeneutics is the study of how we make meaning out of text. Another word that often interchanges with hermeneutics is worldview. Hermeneutics focuses on the details; worldview takes the point of view of the frame. These two terms need to be understood in relationship. A

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.