August 22, 2016 Show with Rosaria Butterfield on “Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity & Union with Christ”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio

platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues

facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one

man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we

converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another

wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear

from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris.

Good afternoon.

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and.

The rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday.

On this 22nd day of August 2016, I am so delighted to have back for the

second time on this program Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, the wife of

Pastor Kent Butterfield of First Reformed Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina and

she is an ex -lesbian and leftist professor from

Syracuse University.

She's the author of the book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, which we covered on our

program and today we are going to be addressing her brand new book, Openness

Unhindered, Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with

Christ and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Rosaria Champagne

Butterfield.

Thank you so much, it's my honor and privilege to be with you today.

And let me right off the bat announce our email address for any of our listeners who would like to join us on the air with

a question of your own.

Our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com, that's C -H -R -I -S -A

-R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live

outside of the USA.

And during a program like this, it is quite obvious that there are many people who may

prefer to remain anonymous.

Perhaps you yourself are struggling with the sin of homosexuality, perhaps you

have a loved one who is and you just would be much more comfortable not identifying yourself

publicly when you ask the question.

We will obviously respect your wishes and you may remain anonymous if that makes you feel more comfortable.

So feel free to email us your questions at ChrisArnson at gmail .com, ChrisArnson

at gmail .com.

And Rosaria, the last time you were on the program, we not only spoke about the secret

thoughts of an unlikely convert, but we also got very heavily involved in your personal testimony.

And even though we addressed that before, I would like to review some of that in

capsulized form because obviously when we're speaking about your new book, we want our

listeners to have some kind of a background.

So we could start where you would like to start off with.

We could start off with your upbringing perhaps and when you first started to get involved in

the activity known as homosexuality.

And one thing that we cannot let slip by us though is how you met your husband

because the last time you were on, we didn't even discuss that.

And that's a really remarkable part of the whole story.

Oh, wait till you hear that,.

Wait till you hear that.

You'll be surprised.

I won't leave the suspense out.

I'll tell you that.

I'll answer that question.

Well, you know, I would just want to say that I was raised in a very progressive home.

I was raised in a home that valued feminism, that valued

planned parenthood, that really, as I was growing up, the name Planned Parenthood

was associated with very good things, with progress and with taking care of women and with

what distinguishes First World health from Third World health and things like that.

So my journey

into lesbianism was not only a preference,

just a kind of internal preference to be in the company of women and to

find women a more safe and attractive presence, but also my

feminist ideology and my gay and lesbian

progressive political issue.

And I say that, I mean, I say that not because politics can make you gay, but because

worldview really matters a lot and we see that especially today.

So there's one way to talk about homosexuality and it's to talk about it in a kind of therapeutic way.

This is how I feel, this is why I feel this way, and this is why I need to convince you that it's

okay.

That's one conversation, but that's actually not the conversation that people have with me, because

so many questions in life and even so many personal decisions in life come down to worldview.

So at a certain point in my life, specifically in my late 20s,

I discovered that although I had been dating men, although I had had boyfriends

and I even found some men attractive, that the whole time I had been dating men, I had been falling in love

with women.

So at the age of 28, I came out as a lesbian.

My lesbian lover at the time moved into my apartment and really life just came together for me and made sense.

And I really didn't understand why, especially conservative Christians, would not leave

consenting adults alone.

You know, for the following 10 years then, I was in serially

monogamous lesbian relationships.

And again, I was completely baffled by

why this kind of nosy intrusion of religion that I

don't claim suddenly had to be mine.

And so after my tenure book was written, I was a professor of English and Women's

Studies, and after I finished the book that I needed to tenure, I started working on a book on the

religious right, basically to figure out why folks like you were invading my

time.

I mean, that's just the truth.

I wanted to get inside your head and think, well, you know, why would a reasonably intelligent person do this?

You think I'm kidding.

I'm not kidding.

In the process, amazingly, I met a friend and a neighbor

who was a Bible -believing Christian and would go on to be my pastor, my mentor,

and many, many years later, the man who would walk me down the aisle when I married my husband, Ken Butterfield.

And that's Ken Smith, who was, at that point, the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian

Church.

And over the course of two years, I met with Ken and Floyd, Floyd is his wife, his lovely wife,

and they discipled me.

And you know, they discipled me, and I was fine with that, because I really was trying to read the Bible to

understand why this book got so many good people off track and why this man, Jesus, persuaded so many

people to follow him.

I mean, it was just an unthinkable, preposterous idea to me.

But in the process, a number of things happened.

I read the Bible for up to five hours a day, which might sound excessive, but I'm an English professor, and

that's just what we do.

That gives the Holy Spirit a lot of time in the life of a person like me.

It really gives the

challenge to me, it convicted me, and some of my well -worn prejudices about it just didn't

hold up.

Now, my PhD is in English.

I'm what's called a whole book scholar.

My job is to read a book and size it up.

And God used those skills that I learned in secular universities powerfully

for my own conversion.

It didn't come easily.

It's a long story.

I wrote about it in the book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.

It's a painful story, painful for me to think about, and I'm told painful for my readers to think about, too.

But at a certain point in this journey, I realized that even if my feelings never changed,

even if my sexual desires for women never changed, that God was calling me to obedience,

and that Jesus is who he says he is, and that actually,

over time, my feelings did change.

Amazing and remarkable, and the fact that I am married to

Terrence and the mother of my children, our children, is just daily proof that

God redeems people like me.

But I would say the real crux of my conversion was to discover that it was actually

Jesus I had been persecuting the whole time, even as I considered myself to be

on the right side of history, the compassionate side, the diverse side, the

progressive side, and to all of a sudden discover that it was not just this historical

figure named Jesus I'd been persecuting, but my Jesus, my prophet, my priest, my king,

my savior, my husband, my friend changed everything.

Even though, yes, and even though really nothing in terms of my feelings changed immediately,

when God saved me, turned my heart of stone into a heart of flesh,

what did change was that I loved the Bible, and I couldn't get enough of it.

I don't know how any of this would have happened, quite frankly, if I hadn't had a neighbor and friend, Ken and Floyd

Smith, who just hung in there with me, and all the messiness.

I mean, this is not easy, this is not pretty, and I'm

pretty sure I wore out pretty much everybody in my church.

But I praise God for them, for their perseverance and their faithfulness.

And the relationship began with this pastor through his writing a letter to you, was it in

response to an article you wrote or something?

Yes, yes, I had written a critique in a local.

Newspaper about the promise keepers having come to town, and

one of the elders in the church apparently had set the op -ed piece on Ken's desk and

said, Ken, we need to shut this woman up, she's trouble.

She co

-authored the domestic partnership policy at Syracuse, she's an out lesbian feminist, she is a

hater of the gospel, we've got to shut her up, and apparently Ken looked up and said, well,

how about if Floyd and I invite her over for dinner?

And you know, especially now as a pastor's wife, you can just imagine the

look on that young elder's face.

I mean, you can just picture it, right?

She's thinking, time to retire, right?

And meanwhile, it was indeed a

faithful act of Christian hospitality pursued over years and years that

the Lord ultimately used in my conversion as the most powerful weapon of tearing down the.

Strongholds of my unbelief.

Yes, we can all learn from that, we who are Christians, when we sometimes let

our disgust, our self -righteousness, our anger, our frustration,

our revulsion, whatever it is that we have towards a particular sinful activity of somebody else,

we have to learn from the humility and compassion of this pastor who did not give up hope,

who looked beyond anything that he was opposed in your life, and saw

in that actually the greater need for you to get to know Jesus and to be

saved.

And I found it interesting, I remember from our first discussion, that you

initially were throwing out his letters, but then you went back to retrieve them.

And I've heard other stories where people's lives were transformed by retrieving

either the discarded book or letter or whatever it was that they initially got them angry that they

threw away, or just threw.

And then they went, crawled on their hands and knees under dusty beds, grabbed the book or

whatever it was that they threw.

And so, now we have to hear how this introduction happened with

your husband, which later became your husband, Kent Butterfield.

Right, right.

Well, you see,.

This is why it's not nearly as exciting as you may be expecting.

