{"id":5676,"date":"2015-07-25T10:36:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T16:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/?p=5676"},"modified":"2015-07-25T10:37:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-25T16:37:24","slug":"quotes-on-sexual-identity-and-union-with-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/quotes-on-sexual-identity-and-union-with-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rosaria Butterfield has a neat story. Perhaps you’ve heard of her book,\u00c2\u00a0The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into the Christian Faith<\/em><\/a>. Butterfield was a practicing lesbian engaged in the rigorous intellectual defense of that lifestyle and identity. The Lord saved her and this book is her story.<\/p>\n

She has a new book that’s worth checking out,\u00c2\u00a0Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>The Gospel\u00c2\u00a0Coalition has done us the favor<\/a> of pulling together 20 quotes from this new title. Here they are:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why is sexual sin so hard to deal with? Because often sexual sin becomes a sin of identity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (4)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I honed the hospitality gifts that I use today as a pastor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wife in my queer community.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (15)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If God is the creator of all things, and if the Bible has his seal of truth and power, then the Bible has the right to interrogate my life and culture, and not the other way around.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (17)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The internal mission of the Bible is to transform the nature of humanity. That is why unbelievers know it is a dangerous text.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (18)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Adam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fall rendered my deep and primal feelings untrustworthy and untrue.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (21)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We never know the treacherous path that others take to arrive in the pew that we share Lord\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Day after Lord\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Day.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (22)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The image of me and everyone I love suffering in hell crashed over me like shark-infested waves of a raging sea. Suffering in hell not because we were gay, but because we were proud. We wanted to be autonomous. . . . I counted the costs and I did not like the math.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (23)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This was the first of my many betrayals against the LGBT community: whose dictionary did I trust? The one used by the community that I helped create or the one that reflected the God who created me?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (25)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I still felt like a lesbian in my body and heart. That was, I felt, my real identity. But what is my true identity? The Bible makes clear that the real and the true have a troubled relationship on this side of eternity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (25)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Repentance is not just a conversion exercise. It is the posture of the Christian. . . . Repentance is the threshold to God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (27)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jesus met sinners at the table, but he did not join them in their choice sins. He sat with them, but he did not sin with them. And we ought not expect Jesus to sin with us today.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (31)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want you to know from what country I emigrated, and in which country my citizenship permanently and eternally resides. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a native speaker of this country. No real convert is. I will always speak in broken godliness, as new paradigms reread old feelings.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (37)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is another term, though, that competes for my allegiance. It is sola experiencia\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmy personal experience shaping and selecting those parts of the Bible I judge relevant for me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (44)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My new affection was not heterosexuality, but Jesus. . . . I was converted not out of homosexuality, but out of unbelief.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (50)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bypass repentance to get to grace. Christ is manifest in our humility, not in our disobedience.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (61)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jesus sweated blood. He withstood the test. He ran the whole race. We cannot make such claims. We have not been tested that hard, or humiliated that comprehensively. We are in the ABCs of the kindergarten of the school of temptation. By not falling into temptation, Jesus ran the whole race, while I collapsed in the first mile.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (82)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you are in Christ, temptation is not about some essential truth or inherent wisdom about us\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand therefore should not become a term of selfhood, self-representation, or identity. It is about warfare.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (82)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do we make an identity out of temptation? By collapsing what you desire with who you are. By collapsing what tempts you or what trips you up with who you will become. . . . God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s revealed purpose for my identity always nails me to his cross.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (83)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153God is calling us to so greatly love others that we do not desire for them anything that might separate them from God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (87)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Loyal fellowship of believers is not an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcadd on\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to good doctrine. Fellowship of believers is often the vein through which the Savior\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blood pumps us whole and well.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (90)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christians are called \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsaints\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in the Bible. We who bear Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spilled blood are a royal priesthood. Any category of personhood that reduces a saint to the sum total of his or her fallen sexual behavior is not a friend of Christ. . . . Making an identity out of sin patterns is itself a sin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (114, 123)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rosaria Butterfield has a neat story. Perhaps you’ve heard of her book,\u00c2\u00a0The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert:… Continue Reading ›<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5676"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5678,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676\/revisions\/5678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}