Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 796 ｜ Former Lesbian Activist Calls “Soft” Christians to Repentance ｜ Guest： Rosaria Butterfield

00:00:00.000 Rosaria Butterfield is a former feminist left-wing lesbian activist professor who was saved by Christ a couple decades ago and has since been sharing her testimony and the freedom that she has found in Christ.

00:00:16.980 She recently just published an article talking about the sin of using quote-unquote preferred pronouns for people who identify as transgender. This was a practice that she once took part in, in the name of Christian empathy, but now has realized that it's a sin.

00:00:33.780 Wow, she has so much to teach us today, not just about her own testimony, her story of how Christ saved her and the kind of evangelism that was so effective for her in her own life, but also how we as Christians can stand really strong in the spiritual battle of this age.

00:00:53.980 Oh my goodness, you are going to love this conversation and be so encouraged and empowered. That's just what the gospel does. And she is an amazing vessel of that gospel.

00:01:05.340 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com. Code Allie.

00:01:12.900 Rosaria, thank you so much for joining us. I think most people listening to this have read your books, they know your story, or they've read your articles, they've at least familiarized themselves with your testimony.

00:01:35.680 But there are some people out there who don't know. So if we could kind of start from the beginning, and you could at least give us a refresher on your testimony, and how you came to do what you do now.

00:01:50.220 Okay, great. Well, you don't want me to start from the beginning, because I'm 61 years old, and we would be here for a lot longer than 45 minutes.

00:01:58.260 Oh, that's perfectly fine. I'm sure it's all very interesting.

00:02:00.700 Well, I'll get to the good stuff. When I was 28 years old, I came out as a lesbian feminist activist. I had been really struggling with, I guess what we would call same-sex attraction for at least, I guess, a decade before that.

00:02:21.320 Although I had dated men and was just sort of waiting to get zapped and find my balance. But that never did happen. So I became pretty radicalized in college and then graduate school and decided at 28 that I should just come clean and call myself a lesbian.

00:02:40.800 And so the next decade was filled really with serially monogamous lesbian relationships. But in addition to that, I was a professor. I was a professor at Syracuse University of English and Women's Studies.

00:02:53.580 I was recruited and mentored and then tenured to launch a queer theory program. And I became one of the first crop of Tier One Research University's gathering of tenured radicals. So I wasn't just a lesbian next door. It was my job to really make homosexuality look wholesome. And I did my best to do that. 0.63

00:03:18.300 Right. And then in the process of writing my post-tenure book, which was basically on the religious right, and my genuine question was, why do people like you hate people like me? Or the person I used to be. That was the genuine question.

00:03:35.880 And so I started working on that book. And in the process of working on that book, I met a pastor and a neighbor. His name is Ken Smith. He is still alive. He's in his 90s. And he and his wife just shared the gospel with me. Not once, not twice, but probably over 500 meals.

00:03:57.080 And I genuinely wanted to know why they believed what they did. And so I'm an English professor. I needed to read the Bible. And I knew that. And so under Ken Smith tutelage, I read the Bible. I read it through seven times. And that's a lot of times.

00:04:16.580 That gives the Holy Spirit a lot of bandwidth in a person's life. And so during the two years that I was really studying and reading, I came to the conclusion that I could not write this book and that Jesus was real and true and risen, and that that would be true whether I believed it or not.

00:04:41.220 And so that was really the beginning of my undoing as a lesbian activist, activist professor, but also my remaking as a godly woman and a Christian. And so I wasn't zapped. You know, I don't know what to say. I mean, it wasn't like I committed my life to Christ and then woke up the next day and said, oh, I should have had a V8. Everything's different. No, I mean, sanctification is slow and hard and painful.

00:05:11.220 But it's also real and true. And so I am one of that earlier generation of Christians who can tell you that I came to Christ and praise be to God, I'm no longer gay. And those seem to be hate words these days or hate some kind of a hateful speech these days. But it's simply true.

00:05:35.960 Yes. And there's a lot that I want to ask you about that period of sanctification, because I know there are people who are listening to this who are either in your generation, my generation or younger, who do they hear that and maybe they're even Christians and they're thinking, that's impossible. You can't ever stop being gay. 0.69

00:05:55.520 That's just authentic to who you are. Your attractions cannot change. The best that you can do is just kind of be celibate. And so they're listening to you. They want to believe what you have to say, but they're having a hard time wrapping their minds around it.

