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

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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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.

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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.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday.

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

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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.

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She is the author of the book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, which we covered on our last program, and today we are going to be addressing her brand new book,

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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.

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

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Our email address is ChrisArnton at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

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USA. And during a program like this, it is quite obvious that there are many people who may prefer to remain anonymous.

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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.

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

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

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ChrisArnton 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.

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And even though we addressed that before, I would like to review some of that in encapsulated form, because obviously when we are speaking about your new book, we want our listeners to have some kind of a background.

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Right, right, right. So we can start where you would like to start off with.

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We can start off with your upbringing perhaps and when you first started to get involved in the activity known as homosexuality.

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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.

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And that's a really remarkable part of the whole story. That's true. Oh, wait until you hear that. Wait until you hear that.

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You'll be surprised. I won't leave the suspense out. I'll tell you that.

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I'll answer that question. Well, you know,

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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

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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, you know, what distinguishes

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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Christians, would not leave consenting adults alone. For the following 10 years then,

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I was in serially monogamous lesbian relationships, and again,

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I was completely baffled by why this kind of nosy intrusion of religion that I don't claim suddenly had to be mine.

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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 gain tenure,

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I started working on a book on the religious right, basically to figure out why folks like you were invading my space.

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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?

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You think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. In the process, amazingly,

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I met a friend and a neighbor who was a

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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

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I married my husband, Ken Butterfield. And that's Ken Smith, who was at that point the pastor of the

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Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. And over the course of two years, I met with Ken and Floyd, Floyd's wife, his lovely wife, and they discipled me.

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

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Bible to understand why this book got so many good people off track and why this man,

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Jesus, persuaded so many people to follow him. I mean, it was just an unthinkable, preposterous idea to me.

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But in the process, a number of things happened. I read the

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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.

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

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Holy Spirit an amazing amount of time in any person's life. The Word of God challenged me, it convicted me, and some of my well -worn prejudices about it just didn't hold up.

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Now, my Ph .D. is in English. I'm what's called a whole book scholar. My job is to read a book and size it up.

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And God used those skills that I learned in secular university powerfully for my own conversion.

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It didn't come easily. It's a long story. I wrote about it in the book,

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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.

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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

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He says He is, and that that actually changes everything. Now, over time, my feelings did change, and that's amazing and remarkable.

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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.

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

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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

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Jesus I had been persecuting, but my Jesus, my prophet, my priest, my king, my savior, my husband, my friend, that Jesus, that changed everything.

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Yes, and even though really nothing in terms of my feelings changed immediately, when

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God saved me and turned my heart of stone into a heart of flesh, what did change was that I loved the

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Bible and I couldn't get enough of it. But I don't know how any of this would have happened, quite frankly, if I hadn't had a neighbor and friend,

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

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

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I wore out pretty much everybody in my church, but I praise

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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?

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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,

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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

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Ken looked up and said, well, how about if Floyd and I invite her over for dinner?

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And, you know, especially now as a pastor's wife, you can just imagine the look on that young elder's face.

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I mean, you can just picture it. He's thinking, time to retire, right?

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And meanwhile, it was indeed a faithful act of Christian hospitality pursued over years and years that the

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

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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

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Jesus and to be saved. Right, right. And I found it interesting,

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I remember from our first discussion that you initially were throwing out his letters, but then you went back to retrieve them.

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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.

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And then they went and crawled on their hands and knees sometimes and under dusty beds grabbed the book or whatever it was that they threw.

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Right. And so now we have to hear how this introduction happened with your husband, which later became your husband,

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Kent Butterfield. Right, right. Well, you see, this is why it's not nearly as exciting as you may be expecting.

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I am just part of a very small denomination. And I think

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Ken Smith had me on every prayer list known to the

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Western world. So I was not unknown to anyone in our denomination.

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And I was on a research leave after my conversion, studying whether Christians should profess at a

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Christian college or not. I was questioning, in some ways, my calling now as a professor.

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

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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

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Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And so it was, and I don't know if you know what the ethics, the culture of a research library on a

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Friday night, but there are very serious rules about sitting at tables that you're not invited to.