I mean, you know, I am just part of a very small denomination,

and I think Ken Smith had me on every prayer list known, you

know, to the Western world.

So I was not unknown to anyone in our denomination.

And I was on a research leave after my conversion, studying

whether Christians should profess at a Christian college or not.

I was questioning, in some ways, my calling now as a professor.

And so I was at Geneva College, and I was also working at the

Center for Urban Biblical Ministry, and that organization, which

was an urban ministry program, met at the seminary, borrowed

a room from the seminary where Kent was a student, the Reformed

Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And so, I don't know if you know the ethics, the culture of a research

library on a Friday night, but there are very serious rules about sitting

at tables that you're not invited to.

And I got to work that night, and I thought, well, why is that man sitting at my table?

That's my table.

You know, that's been my table for the last, you know, six

weeks.

So Kent was an interloper at my table.

Now, he will tell the story slightly differently.

He thinks that was his table, but either way, Kent and I, we had met

before we knew each other's names, but we, you know, we certainly developed our

relationship starting with the great controversy of whose table that was

at the library at RPTS.

Yeah, I happen to know some folks who graduated from that seminary.

In fact, maybe your husband remembers my friend, Pastor William Malick.

I don't know if he knows Bill, but perhaps we could find out later.

Bill is actually a Baptist,.

But he did go to that seminary.

Will you allow that?

Yes.

Yeah, that's permitted.

Yeah, he's a Reformed Baptist.

Well, you brought up a couple of things that I wanted us to touch on because they are pretty

important and pretty profound, in my opinion.

First of all, you said that you kept falling in love with women, and I think that

it might be good for you as a Christian to define exactly

what that really means as opposed to what many people think

that means, because obviously, especially with the young, and not

exclusively for the young, but especially perhaps for the young, they just think that they are

really in love with somebody just because their hormones go wild.

They can't stop thinking about a particular person, and very often that leads a

person down the wrong path.

It has even led Christians down the wrong path into either

abandoning the Christian faith or into cults sometimes when they meet the wrong person.

If you could define, what is it that you think?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, let me back us up even a little bit further and start from a Christian perspective.

So from a Christian perspective, we know that it takes grace to

love what God loves, and that's true whether you have a predisposition towards

homosexuality or a predisposition towards alcoholism or a predisposition towards anger.

All of it has to go because it takes grace to love what God loves.

None of us actually love what God loves by our own,

but if you are not a believer and you've never read the Bible and you are

absorbed into the Rousseauian philosophy of

Rousseau, and that basically is that people are born free to do what they want, and if they

only could do that, then everything would be great, but the chains are out there in the oppression of the world.

Well, the Bible flips that around and says, actually, man is born in chains

and freedom comes through Jesus Christ.

Now, I want to start here because I don't think this is just an issue about homosexuality,

and that's where my new book, you know, that's where we're going in the new book.

This is not about a sectarian problem.

This is about a worldview problem and a faith

issue, and that problem is that without the love of Christ,

you can't love what God loves, and those are very serious words and it's a

very serious problem, and so my inclination was to develop

very intense one -on -one relationships with women that became extremely

codependent and that ultimately became sexual, and by no means

would God call that love, but in the eyes of the world and in the

eyes of the academy,.

That's what we called it.

One of the other things that you brought up that was a very interesting way of phrasing things that

reminded me immediately of Soul of Tarsus.

You said that you were persecuting Jesus Christ, and it's interesting that

when Soul of Tarsus, as you know, was stopped dead in his tracks on the road to Damascus,

Christ did not say to him, Soul, why are you persecuting my

people, although that's what he was doing.

He was rounding up men and women for execution, but Jesus Christ said

to him, why do you persecute me?

If you could.

Explain that a little bit further.

Sure, absolutely.

Well, I had read the Bible seven times before I was converted, and I had been

studying it, and I had been trying my best to tear it apart,

and during this time, I was doing my best to teach thousands of college

students to despise the Word of God as well.

And then, when I became a Christian, when the Lord converted

me, I realized that the Word of God and

the person of God are inseparable, and that my attacks against the

authority of the Bible were absolutely attacks against

the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

And so, you know, when we look at the world that we see out here today, you need

to realize that you have somebody on the line who is part of that machine.

This is the world I helped create.

The blood is on my hands, and I often think about what it was

like to be Paul, because, you know, this is a pretty small little community, and I am sure that there

were times when Paul was actually sitting across the table with a

person whose mother he murdered, or father he murdered.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, he'd look in those eyes, and he'd see the same eyes, but somehow

Paul was so powerfully delivered, not only from his

sin, but even from the history of his sin, that he could have no condemnation.

And I think that there's a relationship between seeing how deep and how gruesome

and how absolutely inexcusable our sin is that allows us to see

our victory in Christ alone, and then to say we don't measure up, because

Christ measures up for us, and that's the point.

I think there's a relationship between those two, and so I'm very uncomfortable when people talk about sin

as if it's a therapeutic problem, as if it's a common mistake,

taking a wrong exit on a highway.

Sin is treason against a holy God.

It is a hateful act.

It's a hate crime, is what it is, and it's specifically a hate crime against

the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who shed his blood for me.

It's that personal, and until we get to that personal place, I don't

think we can fully comprehend how to step into the world around us

and share the gospel with people who hate us now, with a hatred that

comes.

With the entitlement of the federal government.

Yeah, wow, that's pretty powerful words there.

We do have a listener who chooses to remain anonymous.

In fact, she doesn't even want me to announce her city and state where she is

writing from, so I'm going to respect that, obviously.

And this anonymous listener says, on Thursday, my grown daughter said she wanted

to talk to me because I had been through something she was

trying to help someone with.

My daughter is a beautiful girl, was married and divorced, and to make a long story short,

she began dating a girl last month.

I love my daughter with all my heart, and she knows how I feel about what she is doing, that I

don't condone it.

I saw something a long time ago that she doesn't know I saw.

In it, she said she was bisexual.

I haven't told anybody and feel guilty telling you, but

since you're interviewing Rosaria, I am hoping my daughter will be

working and not listening so she may identify me.

She lives in another state than me and will be home on leave at Christmas.

I have no idea how to handle this.

She was raised going to church her whole life, and when I became a believer in the doctrines of

grace, she read a lot of deep books and agreed with them.

When her father left me and her sister, she went with him and was a few weeks

from turning 16.

She is now 23.

He was lost, and she hasn't had any spiritual exposure since that

time.

I am hoping this is a phase for her.

I want to guard my identity because I would not hurt her for the world.

I'm just trying to make sense of it all, and if you could respond as best that you

could to this.

That's so painful.

There's so much there,.

And I think one of the first things we need to remember is that the gospel is always ahead of us, and so

it's always tempting to look back and say, you know, if only this hadn't happened or that hadn't happened or

this did happen, things would be better, but that's not the Lord's economy.

It's a new day, and there are new problems, but there are new opportunities, and the Lord is always

ahead of us.

What I would say is this, that we...

Homosexuality can show up in people's lives for different

reasons.

I have some dear friends who found themselves in a same -sex attraction

because they had been molested as children, and that had just been

an experience that just, it just sort of stopped everything for them, understandably so,

and then there are others, others of us who did, by God's grace, did not have that

story, but for some of us, our homosexual desires, and I think when I heard that

the daughter identified as bisexual, this may be part of it at 16, it just was

Adam's thumbprint on our lives.

You know, Romans 1 has a lot to say about this.

One of the things that Romans 1 does is it helps us define homosexuality.

Homosexuality is an ethical outworking of original sin, and so,

for me at least, I had to spend a good bit of time, a couple of years really, just wrestling with

the question, am I a lesbian and are my

sexual desires for women a reflection of who I am?

That's what I simply said.

That's what I believe.

That's what I said.

That's what the world says, but the Bible has a different understanding of personhood, and so the Bible

actually did not agree with me on this point.

The Bible put it this way, that my sexual desires for women were not a

reflection of who I really am through the fall of Adam,

the consequence of that fall, and so what's very, very hard today, I think, for almost

everybody, but especially people who are struggling with any kind of same -sex attraction, is that we live

in a world that is just vociferous in its anti -biblical

understanding of personhood.