00:06:10.320 So before we kind of get into that, because I know this is going to be relatable for so many people and we joked about not going to the very beginning, but I am interested in kind of just a little bit about your upbringing, how you came to it.

00:06:24.480 You know, at 28 years old, you know, at 28 years old, say, I'm not just a lesbian, but I'm basically a queer theory activist. I'm going to live my life this way in a time when that wasn't quite as mainstream and rewarded by the mainstream as it is today.

00:06:41.420 I mean, did you grow up in a religious background? What was that like? What set the stage for that?

00:06:45.680 Sure. Well, my name is Rosaria, so I'm named after the rosary. So I was raised in a secular Roman Catholic family. And I went to Catholic schools throughout. My dad would drop me off at school and he'd say, remember two things. Do not get in trouble with the nuns. Do everything they say and don't believe a word they say.

00:07:11.340 Wow. So I was raised by secular rationalists. My parents were strong defenders of Planned Parenthood. And I talk a little bit about that in all of my books, but especially the book that's coming out in September.

00:07:29.360 So definitely I was a religious skeptic who had enough, I guess, Catholic training to understand some of the vocabulary.

00:07:44.440 But I guess the secularism kind of won itself over. Ultimately, you didn't really have any kind of theological foundation.

00:07:51.760 So when you decided that you, you know, were going to come out as a lesbian, was there any kind of moral wrestling that you had? Were you worried about telling your parents or if you would be accepted or anything like that?

00:08:06.820 Well, you know, I probably should have been. I probably should have been. But actually, when I came out as a lesbian to my family, that was less threatening than when I came out as a Christian.

00:08:24.420 And so I think that might be a little hard to really track with. But my family's liberal and feminist worldviews and commitments made it so that they weren't a blank slate and I wasn't a blank slate. 0.88

00:08:42.580 I believed what I believed because I believed that that was morally right, not because it was some kind of an affliction and I just couldn't help myself.

00:08:54.360 No, I actually believed that what I was proclaiming was true and right and good and virtuous.

00:09:12.580 So you told your parents, your parents kind of were just like, OK, not that big of a deal.

00:09:21.220 And so you quickly found acceptance and celebration within the academic community, correct?

00:09:28.200 Do you think that was part of what made you or what motivated you to be so public and so activist minded that there were kind of rewards and accolades that accompanied this identity?

00:09:38.780 Well, that could be. I'm not sure that in the 90s, there are quite as many accolades.

00:09:47.820 But, you know, I mean, you know, my undoing has always been that I'm a truth speaker. Right.

00:09:53.640 I mean, so that's that's how I always get myself into these pickles.

00:09:57.720 You know, you know, I had a little stick on my desk that said I'd rather be, you know, wrong on an important point than right on a trivial one.

00:10:07.240 And in some ways, I just always really lived my life like that.

00:10:12.600 But there is no question that in the 90s, especially at the universities where I was at, there was a strong core of feminist activists.

00:10:23.800 And and I was one of those. And it really did give me, you know, a team and a cause, if you will.

00:10:31.340 Right. So let's fast forward to you kind of explained the in between and then sanctification as you described it.

00:10:38.660 It's not like you woke up one day and you were fully sanctified and you decided, great, I'm not a lesbian anymore.

00:10:44.040 I'm going to just move forward in this life with Christ.

00:10:47.440 There was a process of letting go.

00:10:49.740 Now, I imagine that one of the most difficult things that you let go of, one of them was a life of homosexuality. 1.00

00:10:58.220 And you were with a committed partner at the time, right?

00:11:02.560 Absolutely. Absolutely.

00:11:03.960 She was a professor also.

00:11:07.100 So we had a core group of of of people.

00:11:12.360 We called them our family of choice.

00:11:14.160 And we were grownups.

00:11:16.600 I was in my 30s.

00:11:18.980 She was in her 40s.

00:11:20.440 When we broke up, we didn't have a spider plant and, you know, a folding chair table to, you know, to separate.

00:11:28.700 We had we had I had people who depended upon me.

00:11:33.400 I had graduate students who depended upon me.

00:11:36.520 And when I came to Christ, I betrayed a lot of people.

00:11:40.960 And I really did.