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

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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.

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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 certainly developed our relationship, starting with the great controversy of whose table that was at the library at RPTS.

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Yeah, I happen to know some folks who graduated from that seminary. In fact, maybe your husband remembers my friend,

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

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Bill was actually a Baptist, but he did go to that seminary. We allow that, yes.

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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.

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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

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Christian, to define exactly what that really means, as opposed to what many people think that means.

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Because obviously, especially with the young, 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 the person down the wrong path, and has even led

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Christians down the wrong path into either abandoning the

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Christian faith, or into cults sometimes, when they meet the wrong person. If you could define, what is it that you think...

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

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

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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

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God loves. None of us actually love what God loves by our own natural inclination.

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But, if you are not a believer, and you've never read the Bible, and you are absorbed into the

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Rousseauian, you know, the philosophy of Rousseau, and that basically is that, you know, 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.

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Well, you know, the Bible flips that around, and says, actually, man is born in chains, and freedom comes through Jesus Christ.

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

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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.

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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

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God loves. And that's a very serious word, and it's a very serious problem.

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And so, my inclination was to develop very intense, one -on -one relationships with women that became extremely codependent, and that ultimately became sexual.

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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.

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One of the other things that you brought up, that was a very interesting way of phrasing things, that reminded me immediately of Saul of Tarsus.

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

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Saul of Tarsus, as you know, was stopped dead in his tracks on the road to Damascus, Christ did not say to him,

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Saul, why are you persecuting my people, although that's what he was doing.

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He was rounding up men and women for execution, but Jesus Christ said to him, why do you persecute me?

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If you could explain that a little bit further. Sure, absolutely. Well, I had read the

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Bible seven times through before I was converted, and I had been studying it, and I had been trying my best to tear it apart.

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And during this time, I was doing my best to teach thousands of college students to despise the

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Word of God as well. And then, when

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I became a Christian, when the Lord converted me, I realized that the

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Word of God and the Person of God are inseparable, and that my attacks against the authority of the

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Bible were absolutely attacks against the

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Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And so, 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.

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This is the world I helped create. The blood is on my hands.

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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

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Paul was actually sitting across the table with a person whose mother he murdered, or father he murdered.

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You know what I'm saying? I mean, he'd look in those eyes, and he'd see the same eyes. But somehow,

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Paul was so powerfully delivered, not only from his sin, but even from the history of his sin, that he could have no condemnation.

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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.

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And then to say, we don't measure up, because Christ measures up for us. And that's the point.

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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.

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As if it's a common mistake, taking a wrong exit on a highway.

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Sin is treason against a holy God. It is a hateful act.

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It's a hate crime, is what it is. And it's specifically a hate crime against the person of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who shed his blood for me. It's that personal.

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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.

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With a hatred that comes with the entitlement of the federal government.

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Wow, that's pretty powerful words there. We do have a listener who chooses to remain anonymous.

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

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So, I'm going to respect that, obviously. And this anonymous listener says,

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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.

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My daughter is a beautiful girl, was married and divorced, and to make a long story short, she began dating a girl last month.

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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.

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I saw something a long time ago that she doesn't know I saw. In it, she said she was bisexual.

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

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Rosaria, I am hoping my daughter will be working and not listening so she may identify me.

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

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I have no idea how to handle this. She was raised going to church her whole life, and when

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I became a believer in the doctrines of grace, she read a lot of deep books and agreed with them.

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When her father left me and her sister, she went with him and was a few weeks from turning 16.

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She is now 23. He was lost, and she hasn't had any spiritual exposure since that time.

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I am hoping this is a phase for her. I want to guard my identity because I would not hurt her for the world.

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I'm just trying to make sense of it all. If you could respond as best as you could to this.

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That's so painful. There's so much there. I think one of the first things we need to remember is that the gospel is always ahead of us.

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It's always tempting to look back and say, if only this hadn't happened or that hadn't happened or this did happen, things would be better.