You know, personhood is very simple in the Bible.

In the Bible, it's Genesis 1, 26 -27, and we are image -bearers of a

holy God, we are born male or female, and we have a soul that will last forever and a

body that will be glorified and redeemed in the New Jerusalem, but for the world

we live in, homosexuality is the new true mark of personhood, and you see that

in Facebook's 50 gender options and these movements in all the public

schools at this point.

You hear this even when people say things like, I am gay, or when you have to go through a gender training workshop to

to figure out which personal pronoun you're going to use.

None of that is biblical.

All of that is cultural, and all of that is powerful, and so I

think that the most important thing that this dear mother can do is

continue to love her daughter and to continue to be very close to her daughter, to stay very

close into these conversations, because the ultimate question for this

daughter is not, um, the

ultimate question for this daughter is, are my sexual desires for women

who I really am?

This is who I really am.

I need to act on this.

This is all good.

This is what the world says, or is the Bible true?

And this is a distortion of who I really am in the fall, and Jesus is

ahead of me, and in union with Christ, even if I

don't get what I want, which is true for every Christian, by the way, I get

something better.

I get what I need.

Now, in order to have such a personal conversation with someone, this is not

a brief conversation.

This is not an off -the -hip conversation.

This is not an adversarial conversation.

This is a long conversation, and this is the perfect conversation for a mother and a daughter to have,

because ultimately, what this mother is going to be doing is shaking the gates of heaven for her daughter.

So I would just encourage her to stay close, to not worry.

I mean, at this point, I don't think she needs to worry that her daughter will think that she's condoning her if she's kind

to her.

You know, most human beings really do make a distinction between acceptance and approval, and

if we are honest, none of us approve of each other in totality

about everything anyway.

And somehow we're able to manage to create, you know, communities and churches and families and

relationships.

So I don't think that you need to worry on that point.

Well, I just want to let this anonymous listener know that if you email me your full name and mailing address,

you're going to get a free copy of Openness Unhindered, Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on

Sexual Identity and Union with Christ, Complements of Crown and Covenant Publishing,

and you're also going to get the audiobook of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert,

thanks to Christianaudio .com.

That we could just email to you, but as far as the book is concerned, the paper book, please give us your full mailing

address, and obviously we will honor your request.

We're not going to reveal who you are on the air.

We thank you so much, and I think that you obviously could really use these resources, so we hope

that you send us your mailing address.

And we're going to be going to a break right now, and if you would like to join that listener with a

question of your own for Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, our email address is

chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city, and state and country of residence, if you live outside the USA, if you're comfortable

doing that.

And obviously, just as we did with our first questioner, you may remain anonymous if it makes you

feel more comfortable.

Don't go away.

We're going to be right back with Dr. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, right after these

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in for the full two hours today.

Our guest is Rosaria Champagne Butterfield.

This is her second time here in Iron Sharpens Iron, and I'm looking forward to many more visits from her and interviews.

She is the wife of Pastor Kent Butterfield of First Reformed Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina,

and she is a former lesbian and leftist professor at Syracuse University who

was redeemed and delivered and rescued and transformed by the

power of the Holy Spirit and the saving blood of Jesus Christ.

She is the author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, and we're discussing today her newest book,

her latest book, Openness Unhindered, Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity

and Union with Christ.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Before I go to some of our listeners who are waiting to have their questions asked and answered,

I just have a couple of announcements.

One of them involves our guest, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield.

She is going to be one of the many speakers at the G3 Conference this January

19th through the 21st in Atlanta, Georgia, and I am so delighted that by God's

grace and providence, I am going to be in attendance at this conference.

I'm going to have an exhibitor's booth.

Thanks to Josh Bice of Praise Mill Baptist Church.

He is the pastor there running this conference, and he was kind enough to allow me to have an

exhibitor's booth there so I could promote Iron Sharpens Iron.

Among some of the other speakers joining Rosaria Butterfield at this conference

as a speaker are Paul Washer, Stephen J. Lawson, D .A. Carson,

Vody Balcom, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Tim Challies, who's going to be on

the program very soon on Iron Sharpens Iron.

In fact, he's going to be on Friday the 2nd of September, God willing.

And we have Phil Johnson, who has probably been on Iron Sharpens Iron more than any other guest.

He is the executive director of Grace to You Ministries, the media and publishing ministry of

John MacArthur.

Conrad M. Bayway, who is probably one of the most powerful preachers on the planet Earth.

Not probably, he definitely is one of the most powerful preachers on the planet Earth, and maybe the most powerful

preacher on the planet Earth.

I've known Conrad since 1995 and have really been blessed by a long friendship with him

and look forward to seeing him again and sharing fellowship face -to -face with him.

And David Miller and Todd Friel, who was just on Iron Sharpens Iron last Monday.

John Kratz, who's been on this program as well before and many others.

If you want more details on how to attend the G3 Conference, go to

g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com and we hope to see you there.

If you come, please look me up at the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth and say hello.

I'll be right next to the booth for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

We are going to be working together as a team at that conference, helping to

publicize one another's organization.

Hope to see you there in January.

Before I even go to some of the listeners who are waiting, Rosaria, I do want you to

explain a couple of things about the new book.

Number one, if you could explain specifically, Openness Unhindered, what you mean by

that title, and how this book specifically is different from The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convict.

Yeah.

Well, in the NASB, which is my preferred Bible translation.

Well, thank you.

They sponsor my program.

Yeah, I know.

This is like a family reunion, isn't it?

The last two words in the Book of Acts are openness unhindered.

Paul was able, after being shipwrecked and beaten and tortured and persecuted,

he was able to practice, of all things, hospitality in his

new domain with all openness unhindered.

And that was not because all of a sudden things got to be really rosy for Paul.

No.

Because he had, and he was able to express to all of us what

union with Christ means, and how union with Christ allows you, new

believer, to not just withstand difficult circumstances,

but actually thrive in the midst of them, because Christ is for

you.

And because any persecution that you experience

gives glory to God.

And, you know, we are facing persecution right now.

I mean, it hasn't happened yet, but it's going to.

And we need to have, I believe, a greater grasp of how to function

as Christians in an open and unhindered way, in spite of the

hostility around us, and to continue to practice hospitality no longer as the

host of this world, but as its unwelcome guest.

And so the book itself looks at specifically what is

a worldview competition between personhood.

Are we people defined by sexual identity?

And that's what the world wants to tell you.

That's even what some parts of the evangelical church want to tell you.

That's what anyone who identifies as a gay Christian wants to tell you.

Or are we image -bearers of a holy God called to reflect that image in

knowledge, righteousness, and holiness?

And so the book goes through what conversion really means.

What identity in Christ really means.

What repentance really means.

How and when the category of sexual orientation was invented.

It's about 100 years old.

You'd think it's as old as Methuselah, but it's not.

Why self -representation is important.

Why it's important that we understand that binarisms matter.

Male, female.

Why that matters.

Also, how to engage in this world in an

honest and truthful way without...

Well, I mean, sometimes you do have to lose friendships.

That's just the case.

How can we engage with people in genuine Christian love and genuine

Christian integrity without losing our bearings?

And so the book...

Actually, one of the chapters in the book is written by a person who disagrees entirely with me, and we

dialogue back and forth.

We disagree.

How do we deal with people who disagree?

It used to be that Christians could just kind of batten down the hatches, but ultimately, we are called to

be good neighbors, and we are now still called to be good neighbors, even as the

federal government continues to put millstones around the necks of image bearers.

What does a good neighbor do in that situation?

Well, the good neighbor speaks.

The good neighbor fights for religious liberty because it matters for everybody, not just for

Christians.

And so this is a book about, fundamentally, the

integrity of a Christian world, the integrity of a Christian life, the aspects

of Christian living that are vital, like what is repentance, and also the importance

of worldview, and specifically around what I think is the most vexed

concept right now, and that is sexual orientation.

The book talks about this.

Sexual orientation began as a 19th -century category mistake.