00:11:42.340 I mean, can you imagine how horrific it would be to be one of my lesbian, feminist graduate students writing a dissertation in queer theory?

00:11:49.960 And I become a committed Christian, you know, that that truly would ruin your life and your career. 1.00

00:11:56.740 And so that's true.

00:11:59.880 And and I did that to people.

00:12:02.360 Yeah.

00:12:02.620 And tell me about that specific point of sanctification.

00:12:05.540 You've written about this before, actually, in a response article to Jen Hatmaker a few years ago, saying that, sure, you can be gay and be a Christian.

00:12:15.480 And you talk about how you kind of wrestled with that after you became a Christian, after you believed in the gospel.

00:12:21.640 You wanted to think, yes, I can be a gay Christian.

00:12:25.060 Yes, I can have my partner and have Christ, too.

00:12:28.080 Tell me about that wrestling.

00:12:29.360 What was that like?

00:12:30.020 You know, well, first of all, the wrestling should be really obvious to anybody that that whatever it is we like and we do and is so normal and natural to us that we can't really separate ourselves from it.

00:12:46.060 It's really hard to see that through the lens of Christ.

00:12:49.520 It's hard to see that as a vestige of original sin because we can we normalize it and we can think of all the ways that we've done good in the world and all those kinds of things.

00:13:02.560 And so I think the first challenge for every single Christian is to use the Bible as our lens for to separate out what is part of our image bearing of a holy God, part of our creational design and what is part of the world, the flesh and the devil.

00:13:19.520 So the only way to distinguish those two is to use the Bible.

00:13:23.900 If I use my feelings, I'm going to get messed up on all kinds of things, not just homosexuality. 0.93

00:13:28.680 So that's the first order of business.

00:13:31.180 The second order of business, then, is to actually believe that the Bible knows me better than I know myself and that that Jesus has something better for me than what I think is true.

00:13:46.400 And then the third part is to learn, and this is, again, not specific to homosexuality.

00:13:54.840 This is for every single Christian on planet Earth, to learn how to hate your sin without hating yourself. 0.94

00:14:01.260 And every Christian I know has to get up every morning and drive a new nail, fresh nail, into our choice sin every day. 0.98

00:14:13.260 And if you actually do that, the power of the resurrection is yours to have victory over your sin.

00:14:23.800 Now, are you lobotomized?

00:14:26.160 No, not actually.

00:14:27.880 You know, not at all.

00:14:29.980 And at any moment, any of us could backslide and fall into whatever sins are, you know, that know us really well and that we know really well.

00:14:40.820 But that's where we realize that prayer doesn't mean you ask the Holy Spirit to do your job.

00:14:49.360 See, prayer isn't, Lord, you know, pray the gay away. 1.00

00:14:53.220 Just zap me. 0.99

00:14:54.280 Take it over.

00:14:55.040 No, that's not it at all.

00:14:56.580 Prayer is, Lord, put the tools in my hands and help me to mortify this sin.

00:15:02.860 Help me to kill it, to hate it, to defy it, and to grow in your grace. 0.98

00:15:08.900 And, you know, there is absolutely no way that you can call yourself a gay Christian and do that. 1.00

00:15:15.500 You can't put your sin on life support and kill it at the same time. 0.72

00:15:20.040 And that's where the subject of homosexuality does need to be looked at through a particular lens.

00:15:28.420 Not because it's such a special sin.

00:15:31.980 It's a garden variety sin, just like, you know, you've got garden variety spiders.

00:15:36.080 That's all it is.

00:15:37.000 But it's probably the only one that has civil rights protection.

00:15:42.080 And so for that reason, many, many evangelical Christians are really torn right now about how to proceed forward. 0.91

00:15:54.040 And that's where we just have to be bold and clear and not muddled and ambiguous and really quite, you know, foolish. 0.70

00:16:02.920 So as an academic who became a Christian, were you met with some of the same arguments about Christianity and homosexuality that we are today? 0.93

00:16:13.680 You've probably heard some of them.

00:16:15.040 Well, the word homosexuality was added into the Bible later.

00:16:18.680 Well, if you dig into it, it's really talking about pedophilia or it's talking about prostitution or the Old Testament.

00:16:25.020 Sure, it says that, but it says lots of other things, too.