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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

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Lord is always ahead of us. What I would say is this, that homosexuality can show up in people's lives for different reasons.

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I have some dear friends who found themselves in a same -sex attraction because they had been molested as children.

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And that had just been an experience that just sort of stopped everything for them.

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Understandably so. And then there are others of us who, by God's grace, did not have that story.

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But for some of us, our homosexual desires, and I think when I heard that the daughter identified as bisexual, was maybe part of it at 16, it just was

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Adam's thumbprint on our lives. You know, Romans 1 has a lot to say about this.

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One of the things that Romans 1 does is it helps us define homosexuality. Homosexuality is an ethical outworking of original sin.

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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

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I a lesbian? And are my sexual desires for women a reflection of who

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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

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Bible has a different understanding of personhood. And so the Bible actually did not agree with me on this point.

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

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I really am, but a distortion of that through the fall of Adam, the consequence of that fall.

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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.

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You know, personhood is very simple in the Bible. In the Bible, it's Genesis 1, 26, 27.

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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

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Jerusalem. But for the world we live in, homosexuality is the new true mark of personhood.

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And you see that in Facebook's 50 Gender Options and these movements in all of the public schools at this point.

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You hear this even when people say things like, I am gay, or when you have to go through a gender training workshop to figure out which personal pronoun you're going to use.

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None of that is biblical. All of that is cultural. And all of that is powerful.

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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.

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Because the ultimate question for this daughter is not...

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Well, let me just say what it is. The ultimate question for this daughter is, are my sexual desires for women a reflection of who

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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.

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Or is the Bible true? And this is a distortion of who

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I really am in the fall. And Jesus is ahead of me. And in union with Christ, even if I don't get what

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I want, which is true for every Christian, by the way, I get something better.

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I get what I need. Now, in order to have such a personal conversation with someone, this is not a brief conversation.

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This is not an off -the -hip conversation. This is not an adversarial conversation.

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

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

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So I would just encourage her to stay close. At this point,

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I don't think she needs to worry that her daughter will think that she's condoning her if she's kind to her.

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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.

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And somehow we're able to manage to create communities and churches and families and relationships.

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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

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Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity in Union with Christ, Compliments of Crown and Covenant Publishing.

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

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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.

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And obviously we will honor your request. We're not going to reveal who you are on the air.

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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.

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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,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

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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.

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Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Dr. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield right after these messages.

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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

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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.

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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

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Holy Spirit and the saving blood of Jesus Christ. She is the author of The Secret Thoughts of an

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Unlikely Convert, and we're discussing today her newest book, her latest book, Openness Unhindered, Further Thoughts of an

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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.

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chrisarnzen at gmail .com before I go to some of our listeners who are waiting to have their questions asked and answered,

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I just have a couple of announcements. One of them involves our guest, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield.

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

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

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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.

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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

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Iron Sharpens Iron. Among some of the other speakers joining

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Rosaria Butterfield at this conference as a speaker are Paul Washer, Stephen J.

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Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Balcom, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, Tim Chalies who is going to be on the program very soon on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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In fact, he is going to be on Friday the 2nd of September, God willing. And we have

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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.

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

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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

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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.

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And David Miller and Todd Friel who was just on Iron Sharpens Iron last Monday. John Kratz who has been on this program as well before and many others.

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If you want more details on how to attend the G3 conference, go to g3conference .com.

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

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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

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Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and we are going to be working together as a team at that conference helping to publicize one another's organization.

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So hope to see you there in January. Before I even go to some of the listeners who are waiting,

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Rosaria, I do want you to explain a couple of things about the new book.

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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

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Unlikely Convict. Yeah, well in the NASB which is my preferred

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Bible translation. Thank you, they sponsor my program. I know, this is like a family reunion, isn't it?

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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.

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

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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 is a gives glory to God.

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And you know, we are facing persecution right now. I mean, it hasn't happened yet but it's going to.

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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.

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And so the book itself looks at specifically what is a worldview competition between personhood.

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Are we people defined by sexual identity? And that's what the world wants to tell you.