It then became a 20th -century idol because it advances the notion of sexual

autonomy.

And now, in the 21st century, through the Obergefell decision, which was the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay

marriage, that Supreme Court decision did more than legalize gay marriage.

It redefined personhood.

And through that court decision, sexual orientation became a civil right.

And now, the gospel is on a collision course with that civil right.

And so the book attempts to equip Christians to

understand the language of this new world in the hopes that

having a better understanding of what the language itself implies.

See, language always has a theology involved in it.

There's no such thing as neutral language.

But if we understand a little bit about the ideology of this world, we have a greater

capacity to see gospel context.

Where is the gospel bridge to this person's life?

You know, when Ken Smith first met with me, he knew the gospel bridge to my life wasn't telling me that homosexuality

was a sin.

The gospel bridge to my life was recognizing that the biggest sin in my life was unbelief.

And so Ken worked from there.

So, you know, I'm trying to write, in some ways, a bit of an insider's guide.

Because, again, this is the world I helped create.

And this is also the world that I'm called to help redeem.

Amen.

Yeah, well, it sounds like a very valuable tool.

Now, the chapter where you're in disagreement with somebody, is this a fellow Christian who has a different

approach to this?

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

It's chapter six.

It's called, When Sisters Disagree.

And we find ourselves more and more in that position.

You know, we say, well, I'm a Christian, but you say you're a Christian.

And I believe that homosexuality is a sin, and that the male -female

binarism that undergirds marriage is at the center of the gospel.

And you believe that it's at the margin.

You believe that the red letters are the only things that count.

And I believe that this is a unified biblical revelation.

And, you know, and now what?

And it's also, in some ways, a...

I mean, you know, we are called to see fruit in

people's lives.

And people say, I'm a Christian.

You know, those are not words only.

We're to see, and not just, you know, fruit of good grades on a report card, but Christian food as well.

So I'm not suggesting that there isn't a great need for discernment when we

have disagreements over what the name Christian means.

But we also live in a very confusing world and a very confusing time.

And we have whole segments of the evangelical church really losing its

bearings and bringing a great deal of gospel integrity along with it

as it crashes.

So, you know, we are not so arrogant as to think that everyone in these churches are unbelievers.

There are true believers who are being tossed to and fro by very bad teaching,

by very, you know, by seriously heretical pastors.

Those people are our brothers and sisters and must be rescued.

Amen.

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

And when you refer to sexual orientation, is that not

like inventing new genders?

Like, for instance, instead of just male and female, now we have at least five new

genders, if you will, to deal with?

Yeah, there's a relationship, although it is very different.

The sexual orientation came out of the 19th century, came out of Freud's work,

and it basically declared that what sets human beings apart from other higher mammals is that we

desire sexual autonomy and we desire sexual autonomy that is not connected to

procreation.

We just, you know, we want to have sex for the sense of self that it gives to us.

And so Freud, who believed that the Christian faith was a, quote -unquote, universal obsessional

neurosis, so I don't think this is, you know, this is not an ideologically free, you know,

scientific, neutral, I mean, this is loaded as it gets.

But what he declared, it wasn't just that there are people who desire to have sex with the members of their

own sex.

That's not news.

That's as old as the garden.

But what is news is that this is a new category of people.

So after Freud, the gay historian of ideas, Michel Foucault,

actually said, because of this category of sexual orientation, a new species of

humanity was born.

So there's a difference between saying somebody is same -sex attractive, this is what this person struggles with, this is an

outside distortion of the fall, it is something that needs to be taken seriously, and we need to help

and uphold one another in these struggles and help each other to drive a fresh nail into our sin every

day, and this is no different than any other sin in that way.

That's different from saying, this is who I am, this is a new category of personhood,

I am, in a philosophical term, ontologically gay.

And ontology is the philosophy of beginning.

The idea that it is so deep, it goes into your absolute most

center part, and in fact, Jonathan Rauch, the contemporary

journalist, the decision that the gay soul was born.

So there's a difference between saying, my daughter struggles with

this, and saying a new species of personhood, and that's what sexual orientation did.

It quickly became an idol, and that idol is connected to other issues.

Right now, part of the debates, the very discouraging debates we're having

with pro -abortionists is that we

thought, we on the pro -life side, thought that if we could just prove that life begins

with conception, that would be enough to win the case.

But in a world that values sexual orientation as a category of personhood, that

world values choice more than life.

And I think it's easy for Christians to just say, you know, post -modernists, they're just illogical.

Well, okay, but we still have to understand why people believe what they believe.

Because even too illogic, there's a kind of thread of something.

And it's that post -modern, pull -on attack against life

that you're seeing.

That's what produces transgenderism.

See, gay and lesbian issues, sexual orientation, that's a very modernist

problem.

Certain things are still stable, like the sexual identity of the person

involved.

What's not stable is desire and what you want to do.

But gender dysphoria and gender identity issues really do come out of

a post -modern mindset.

And what I mean by that is that's the mindset that says there are no foundations.

Now, let's also remember that gender dysphoria also comes from the fall.

And that is a very sad thing.

It is a serious thing.

It is a serious problem for any of your listeners right now to be hearing this and to be saying, well, I am a

woman who feels trapped in a man's body.

Or I am, you know.

So this is, I'm not suggesting that people do not have these burdens and these feelings that are

powerful and important to be dealt with.

But it is indeed only the word of God that allows for integrity on these issues.

Now, even though you don't like Sigmund Freud's answers to these issues,

did he not believe this was a mental disorder, homosexuality?

Didn't he think that?

Yes, Freud did.

That is true.

But if you declare that something is

an ontological category of personhood, how

hard would it be then for, over time, a civil rights

base to be organized around that sense of personhood?

So, you know, we're all, you know, we are products of our culture.

Freud was a product of his culture.

He did have certain Victorian throwbacks.

But what I'm saying is that, inherent to his thinking, his thinking allowed

for exactly what we see today.

But yes, absolutely.

He did have, he was a, I mean, this was, I would say, a

pseudoscience.

But nonetheless, he would have called this a scientific breakthrough.

Right.

And one that required medical attention.

Yes. Right.

And did not all of the psychiatric textbooks until, like, the 70s,

all list homosexuality as a disorder, and then it magically, overnight,

all disappeared from the textbooks?

Yes.

Well, it wasn't magic, anyone?

There is no magic.

There's a great deal of political lobbying that goes into what's called the Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association.

And your readers need to know that, at this point, pedophilia in the new DSM -6 is

considered a form of sexual orientation.

Oh, boy.

Oh, wow.

And if you want to look at some of Denny Burke's blogging, his blog site is excellent for

this.

In his work, he's been following this very carefully.

It's very serious.

Yeah, this is really disturbing, and it's such hypocrisy, because

those who will fall back on psychiatry and psychology for their

argumentation and reject the views of Christians, and even

Orthodox Jews, for that matter, about a biblical approach to these things, they

don't even realize that they are taking a religious approach to this.

Just a wrong religion.

But it is religious, because it ceases to be scientific if you are silenced from ever

pursuing something that you believe scientific evidence is proving.

That's right.

And it's religious in another way.

Anytime something moves from a

position of the body to the sacred, that is itself a religious

move.

And so when you hear people, even the Supreme Court justices who

supported the Obergefell decision, when you read the way they write about homosexuality, they write about

it as a sacred issue.

And certainly Christians feel this today.

I mean, almost overnight, we went from being the people who were considered

trustworthy with people and things and ideas to people who are

universally dismissed as bigots and hate mongers, even though we actually haven't

necessarily changed anything.

But what has changed around us is the idea that sexual orientation

is a civil right.

And as soon as that changed, even though Christianity didn't change, even though nothing in our

church has changed, everything is...

Well, we have to go to another break right now, and I promise our listeners who are waiting patiently

that we will get to your questions, at least as many of you as we can.

And so we look forward to doing that after the break.

But if you'd like to join them, if we have time to include you with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen

at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail

.com.

And as I said before, you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable.

Don't go away.

We're going to be right back, God willing, after these messages with Rosaria

Champagne Butterfield.

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That's wrbc .us.

Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with one hour to go is Rosaria

Champagne Butterfield.

She is a former lesbian and political leftist and tenured professor

at Syracuse University who was redeemed and transformed by the saving power of Jesus

Christ.

She is a born -again believer, a conservative evangelical, and the wife

of a Presbyterian pastor.

We have been discussing her latest book, Openness Unhindered, Further Thoughts of an

Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity in Union with Christ.

Before we return to some of our listener questions, I just want to announce that this

Wednesday morning at 11 a .m., I will be speaking at a camp meeting for

the Glenvale Church of God in Marysville, Pennsylvania.

But the actual camp meeting is in Newville, Pennsylvania.

That's Camp Yolijua.

That's not a Native American name.

That camp stands for Youth Living Jesus's Way.

It's kind of like an acronym, I guess.

And if you'd like more information about this event that I will be speaking at

this Wednesday morning at 11, you can go to the Camp Yolijua

website, which is c -a -m -p -y -o -l -i -j

-w -a .org.

And you can also go to the Glenvale Church of God website,

glenvale, that's g -l -e -n -v -a -l -e -c -o -g .com.

And I just want to thank Pastor Larry and everybody at the Glenvale Church of God in Marysville, Pennsylvania, for

inviting me to speak on the theme of Iron Sharpens Iron, the actual biblical

text and Proverbs.

I'm going to be speaking on that theme.

And if anybody is in the area, I would love for you to stop by and join us

for a morning and early afternoon fellowship and

actually lunch, and obviously the opening of God's Word and

worship.

So hopefully we'll see some of you there this Wednesday morning.

And we do have a couple of listeners who are waiting now for me to answer their

question.

Well, you, we're waiting for you to answer their question.

We have Erin in Indianapolis, Indiana, who writes, I wondered if

Rosaria might suggest a helpful thoughtful answer to the argument I've heard, how

can love be wrong no matter who it is?

And she has one follow -up question that I'll get to after you address that.

Well, I think this is where you see that you've got to help people to understand that

Christians are going to use God's vocabulary and God's dictionary.

And the reason we're going to do that is not just because, you know, it's not because we're partisan, it's not because, you know, this is

our style, but because any ethic has to come from a stable source.

And God created us and God redeemed us and that was both, both the act of

creation and redemption are intentional and they're both acts of love.

And so ultimately, Christians are using a different definition of love than what

most secularists mean when they say love.

I mean, you know what, when I was in lesbian relationships,.

I called it love and I said,.

Why can't you leave consenting adults alone?

You know, that's what grownups do.

That's what civilized people do.

And yet I learned in part through Ken Smith and through my reading of the Bible that the

operative understanding of love in the Bible is actually submission.

Also, we see the greatest act of love is in the atonement.

And so, and that is part of why Jesus could be standing there talking

to the woman caught in adultery.

And when he could say the words, go and sin no more, he would actually know viscerally how

much that sin is going to cost him.

And so it's always including the perspective of the Jesus who says my yoke is easy and my

burden is light that we say to people, that's not love.

Love is indeed atoning love.

And love is transforming love.

And God does not often give us what we want.

He gives us what we need.

And over time, we learn to love what God loves.

But that's a hard learning curve.

It's a very hard learning curve.

It's very rigorous.

There's no room in this conversation for, in my opinion, a sloppy sinner's

prayer kind of Christianity.

That's not real Christianity.

It just isn't.

And I think we need to tell people that.

That we're a blood -bought people, bought by the love of God through the atoning blood of

Christ.

And therefore, the real love

is me being able to look at you and love you so much that I would never

want to desire anything that would interfere with your ability to come to a holy

God.

And so a same -sex attracted person's real love for a member of their own sex is this.

I love you so much that I will not lust after you.

I love you so much in Christ that I do not see you as an

object of my desire, but rather as an image bearer of a holy God.

And that's love.

Amen.

And Erin has a follow -up question.

And she asks, how does Rosaria lovingly refute the attempt to equate

historical inequalities of African Americans with gay rights?

Right, right.

That's a great question.

And I'll tell you part of why it's a hard thing to do right now.

Many Christians are really taken aback by this.

When did this analogy come up?

Why did this analogy all of a sudden become set in stone?

Well, it came up because of the way that the Supreme Court decided the

Obergefell decision.

So it helps to know why this analogy is right up there in something that we have to

respond to.

And it came up because specifically, the Obergefell decision came down like this.

Sexual orientation is now made analogous to race because

its protections are under the 14th Amendment.

And so, you know, I mean, it's going to take a certain amount of chutzpah, no question, on the part of Christians.

But I'm very happy to say that five Supreme Court justices, who were, by the

way, unelected, don't get to tell us what personhood means.

Recently, the Department of Justice, yes, Department of

Justice, that's suing North Carolina, defined gender as a

distinction without a difference.

All of my children came through adoption, but you just tell a nine -month pregnant woman

that her gender is a distinction without a difference, and I just don't think anybody's going to buy it.

So the difference is this.

According to biblical marriage, biblical marriage, and we see this right in Genesis,

Genesis 1, in fact, biblical marriage requires

gender differentiation.

It demands it, male and female.

But it in no way requires racial difference or sameness.

And so it is, again, a situation where we have to be able to use the Bible as

our ethics, not just our biblical ethics, but our ethics.

And then sometimes people say, well, you're being a theonomist.

And I'll say, well, no, no, no, no, no.

Theonomists may think that you're saved by this.

I'm just saying you're going to be able to think well by doing it this way.

We're not talking about salvation.

We're talking about thinking logically through the questions of what forms an ethics.

So what I would say is that it's a very bad analogy, but it's

cemented in a legislative stone right now through the way that the Obergefell

decision was made.

And so it'll become crucial for Christians to be able to explain marriage never,

ever depended on racial difference or sameness.

Marriage has always depended on gender difference.

And a great place to go if you're looking for, you know, people who can say this better than I can is

the Heritage Foundation and specifically the journal Public Discourse.

Great.

Well, thank you so much.

And thank you, Erin in Indianapolis, Indiana.

And if you give us our full mailing address, if you give us your full mailing address,

you're going to receive the paper version, the book of Openness Unhindered, Further

Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity in Union with Christ, Compliments of Crown

and Covenant Publishing.

And you're also going to get the audio book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, thanks to our

friends at christianaudio .com.

So obviously we don't need your mailing address for the latter, but we need your mailing address to get the book, the

paper book.

So please, if you'd like that, send us your full mailing address, Erin.

And we do have an overseas listener now.

We have Murray in Kinross, Scotland.

And he asks, I'm conscious of two or three cases in

reformed churches here in the UK in recent years where men considered

to be believers have entered into same -sex relationships and in each case effectively

cut off contact with Christians they once enjoyed fellowship with.

It's difficult to know quite how to break down the barriers and do something positive and sensitive

other than just praying.

Could you give some advice on how to counsel quote, quote, believers

who fall into this particular temptation and cut themselves off?

Right, right, right, right.

And those are very, that's a great question because I think we would all agree that

any believer is capable of falling into any temptation or sin

pattern.

I mean, it's a dreadful thing and it's a shameful thing and it's a painful thing for everyone, especially

the person who's falling, the people directly surrounding that person and the church and the cost of

Christ.

But in repentance, there is forgiveness and restoration.

The challenge is this false gospel that's spreading that says, no, no, no, you know, just the opposite is true.

There are just these, you know, six, you know, Matthew Vine says, hey, there are just these six little pesky verses.

You know, how can six pesky verses stand between me and the love of my life?

That makes, God is a God of love.

He would never do that.

And so the challenge is when people defend their right to sin by

distorting and mangling the gospel message.

And, you know, the truth is you just don't know which is the case unless you actually get to

talk to this person, you know, and you don't, you know, you just don't know.

You don't know if this person has fallen into sin because temptation has just

overwhelmed him faster than sanctification has buoyed him up or if he is claiming

a false gospel.

So I think that as hard as it is, it's really crucial that Christians do

everything in their power to, you know, maintain a

relationship with other believers who have fallen into sin.