00:16:28.740 Were you confronted with those kinds of things when you were trying to figure this out?

00:16:35.500 Absolutely.

00:16:36.680 Absolutely.

00:16:37.540 And I think that's always been my challenge.

00:16:41.400 You know, some people become fairly proficient swimmers by being thrown into the deep end and providentially slapping around in such a way that allows them to survive.

00:16:52.860 That doesn't necessarily mean they should be a swim coach.

00:16:57.040 And in some ways, that's a good analogy for how it's always been for me.

00:17:01.400 I've really always been confronted with extremely challenging questions.

00:17:07.440 But by God's grace, I've also been part of a denomination with pastors and elders who have been able to really equip me to work through these questions.

00:17:20.880 Those are good questions, and they actually have good biblical answers.

00:17:27.300 And so a lot of it has to do with if you believe there are any problem passages in the Bible.

00:17:32.960 In other words, do you believe the Bible was actually given to us, God breathed, transcribed by chosen men, inspired by the Holy Spirit,

00:17:43.040 so that we could have everything we need for faith in life?

00:17:47.860 Or do you believe that there are some real problems in here?

00:17:51.960 It's, you know, it's not really sufficient.

00:17:53.680 It's not really inerrant.

00:17:55.220 It's not, you know, it's not really inspired.

00:17:57.540 And sometimes it is.

00:17:59.120 Sometimes it isn't.

00:18:00.840 If that's what you believe, which I think is a foolish way to go about, you know, why even buy it?

00:18:05.180 Why even be a Christian if you're going to believe that your Bible can't see you through and your Lord's salvation is not sufficient?

00:18:14.280 I mean, I don't even understand why you'd want to be a Christian at that point, but that's a different story.

00:18:19.380 If you see that the Old Testament and the New Testament, in fact, are so deeply connected because our God is one God, not two gods, that there are no problem passages in the Bible.

00:18:38.740 If you can see and appreciate that, then you can hold on, that you can have confidence and you can learn how to wait on the Lord as you are fighting your sin.

00:18:50.900 And you can learn this fine art of Christian maturity as you grow in sanctification.

00:18:57.220 And I think those are really important things.

00:18:59.660 But I also was, and I guess I still am, a 19th century scholar.

00:19:04.820 And these ideas about sexual orientation as a category of personhood were ideas that came of age out of German romanticism and Freudianism and were part of the 19th century.

00:19:19.880 And so anybody who studies the history of ideas, as anybody with a PhD would, would know, well, these are not really ancient ideas.

00:19:28.680 This idea that sexual orientation is who you are, not how you are, is about 150 years old.

00:19:35.300 Right.

00:19:35.520 You know, it's not like, oh, you know, back there when we made the pyramids, this idea was there.

00:19:40.680 Not at all.

00:19:42.120 And so even as a gay rights activist, my community was very suspicious of some of these ideas about sexual orientation.

00:19:54.280 Now, in my generation, we were suspicious about it because it was considered an illness.

00:20:00.040 And we wanted you to know that gay is good. 0.55

00:20:02.560 We weren't sick and we didn't need your cure.

00:20:05.040 But the same, you know, the same issue is at stake here.

00:20:08.660 So my generation, actually, we understood our homosexuality through the lens of a, at that point, iconic lesbian poet named Adrienne Rich, who wrote a fairly seminal article called Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.

00:20:29.700 So many of us came to our lesbianism out of heterosexual relationships.

00:20:36.840 Right.

00:20:37.280 And we, we viewed those heterosexual relationships as compulsory through a societal lens.

00:20:43.980 Yeah.

00:20:44.300 And therefore not, you know, in some ways authentic.

00:20:47.620 Real.

00:20:47.860 If that makes sense.

00:20:48.620 Mm-hmm.

00:20:48.960 Yep.

00:20:49.600 Yep.

00:20:49.660 Yep.

00:20:49.700 Yep.

00:20:50.100 Yep.

00:20:50.600 Yep.

00:20:51.600 Yep.

00:20:51.640 Yep.

00:20:59.700 There's so many things in what you said that I want to respond to and ask questions about.

00:21:05.880 But one thing that you said is that really kind of some of those difficult questions and good questions that people have about what does the Bible really have to say about sexuality in marriage?

00:21:17.080 They really do go back to fundamentally what you think, as you said, about the Bible, but also not just that about God himself.