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That's even what some parts of the Evangelical Church want to tell you. That's what anyone who identifies as a gay

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Christian wants to tell you. Or are we image bearers of a holy God called to reflect that image in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness?

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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.

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It's about 100 years old. You'd think it's as old as Methuselah, but it's not. Why self -representation is important.

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Why it's important that we understand that binarisms matter. Male, female.

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Why that matters. Also, how to engage in this world in an honest and truthful way without, well,

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I mean, sometimes you do have to lose friendships. That's just the case. But how can we engage with people in genuine

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Christian love and genuine Christian integrity without losing our bearings?

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And so the book, actually, one of the chapters in the book is written by a person who disagrees entirely with me.

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And we dialogue back and forth. We disagree. How do we deal with people who disagree?

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

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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.

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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.

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And so this is a book about fundamentally the integrity of a

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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

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I think is the most vexed concept right now, and that is sexual orientation.

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The book talks about this. Sexual orientation began as a 19th century category mistake.

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

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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.

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

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And now the Gospel is on a collision course with that civil right. And so the book attempts to equip

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Christians to understand the language of this new world in the hopes that having a better understanding of what the language itself implies.

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See, language always has ideology 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

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Gospel context. Where is the Gospel bridge to this person's life?

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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.

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

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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

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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.

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

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Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's chapter six. It's called, When Sisters Disagree.

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And we find ourselves more and more in that position. You know, we say, well, I'm a

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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

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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?

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And it's also, in some ways, I mean, you know, we are called to see, you know, we're to see fruit in people's lives and people say,

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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.

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So I'm not suggesting that there isn't, you know, a great need for discernment when we have disagreements over what the name

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Christian means. But we also live in a very confusing world and a very confusing time and we have whole segments of the

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Evangelical Church really losing its bearings and bringing a great deal of Gospel integrity along with it as it crashes.

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

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There are true believers who are being tossed to and fro by very bad teachings, by very, you know, by seriously heretical pastors.

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

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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?

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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.

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

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And so Freud, who believed that the Christian faith was a universal obsessional neurosis, you know, this is not an ideologically free, you know, scientific, neutral,

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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.

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That's not news. That's as old as the garden, but what is news is that this is a new category of people.

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So after Freud, the gay historian of ideas,

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Michel Foucault, actually said, because of this category of sexual orientation, a new species of humanity was born.

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So there's a difference between saying somebody is same -sex attracted. This is what this person struggles with.

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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.

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And this is no different than any other sin in that way. That's different from saying, this is who

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I am. This is a new category of personhood. I am, in the philosophical term, ontologically gay.

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And by ontology is the philosophy of beginning. The idea that it is so deep, it goes into your absolute most center part.

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And in fact, Jonathan Rausch, the contemporary journalist, wrote after the

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Obergefell 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.

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And that's what sexual orientation did. It quickly became an idol. And that idol is connected to other issues.

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

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But in a world that values sexual orientation as a category of personhood, that world values choice more than life.

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

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

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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.

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That's what produces transgenderism. See, gay and lesbian issues, sexual orientation, that's a very modernist problem.

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

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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.

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

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Now, let's also remember that gender dysphoria also comes from the fall. And that is a very sad thing.

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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,

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I am a woman who feels trapped in a man's body. Or I am. 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.

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

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Now, even though you don't like Sigmund Freud's answers to these issues, did he not believe this was a mental disorder?

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Homosexuality? Didn't he think that was... Yes. Freud did.

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That is true. But think about it. 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?

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So, you know, we are products of our culture. Freud was a product of his culture. He had...

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He did have certain Victorian throwbacks. But what

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I'm saying is that, inherent to his thinking, his thinking allowed for exactly what we see today.

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But yes, absolutely. He did have... He was a...

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I mean, this was, I would say, a pseudoscience, but nonetheless, he would have called this a scientific breakthrough.

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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?

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Yes. Well, it wasn't magic. There is no magic. There's a great deal of political lobbying that goes into what's called the

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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association and your readers need to know that at this point pedophilia in the new

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DSM -6 is considered a form of sexual orientation. Oh, boy.