Now, of course, the challenge is, you know, my, especially as a pastor's wife, my

desire is that we would all be under an in -church

membership and under the good care and shepherding of a pastor and local

elders so that they can help, in some ways, interpret for us what to do.

I mean, obviously, if someone is under care of the session or

potentially being rebuked by the session or potentially being excommunicated by the session, we,

the flock, who don't have access to the full story, need to not interfere with that.

But, you know, my prayer is that always the session would be

communicating clearly to the flock so that we would know how to love.

But, you know, ultimately, these are very messy times and you just can't get close enough to somebody

to really know what the story is or be of any, really, use if you're not also close

enough to get hurt.

So I think Christians have to be willing to just, you know, accept that we will get hurt in the process.

This is going to be a hurtful experience.

And we don't know, just by the virtue of somebody falling into sin, whether this is a wolf in sheep's clothing or a lost

sheep.

We need more information.

But this is also another clear reason why people need to be under the

authority of a local church, including people in ministry,

including, you know, pastors and elders.

We need to be accountable to our authorities because left to our own devices, we

thought, you know, we all could be potentially deceived.

And it's dreadful and painful and just horrific when a pastor brings down an

entire congregation or even denomination.

Well, thank you so much, Marie, from Kinross, Scotland.

And guess what, Marie?

You're getting both of Rosaria's books and audiobook.

We don't typically mail out books to overseas listeners, the paper ones.

But since this can be done electronically, and thanks to our friends at Christianaudio .com,

you're receiving The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered, Further Thoughts of an

Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ, compliments of Christianaudio .com.

So thank you very much, Marie, for writing a very insightful question.

And we do have another listener from Old Town, Maine.

Peter, who says in response to something you said earlier

about the psychiatric textbooks, I have read that the

DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, was

changed as a result of not only political pressure, but protests, threats of

violence, and in some cases, violence from the late 60s into the early 70s.

I guess that would be the Stonewall Riots he's referring to.

Well, I don't know.

Yeah, well, the Stonewall Riots happened at that same time, but they happened at a bar in New York.

So I'm not quite sure.

I'm not thinking that the Psychiatric Association was meeting directly there, but

I've heard the exact same thing.

And I have not studied it myself, but I have heard that as well.

Well, thank you, Peter.

And you're also getting a copy of both the paper version of Openness Unhindered and

the audio book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.

We do need your full mailing address for the paper book, the paperback.

So we look forward to getting that from you.

And we thank you for participating in this discussion.

We have an anonymous listener from Sydney, Australia,

who asks, have you heard about the controversy in regard to

Hillsong Ministries here in Australia?

And they seem to be continually defending their traditional and biblical stance on marriage,

but they seem to be also contradicting that stance and being overly soft on the

sin of homosexuality.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what?

I actually am not, other than things that people have told me about what's

going on with Hillsong, but the way that you phrased your question is exactly the

problem.

You see, if we can't determine why homosexuality is a sin,

I mean, really, if we just can't say, homosexuality is a sin because, and then answer that,

then we can't respond to a world that says, no, homosexuality is just one of the many forms of

diversity, and every intelligent person knows that.

You know, Christians know that homosexuality is a sin.

It's a very serious sin.

It's actually one of the biggies because it attacks the creation ordinance.

And I understand.

I'm the first to tell you, and be very thankful, that the blood of Christ covers all sins.

But in biblical ethics,.

Homosexuality is not only a sin, but a bigger sin than many other sins because it attacks the

creation ordinance.

It attacks the very foundation of what it means that God spoke this world into existence, and

with it, everything that is good.

So, you know, and I would suggest that a really helpful person to be

reading at this point, when we're trying to think about, well, why is homosexuality a sin?

You know, my gay neighbors are the nicest people on the block.

You know, how can you say that it's a big sin?

I think that Peter Jones's work over at Truth Exchange is very helpful because

he works from a cosmological worldview perspective on this, and that's extremely helpful for

people.

Who have been, you know,.

Really in the details, kind of in the weeds of the Bible, which is a great place to be,.

But all of a sudden,.

We're all asked to be theologians.

We're all asked to explain the big picture, and so Peter Jones and Truth Exchange do just a great

job, and he's having a conference there in October on

what's wrong with gay Christianity, and I can just guarantee that every speaker will be

dealing forthrightly with, you know, with exactly, you know, why

homosexuality is a sin, because if all we can say is,.

I don't know,.

But the Bible tells me so, then we're going to lose this battle the same way we lost the purity war.

There's a reason for sexual purity, and there's a reason to understand the sinfulness

of a particular sin, and we need to be able to articulate that, and if we can't, we've lost this

conversation.

Even if there's some holdouts for biblical orthodoxy, we've lost it.

Right, and our listener there, our anonymous listener in Sydney, you're getting both books

by the audio version, which will be emailed to you, thanks to our friends at

christianaudio .com.

That's christianaudio .com, and they were very generous to us today as

Crown and Covenant publishers have been and continue to be, and we thank both of

them for helping to make Iron Sharpens Iron a more

fruitful and productive program through the things that they give to our listeners.

Yes, and Peter Jones has been a guest on my program.

I look forward to having him back, and in fact, you just put the reminder in my

mind to contact him and get him back on to actually promote this specific

conference.

That would be great, yeah.

And I know that he was actually a childhood friend of John Lennon.

He was.

Yes, and he has a...

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, he has a friend, a Christian pastor in England

who is certain that John Lennon, believe it or not, became a Christian, a

genuine believer before being murdered.

So I hope that's true.

Wow, that's beautiful, yeah.

Peter seems to be very convinced that his friend's report is accurate.

But that website, if you're interested in following up on Peter's conference,

that is TruthXChange .com, and it's spelt Truth and just the

letter X, then Change .com.

And keep listening for updates on Peter Jones's return

to Iron Sharpens Iron as a guest.

And the thing that we have

to constantly overcome...

In fact, since a listener has actually asked this question,

I was almost going to steal the listener's thunder by asking a

question of my own.

But then when I began looking at what she wrote, I might as well give her the credit.

Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, she says, I am very frustrated with

the fact that my adult children in their 20s seem to find absolutely

nothing wrong with the sin of homosexuality.

Of course, none of them are born again, but it seems irrational to

me that this is now the typical answer you get from young people.

I understand that it was very wrong years ago when we were children

and teenagers to frighten and harass and bully and

brutalize people that were discovered to be homosexuals,

or at least those that were labeled that way even falsely.

And I understand that that was wrong, but it seems that the reverse that is now taking place

is even more spiritually dangerous for the young.

Yeah, and I would say let's distinguish those two things because any kind of violence against

a fellow image bearer of a holy God for any reason is wrong.

I mean, you know, it's always wrong, but I don't think that that's, I mean, I know that that's

part of what the gay rights movement will tell you is the impetus, but from a worldview perspective, that's

actually not the impetus.

The impetus comes from an idea that personal experience is more true

than anything else and that one person's personal experience

can be radically different from another and that those would just coexist very

peacefully, that nothing ultimately trumps personal experience in terms of

what we call epistemology or truth -telling.

And this is an old idea.

It actually comes out of German Romanticism.

It comes out of the 18th century in the West and it really has taken hold and

you see it in specifically the gay rights movement.

You also see it in the writing of gay Christians.

Very rarely do gay Christians engage with scripture in the way that scripture

calls you to engage with scripture.

Scripture calls you to engage with it because it is supposed to change you, but what gay

Christians will do, you know, supposedly gay Christians, what they will do is use scripture as

a kind of springboard to talk about their personal experience.

And really,.

Anytime anybody does that with scripture, you should be concerned.

You should be concerned.

Now, you know,.

Another question.

That's embedded in this very good question is, you know, it used to be that

people just had a kind of moral conscience, bad conscience, a

moral intuition that said, incest is bad.

A moral intuition that said, homosexuality is not right.

A moral intuition that said, men dressing as women and coming into the women's restroom

is really dangerous and ought not happen.

And for years and years and years, people just had that moral intuition.

And, you know, anthropologists talk about this in terms of taboos.

You know, there was a taboo against homosexuality.