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And if you want to look at some of Denny Burke's blogging, his blog site is excellent for this and his work, he's been following this very carefully.

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Wow. 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

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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.

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That's right, and it's religious in another way. Anytime something moves from the position of the body to the sacred, that is itself a religious move and so when you hear people, even the

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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

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Christians feel this today that 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.

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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 different.

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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

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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

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God willing after these messages with Rosaria Champagne Butterfield Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars a year -round

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01:01:55

Tired of box store Christianity? Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert?

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Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship? And how about the preaching? Perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island.

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that's wrbc .us Welcome back this is

01:02:46

Chris Arnzen if you just tuned us in our guest today for the full two hours with one hour to go is

01:02:52

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

01:03:14

Presbyterian pastor we have been discussing her latest book Openness Unhindered Further Thoughts of an

01:03:21

Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ before we return to some of our listener questions

01:03:29

I just want to announce that this Wednesday morning at 11 a .m. I will be speaking at a camp meeting for the

01:03:38

Glenvale Church of God in Marysville, Pennsylvania but the actual camp meeting is in Newville, Pennsylvania that's

01:03:49

Camp Yolijoa that's not a Native American name that camp stands for Youth Living Jesus' Way it's kind of like an acronym

01:04:00

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

01:04:07

Wednesday morning at 11, you can go to the Camp Yolijoa website which is

01:04:15

C -A -M -P -Y -O -L -I -J -W -A dot org and you can also go to the

01:04:25

Glenvale Church of God website Glenvale that's G -L -E -N -V -A -L -E -C -O -G dot com and I just want to thank

01:04:36

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 in Proverbs, I'm going to be speaking on that theme and if anybody is in the area

01:04:53

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

01:05:12

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

01:05:26

Erin in Indianapolis, Indiana who writes, I wondered if Rosaria might suggest a helpful, thoughtful answer to the argument

01:05:35

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

01:05:54

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 the act of creation and redemption are intentional and they're both acts of love and so ultimately,

01:06:24

Christians are using a different definition of love than what most secularists mean when they say love when

01:06:31

I was in lesbian relationships I called it love and I said why can't you leave consenting adults alone that's what grown -ups do, that's what civilized people do and yet I learned in part through Ken Smith and through my reading of the

01:06:48

Bible that the operative understanding of love in the

01:06:53

Bible is actually submission and also we see the greatest act of love is in the atonement and that is part of why

01:07:04

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

01:07:26

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

01:07:50

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

01:08:05

Christianity it just isn't and I think we need to tell people that, that we're a blood -brought people brought 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

01:08:36

God and so a same -sex attracted person's real love for a member of their own sex is this,

01:08:43

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

01:08:57

God, and that's love Amen, and Erin has a follow -up question and she asks how does

01:09:09

Rosaria lovingly refute the attempt to equate historical inequalities of African -Americans with gay rights?

01:09:20

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

01:09:27

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?

01:09:35

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

01:09:41

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

01:09:52

Obergefell decision came down like this sexual orientation is now made analogous to race because its protections are under the 14th

01:10:05

Amendment, and so 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

01:10:16

Supreme Court justices, who were by the way unelected, don't get to tell us what personhood means recently the

01:10:24

Department of Justice Department of Justice that's suing

01:10:30

North Carolina defined gender as a distinction without a difference and 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 is going to buy it so the difference is this according to Biblical marriage and we see this right in Genesis Genesis 1 in fact

01:11:01

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

01:11:21

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 no no no no no, theonomists may think that you're saved by this,

01:11:39

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 ethic so what

01:11:53

I would say is that it's a very bad analogy but it's cemented in legislative stone right now through the way that the

01:12:04

Obergefell decision was made and so it will 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 people who can say this better than I can is the

01:12:26

Heritage Foundation and specifically the journal Public Discourse Great, well thank you so much and thank you

01:12:34

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

01:12:50

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,

01:12:59

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert thanks to our friends at Christian Audio .com

01:13:06

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

01:13:18

Erin and we do have an overseas listener now, we have

01:13:25

Murray in Kinross, Scotland and he asks

01:13:30

I'm conscious of two or three cases in reformed churches here in the

01:13:36

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.

01:13:51

It's difficult to know quite how to break down the barriers and do something positive and sensitive other than just praying.

01:13:59

Could you give some advice on how to counsel quote quote believers who fall into this particular temptation and cut themselves off?

01:14:10

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.

01:14:25

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 cause of Christ but in repentance there is forgiveness and restoration the challenge is this false gospel that's spreading that says no, no, no, just the opposite is true there are just these six, you know,

01:14:52

Matthew Vines says hey there are just these six little pesky verses how can six pesky verses stand between me and the love of my life

01:14:59

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 the truth is you just don't know which is the case unless you actually get to talk to this person and 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.

01:15:33

So I think that as hard as it is, it's really crucial that Christians do everything in their power to maintain a relationship with other believers who have fallen into sin.

01:15:50

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.

01:16:15

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.

01:16:55

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

01:17:01

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.

01:17:26

We need to be accountable to our authorities because left to our own devices 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.

01:17:46

Well thank you so much Murray from Kinross, Scotland and guess what Murray? You're getting both of Rosaria's books in audio book.

01:17:53

We don't typically mail out books to overseas listeners for the paper ones but since this can be done electronically and thanks to our friends at christianaudio .com

01:18:04

you're receiving the secret thoughts of an unlikely convert and openness unhindered for the thoughts of an unlikely convert on sexual identity and union with Christ compliments of christianaudio .com

01:18:16

so thank you very much Murray 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

01:18:37

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.

01:18:56

I guess that would be the Stonewall riots he's referring to. Well I don't know the

01:19:02

Stonewall riots happened at the same time but they happened at a bar in New York so I'm not quite sure

01:19:07

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.

01:19:22

Well thank you Peter and you're also getting a copy of both the paper version of Openness Unhindered and the audio book

01:19:31

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert but we do need your full mailing address for the paperback so we look forward to getting that from you and we thank you for participating in this discussion.

01:19:46

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

01:20:16

Yeah, you know what I am 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

01:20:37

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

01:20:52

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

01:21:06

I'm the first to tell you and be very thankful that the blood of Christ covers all sin 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 I would suggest that a really helpful person to be reading at this point when we're trying to think about why is homosexuality a big sin you know my gay neighbors are the nicest people on the block how can you say that it's a big sin

01:21:46

I think that Peter Jones' 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 really in the details kind of in the weeds of the

01:22:04

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

01:22:22

Christianity and I can just guarantee that every speaker will be dealing forthrightly with exactly why homosexuality is a sin because if all we can say is

01:22:35

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 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

01:23:15

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

01:23:31

Iron Sharpens Iron a more fruitful and productive program through the things that they give to our listeners and Peter Jones has been a guest on my program,

01:23:44

I look forward to having him back in fact you just put the reminder in my mind to contact him and get him back on to actually promote this specific conference and I know that he was actually a childhood friend of John Lennon yes he has a friend a

01:24:10

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

01:24:19

Christian, a genuine believer before being murdered I hope that's true

01:24:27

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

01:24:43

and it's spelt truth and just the letter X truthxchange .com and keep listening for updates on Peter Jones' return to Iron Sharpens Iron as a guest and the thing that we have to constantly overcome in fact let me since a listener has actually asked this question

01:25:14

I was almost going to steal the listener's thunder by asking a question of my own but then when

01:25:24

I began looking at what she wrote might as well give her the credit Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania she says,

01:25:33

I am very frustrated with the fact that my adult children in their twenties 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

01:25:56

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 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 it's always wrong

01:26:41

I know 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

01:27:37

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

01:27:51

Christians will do 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 now, you know, another question that's embedded in this very good question is it used to be that people just had a kind of moral conscience, bad conscience a kind of 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 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

01:28:54

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

01:29:18

I've said on this show is probably considered to be hate speech but 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 this moral intuition, and I think we see that and therefore

01:29:47

I don't think we can appeal to that in young people I mean, I think people really want to say but don't you see that it's wrong?