There was a taboo against incest.

And we can look to the Bible and say,.

Well,.

The Bible says that natural law explains some of this.

That on the hearts of men is written not only eternity, but a kind of deep sense

that this is not right.

This is just not right.

And today we live in a world where everything that I've just said is hate speech.

Pretty much everything I've said on this show is probably considered to be hate speech.

Certainly what I've just said.

In the last few minutes.

Now, what we know to be true is that there is always a relationship between lack of modesty and

lack of moral intuition.

The more that a culture displays itself and I think violates its own conscience

in doing that, the more that it loses its bearing on these, you know, on this moral

intuition.

And I think we see that.

And therefore,.

I don't think we can appeal to that in young people.

I think people really want to say, but don't you see that it's wrong?

And I think millennials are saying, no, we really don't.

And so I think that we need to take a totally different tack.

Because I'm going to tell you as a very sinful person, there are a number of things in the Bible.

I mean, there are a number of things in my life that I don't have the moral intuition to

respond to properly just within my little Rosario world.

But I have the Word of God.

And so I check that.

And I probably check that more frequently than most people because the kind of sin that I committed over years and

years,.

It deadened me to these things.

It made me kind of dead to the very things that make up a tender

conscience.

And so by God's grace,.

I can, you know, I have the Word of God.

I can go to it.

I can check myself.

But I would say a good resource, an excellent resource right now to discuss these matters much more

intelligently than I have is Al Mohler's The Briefing.

So he has been really, just really hitting this question of Christian

worldview and the stability of

truth in a very powerful way.

And then another really excellent body of books is by Nancy Peercy,

I've got a whole slew of those, Finding Truth, Total Truth, Saving

Leonardo.

Those are just excellent resources.

Nancy Peercy is a philosopher, a Christian philosopher that takes up Schaeffer's

understanding of engagement in the world.

And so she's very readable and very likable.

And I think those books would be a good resource too.

Well, I can recommend for all of our listeners a wonderful resource

to get all of those books, the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

They are a theologically reformed book service that happens to sponsor our

program.

Whenever you receive a free book in the mail from Iron Sharpens Iron that is being shipped to

you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

That's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service .com.

And they ship out these free books at no charge to Iron Sharpens Iron.

And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings, who are members of the Carlisle Reform Presbyterian Church

here in Pennsylvania.

We thank them for being faithful supporters of Iron Sharpens Iron in this way.

And we look forward to partnering with you for many years to come.

I might also throw in there in a relationship to the discussion that we're having, since you mentioned

Dr. Albert Moeller.

He was a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron months ago to discuss a book that was hot off the press that

time.

At that time, we cannot be silent, speaking truth to a culture redefining sex, marriage, and the very

meaning of right and wrong.

That's an excellent book.

That's a must -read book.

Yes, and you can also get that through cvbbs .com.

And you can also listen to the interview with Dr. Moeller at ironsharpensironradio .com in the

archives.

We're going to our final break right now.

And by the way, Susan, in Newville, Pennsylvania, you're also getting the audiobook of The Secret

Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and the paperback of Openness Unhindered, compliments of

christianaudio .com and compliments of the Crown and Covenant publishers.

And so look out in your email and your regular mail for those two things.

We thank you for participating.

We're going to go to our final break right now.

And so we hope that in the remaining half hour that some of you will

join those who are already waiting with their questions to be asked and answered.

And we'll be right back with Rosaria Butterfield.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Or am I trying to please man?

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

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That's not the best recipe for popularity.

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Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes and the next half hour to come, our guest today

has been and is Rosaria Butterfield, wife of Kent Butterfield, the pastor of First

Reform Presbyterian Church of Durham, North Carolina.

And she is a former lesbian and leftist professor at Syracuse

University, a tenured professor there.

And she is the author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and also Openness

Unhindered, Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ.

And I want to make sure that our listeners know that Rosaria has her own website.

It's rosariabutterfield .com.

Rosaria...

By the way, I think I mispronounced your name last time.

Am I mispronouncing it again?

Yeah, that's okay though.

Well, how do you...

What's the correct way?

Well, it's the Italian pronunciation.

That's Rosaria.

And I'm saying it differently than that?

Yeah, that's okay.

Rosaria?

Is that it?

Rosaria?

Yep.

Okay.

Rosariabutterfield .com.

R -O -S -A -R -I -A.

Butterfield .com is her own website.

And I hope that you visit that often and let other folks who need to know about this Christian

response to the sin of homosexuality, let them know about this response from

a gifted woman like Rosaria by passing on the website

rosariabutterfield .com.

Uh, we have an anon...

An anon...

I can't even say it.

An anonymous listener...

I don't know why I had trouble saying that word.

I guess if I have problems saying Rosaria correctly, I can say it.

An anonymous listener in the Republic of Ireland who says, I have

heard from some pastors that because of the fact that

homosexuality is a sin that God has turned

wicked individuals over to, that this is a sin without hope

that those who are involved in it cannot repent and that they are

most certainly doomed to the fate of damnation.

And obviously your guest believes she is repentant and transformed.

So I was wondering if she had ever heard of this view before and

how she responds to this.

Yes.

Yeah, what a good question.

What a good question.

You know, how we rightly handle the word of God says so much

about everything, right?

So this particular, I'm going to say misreading, comes from Romans 1.

If you happen to have your Bible, you can flip over there with me as I'm going to do right now myself.

And it comes specifically out of the line that talks about

God giving some over.

And anytime you read in the Bible that God gives you over, that's not what anybody wants,

right?

Right.

We all want to be...

We don't want God to turn us over to Satan.

We don't want God to turn us over to anything.

We want to draw close to God.

We know that in Scripture, there is one sin.

There is one sin from which we are unredeemable.

And that is the unforgivable sin.

But homosexuality is not actually listed here as the unforgivable

sin.

Mm -hmm.

I think it also comes from a miscuing

of what a reprobate is.

You can't be alive and be a reprobate.

You just can't.

You can be alive and be a terrible sinner.

You can be alive and be running from the grace of God faster than you ever thought you could run.

But a reprobate is someone dead and condemned.

So, where there's life, there's hope.

And now, what does it mean to be a Christian who

is...who has come out of a past of sexual sin?

Well, it means that you've got, you know, until you're glorified, there are

real issues that you have to deal with.

I deal with body memories, and they're not pleasant.

And you don't want them.

And I think that's true for heterosexual sin as well as homosexual sin.

But what you have in Christ is the redemption

of your soul and the promise of the redemption of your body and the absolute certainty

that in the new Jerusalem, all of that will be glorified.

Your body, this earth, all of it.

And you know, that's actually why the gospel is the best news for people who have become

transsexuals.

You know, there's nobody forgotten by God.

It's the best news because of this.

In the new Jerusalem, there's no gender mutilation.

You are made whole again.

So, I don't believe, and I'm uncomfortable with this kind of idea

that you know you're redeemed if your feelings have changed.

Well, no, that's not actually what the Bible says.

The Bible says that there will be struggle, that you will struggle with your sin until

Jesus comes back or you die and go to be with him.

And if you're not struggling, then there's a big problem.

And in fact, you know, Galatians 5 really paints that struggle in very stark,

stark terms.

A Christian is not necessarily someone whose feelings have been

changed.

A Christian is someone who, through union with Christ and the power of the gospel,

loves Jesus more than you love your sin.

And you are equipped to obey God.

That doesn't mean it's easy.

And it takes grace to love what God loves.

So, I'm really, I think that sometimes we have, again, we

have half the gospel working in our minds.

We talk about how the blood of Christ cleanses us and we're

forgiven to it.

But we seem to forget that that blood gives you the power to obey.

And obedience matters to God.

It's a sign of fruit.

It's a sign of life, new life.

So, I hope that answers your question, that the passage in

question is Romans 1.

It's a really important passage to take hold of.

I think that Genesis 1 -11 and Romans 1 are the

bookends of our lives in so many ways and also bookends that explain so

many of the problems and confusions we have.

If Christians just really committed ourselves to really being able to

handle those two bookends really well, that would be very good.

That would be very helpful in these current cultural discussions.