01:29:55

And I think millennials are saying no, we really don't and so I think that we need to take a totally different tact because I'm going to tell you as a very sinful person there are a number of things in the

01:30:08

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

01:30:17

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.

01:30:39

And so by God's grace I have the Word of God I can go to it, I can check myself.

01:30:46

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

01:30:54

Al Mohler's The Briefing and 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

01:31:19

Finding Truth, Total Truth Saving Leonardo, those are just excellent resources.

01:31:27

Nancy Peercy is a philosopher Christian philosopher that takes up Schaeffer's understanding of engagement in the world and so it's very readable and very likable and I think those books would be a good resource too.

01:31:43

Well I can recommend for all of our listeners a wonderful resource to get all of those books, the

01:31:51

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 it is being shipped to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service CVBBS .com

01:32:10

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

01:32:21

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

01:32:38

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

01:32:44

Dr. Albert Moeller he was a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron months ago to discuss a book that was hot off the press at that time

01:32:55

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

01:33:11

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,

01:33:22

Susan, in Newville, Pennsylvania you're also getting the audio book of The Secret Thoughts of an

01:33:28

Unlikely Convert and the paperback of Openness Unhindered compliments of ChristianAudio .com

01:33:34

and compliments of the Crown & Covenant Publishers 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 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

01:34:03

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01:34:10

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01:34:16

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01:34:24

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Or visit LindbrookBaptist .org That's LindbrookBaptist .org Welcome back, this is

01:38:28

Chris Arnzen If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes in the next half hour to come our guest today has been and is

01:38:37

Rosaria Butterfield, wife of Kent Butterfield the pastor of First Reformed 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

01:38:55

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

01:39:09

It's RosariaButterfield .com By the way,

01:39:15

I think I mispronounced your name Am I mispronouncing it again? Yeah, that's okay though How do you, what's the correct way?

01:39:24

It's the Italian pronunciation, it's Rosaria And I'm saying it differently than that?

01:39:33

Yeah, that's okay Rosaria, is that it? Rosaria? Yep, that's it

01:39:40

RosariaButterfield .com R -O -S -A -R -I -A Butterfield .com

01:39:45

is her own website and I hope that you visit that often and let other folks who need to know about this

01:39:52

Christian response to the sin of homosexuality let them know about this response from a gifted woman like Rosaria by passing on the website

01:40:05

RosariaButterfield .com We have an anonymous listener

01:40:13

I don't know why I had trouble saying that word I guess if I have problems saying

01:40:19

Rosaria correctly I can say it An anonymous listener in the

01:40:24

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

01:41:11

Yes, what a good question How we rightly handle the word of God says so much about everything

01:41:24

So this particular misreading comes from Romans 1 if you happen to have your

01:41:33

Bible you can flip over there with me as I'm going to do right now myself and it comes specifically out of out of the line that talks about God giving some over and anytime you read in the

01:41:50

Bible that God gives you over that's not what anybody wants we all want to be we don't want

01:41:58

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

01:42:26

I think it also comes from maybe 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

01:43:02

Christian who is who has come out of a past of sexual sin well it means that you've got until you're glorified there are real issues that you have to deal with I deal with body memories and they're not present and you don't want them and I think that's true for heterosexual sin as well as homosexual 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

01:43:44

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 there's nobody forgotten by God it's the best news because of this in the new

01:44:01

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

01:44:36

Galatians 5 really paints that struggle in very stark terms a

01:44:42

Christian is not necessarily someone whose feelings have been changed a

01:44:49

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

01:44:56

Jesus more than you love your sin and you are equipped to obey

01:45:03

God that doesn't mean it's easy and it takes grace to love what

01:45:09

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

01:45:48

Romans 1 it's a really important passage to take hold of I think that Genesis 1 -11 and Romans 1 are the bookend of our lives in so many ways and also bookend that explains 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 and of course we have those words by the

01:46:25

Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 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

01:46:50

Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God so our listener in the

01:46:56

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 are also getting the audio book since you are overseas you are getting the audio book of both titles

01:47:10

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered thanks to our very generous friends at Christian Audio dot com

01:47:18

Christian Audio dot com and one thing

01:47:23

I would 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.

01:48:05

Now is it really that rampant? I mean that to me always surprises me when

01:48:11

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

01:48:22

I talk with on any given day apart from my family would be people who struggle with same sex attraction and so my barometer would say yes that is true and that you have faithful Christians who love

01:48:37

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 can't believe it but you shouldn't be shocked

01:48:55

I mean any sin if dealt with in God's way is not a it's not a mark of shame it's a mark of humanity that we are 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?

01:49:18

Are you dealing with that? So 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

01:49:33

God does not love or let's put it this way a capacity to lust for that which

01:49:38

God has not allowed you to have um that doesn't seem shocking to me

01:49:45

I mean you know the fact that you have people in your church who have the capacity to lust over that which

01:49:50

God has denied them if that's shocking I don't we're not living on the same planet

01:50:01

I guess why I'm surprised by it is because uh it is

01:50:08

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 um sin distorts everything so sin makes what's natural unnatural you know it's kind of the first the first attack really from Satan is to do that so um what

01:50:57

I would not say I've heard pastors say this I would not say that you know half of your congregation is you know is going to leave their spouses for a same sex partner and I would not

01:51:17

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

01:51:26

I think we need to encourage one another to live out holy lives and again here a great resource for this and a great book to read on this subject is

01:51:38

Christopher and Angela Yuan's book Out of a Far Country um so you know

01:51:44

I think we need to be very um 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 we're grateful for that but 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

01:52:08

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

01:52:28

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

01:52:55

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

01:53:21

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

01:53:35

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 are speaking about Italians, Hispanics or Africans, Americans or Asians they will say there is 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 and there is a reason within a

01:54:28

Catholic doctrine of sin that you see that falsification and you know what it is?

01:54:35

What is that? It is that in a Catholic understanding of original sin original sin distorts but original sin does not corrupt and in a reformed understanding of original sin moving from Augustine and by the way looking at Romans 6 it is not like we are 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 poor me poor me and I see recently much appalling blather in the form of evangelical writing that takes up this

01:55:35

I have a book sitting on my shelf right here that declares that homosexual desire is not a sin because it is not an act now if Jesus says that anger is murder and lust is adultery

01:55:57

I don't understand how these evangelical pastors get away with saying that in fact there is another book on my shelf because I get to review some of these books that says that actually homosexual desires are not a sin they are a form of suffering and we should pity now you know these men they are 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 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

01:56:47

Catholic church lose this conversation it's interesting that you said that the

01:56:54

Christians or the professing Christians who are basically salving the consciences of those involved in homosexuality are putting millstones around their neck

01:57:04

I can remember I don't know if you saw it but years ago back in the 90's

01:57:10

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

01:57:16

Walter Martin debated John Shelby Spong who was an 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

01:57:38

John Ankerberg show, the last segment featured a man who was dying of AIDS and he had become praise be to God a

01:57:48

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

01:58:05

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

01:58:15

Rosaria Well, yeah, that's right 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

01:58:31

Lord wants us to be and I'm so glad that that Chris mentioned this conference coming up in Atlanta, the G3 conference

01:58:37

I believe that all the speakers there are going to be hitting the swing hard. Each generation must defend the

01:58:42

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

01:58:52

Now, you know okay, 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

01:59:05

You know, the old ones are we justified by faith or by faith alone? Why shed blood over one word?

01:59:12

Well, we are going to see a great purification of the church I'm sure that we are also going to see persecution and may it give

01:59:22

God glory how we respond to that Amen I do believe that the

01:59:29

Gospel is on a collision course specifically with the category mistake of sexual orientation as a form of personhood and I absolutely believe that the

01:59:40

Gospel truth is at stake on this one Amen. And Rosaria's website again is rosariabutterfield .com

01:59:47

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