Petey.

And of course, we have those words by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians

6.

Sarah.

Yes, that's for some of you.

Petey.

Yes, where he lists a whole bunch of sins that damn the soul

if they are unrepented of and we are left trembling and horrified.

But then he says, such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were

justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God.

So I would also, our listener in the Republic of Ireland, I would tell anyone who

mentions that view to you to bring that text up as well.

And by the way, you're also getting the audio book since you're overseas.

You're getting the audio book of both titles, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered thanks

to our very generous friends at christianaudio .com, christianaudio

.com.

And one thing I'd like to ask you, I keep hearing

preachers and evangelists who are speaking on the issue of homosexuality.

And I'm talking about biblically sound, theologically orthodox

men who would even be from a tradition very much like

ours, theologically reformed Calvinistic, who say things like,

if you think same -sex attraction is nearly

non -existent or very rare, I guarantee you that this is going on in the lives of some members of your

church.

Now, is it really that rampant?

I mean, that to me always surprises me when I hear that.

Yeah, you see, I'd be the last person to want to answer that question because in some ways,

you know, when you're me, most of the people I talk with on any given day,

apart from my family, would be people who struggle with same -sex attraction.

And so, you know, my barometer would say, yes, that is true and that you have faithful,

faithful Christians who love Jesus and love you.

And they have poured into.

Your ministry and your family and

maybe you've just never known it and they're 70 years old and, you know, you can't

believe it.

But you shouldn't be shocked.

I mean, any sin if dealt with in God's

way is not a, you know, it's not a mark of shame.

It's a mark of humanity that we are, you know, we don't choose the way that original sin

distorts us.

But the question is, are you dealing with that sin in God's way?

Are you dealing with that?

So, you know, I would say when we're talking about and maybe the language here needs to be worked through.

If you're talking about same -sex attraction, you're talking about a capacity

to love that which God does not love.

Let's put it this way, a capacity to lust for that which God has not allowed you

to have.

That doesn't seem shocking to me.

I mean, you know, the fact that.

You have people in your church who have the capacity to lust over that which God has denied them.

If that's shocking, I don't...

We're not living on the same planet.

I guess why I'm surprised by it is because

I'm obviously looking at something that is foreign to my own experience.

And it is obviously, as you would agree, it is unnatural, unlike

heterosexual lust and heterosexual adultery, which is

something that is coming from a biologically natural kind of a thing,

physically.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but I would say even that sin distorts

everything.

So sin makes what's natural unnatural.

You know, it's kind of the first attack,.

Really, from Satan,.

Is to do that.

So what I would not say, you know, I've heard pastors say this, I would not

say that, you know, half of your congregation

is going to leave their spouses for a same -sex partner.

I mean, I would not...

You know, I don't think we need to be...

That we need to deny the power of the blood of Christ in believers to fight the sin that they have.

I think we need to encourage one another to live out holy lives.

And again, here, you know,.

A great resource for this and a great book to read on this subject is Christopher and Angela

Yuan's book Out of a Far Country.

So, you know, I think we need to be very...

I don't know.

We are victorious in Christ, and we need to know that.

We're not victorious in natural law.

We're not victorious in the law.

We're victorious in Christ, and we're graceful for that.

But no, I don't think it's shocking at all to think that there are many,

many people in our church who lust after that which God has denied them.

And I think that's ultimately what same -sex attraction is.

Do you think, though, that the homosexual activists and

those that support them are exaggerating percentages, though, when it comes to the number of...

You know, that's a great question.

I think that, you know, my own hunch is that, yes, they are.

But the more that you normalize a sin pattern, the more that you're going to see

rise in the percentage of people practicing it.

So, you know, today it's a sign that you are a progressive and a compassionate person

and an open -minded person if you call yourself bisexual.

Now, if you call yourself a Christian, you might as well just say you're a bigot.

You know, you're closed -minded.

So I think that we will see an increase in the percentage of people who both fall into the

sin of homosexuality, but also the people who are just kind of experimenting, simply

because of the way that the law has become a terror to the people.

It's very serious.

Mm -hmm.

I have been involved in organizing theological debates for many years with

Roman Catholic apologists.

And it is very interesting to me that even very conservative Roman

Catholics, scholars, theologians, clerics,

seem to have acquiesced to the liberal understanding of homosexuality

and have said that there is nothing wrong with being a

homosexual as they will categorize people in that

as if they, you know, they're speaking about Italians, Hispanics or Africans,

Americans or Asians.

They'll say there's nothing wrong with being that you just cannot act upon it.

You must remain chaste.

So they will say, we welcome gay men into the priesthood, for instance,

as long as they honor their vow to chastity.

Right, right.

And there is a reason within a Catholic doctrine of sin that you see that

falsification.

And you know what it is?

What is that?

It is that in a Catholic understanding of original sin, original sin

distorts, but original sin does not corrupt.

Right.

And in a reformed understanding of original sin, moving from Augustine,.

And you know, by the way,.

Looking at Roman six, it's not like we're just only working with early church fathers here.

You see that God holds us responsible for our original sin.

We are made both guilty and corrupt by it.

But if you believe that original sin nearly distorts you,

it makes you a victim.

You know, poor me.

Poor me.

You know, this is, in fact, and I see in recently

much appalling blather in the form of evangelical writing

that takes up this.

In fact, I have a book sitting on my shelf right here that declares that

homosexual desire is not a sin because it's not an

act.

Now, if Jesus says that anger is murder,

and lust is adultery, I don't understand how these

evangelical pastors get away with saying that.

Right.

In fact, there's another book on my shelf, you know, because I get to review some of these books that says that actually homosexual

desires are not a sin, they're a form of suffering, and we should pity.

Now, you know, these men, they're putting millstones around the necks of people like

me.

In order to fight a sin, you must stand apart from it

and see it as evil.

Yes.

But Catholics do not make a distinction between the moral fallenness and the natural

fallenness of original sin.

And that's why we're going to see the Catholic Church lose this conversation.

It's interesting that you said that the Christians or the professing Christians who are

basically salving the consciences of those involved in homosexuality are putting millstones

around their neck.

I can remember, I can remember, I don't know if you saw it, but years ago, back in the

90s, I guess it was, maybe the late 80s, I can't remember, but when Walter Martin, the late

Walter Martin, debated John Shelby Spong, who was a bishop, Episcopal bishop in New

Jersey, and gave his wholehearted loving approval of

homosexual relationships and ordination of unrepentant

homosexuals.

The last part of that debate on the John Ankerberg show, the last segment, featured

a man who was dying of AIDS and he had become, praise

be to God, a Christian.

He repented of his sin.

And he basically said, I'm not saying he said exactly what you said about the millstone around the neck, but he was

very close in that when he was talking to Bishop Spong.

And Bishop Spong was really silenced by this because what can you say when you're...

Right, right, right.

Absolutely.

But we are running out of time and I'd like you to, in a minute, just basically summarize what you most want

etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners, Rosaria.

Well, yeah, that's great.

You know, each generation, we are in hard times, there's no question, but

in this way, we are right in step with exactly where the Lord wants us to be.

And I'm so glad that.

Chris mentioned this conference coming up in Atlanta, the G3 conference.

I believe that all the speakers there are going to be hitting this point hard.

Each generation must defend the gospel anew because the truth of God's word is always attacked at different

pressure points throughout the ages.

And today's attack is on biblical sexuality.

Now, you know, OK,.

You know, great battles in the church have always been caused by the introduction of these

unbiblical categories and the imprecise language that emerges from this.

You know, I mean, the old ones,.

Are we justified by faith or by faith alone?

You know, why shed blood over one word?

Well, we are going to see a great purification of the church.

I'm sure that we're also going to see persecution and may it give God

glory how we respond to that.

Amen.

I do believe that the gospel is on a collision course, specifically with the category

mistake of sexual orientation as a form of personhood.

I absolutely believe that gospel truth.

Is at stake on this one.

Amen.

And Rosaria's website again is rosariabutterfield .com.

Thank you so much for being on the program.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you

are a sinner.

We look forward to hearing from you next time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.