00:21:25.060 Do you believe that he is authoritative?

00:21:26.840 Do you believe that he is loving?

00:21:28.200 Do you believe that he is trustworthy?

00:21:30.720 Then that will determine how we read the Bible.

00:21:33.480 We don't just read the Bible saying, well, what can we get away with?

00:21:38.380 What does the Bible specifically say that we cannot do?

00:21:41.720 And can we somehow exclude those verses to see how sinful we can really be and still be a Christian?

00:21:48.340 We also look to the Bible because we love God and he loves us and say, but what does God say to do?

00:21:53.680 What does he say is good and holy and pleasing to him?

00:21:57.020 And we see only one type of sexual relationship positively defined, spiritually defined, eternally defined, and that's marriage between a man and a woman.

00:22:06.940 So I think you're absolutely right that it really is about a lens.

00:22:10.360 Yes, those questions are good, but they speak to something, I think, more fundamental about someone's faith and how they view God.

00:22:17.700 But I guess my attachment to that or my building off of that is how then you kind of changed your mentality from one of not just skepticism, but really a dislike of Christians thinking that they hated you to realizing, oh, God is loving.

00:22:41.220 Christians can be extremely loving.

00:22:45.160 You talked about Ken Smith.

00:22:47.140 How did you go from that skepticism and maybe antipathy towards Christianity towards realizing, wow, God actually wants what is good for me?

00:22:56.800 What did that look like?

00:22:58.080 Right, right, right.

00:22:59.280 Well, one of the things that we would say in the Reformed Presbyterian Church is that the Bible is a unified biblical revelation.

00:23:09.180 So the Old Testament is not somehow lesser than the New Testament.

00:23:13.380 It's law and gospel.

00:23:14.700 It's not one or the other.

00:23:16.800 And, you know, I would say that the seeds of the gospel are in the garden.

00:23:20.820 And so that was just part of the, you know, the Reformed Presbyterian Church.

00:23:26.500 And so here were my, these people who were in my life now, and I was hearing that fairly constantly.

00:23:33.280 But I would say a real breakthrough moment for me was sitting at Ken Smith's table, probably for the 500th time.

00:23:41.960 I don't know, right?

00:23:42.720 And after, you know, after a meal, we would, we would sing a song, and then Ken would read from the Bible, and we would discuss it.

00:23:53.040 And we were singing from Psalm 23.

00:23:55.140 And I remember, you know, I was sitting there thinking, you know, oh, poor me, I am, I am the only lesbian here.

00:24:02.100 You know, I am all alone, and these, these, these people are my enemies, and they don't believe in gay rights, and they don't, you know, you know, and, you know, we're singing through the psalm, and I'm, I'm doing this kind of pity party.

00:24:18.740 And then we get to this line, you know, about dining in the presence of my enemies.

00:24:23.700 And I don't know, it was, it was really a, it was a scary moment for an English professor.

00:24:28.820 English professors like to be right about reading things, right?

00:24:31.400 We like to think we know how to read books.

00:24:32.980 So it was a really bizarre moment for me to realize, I actually was reading this whole psalm from the entirely wrong point of view.

00:24:44.740 These people were not my enemy, I was theirs.

00:24:50.000 And furthermore, I was Christ's enemy.

00:24:54.200 But then to make it all the more disarming, these people love me.

00:25:02.560 And I think that was the real turning point for me.

00:25:05.960 Now, I'd love to tell you that I just dropped to my knees and committed my life to Christ, and it was all, that's not what happened.

00:25:11.320 I fought for about a year after that.

00:25:13.100 But that was a, that was a turning point in the way I was thinking about things.

00:25:18.280 I realized that in some ways, they were my friends, but I was their enemy.

00:25:24.780 And I was their enemy because I was Christ's enemy.

00:25:27.960 But they loved me anyway.

00:25:30.520 And so I would say, I came of age under a discipling ministry that understood, you're not actually supposed to pretend that your enemies are your friends.

00:25:41.500 You're supposed to do something harder, you're to love them.

00:25:45.460 And I was a recipient of that kind of radical Christian love.

00:25:53.080 And how did these people kind of balance with you truth-telling about sin and salvation and just friendship and kindness and hospitality?

00:26:04.000 Were they constantly intertwined?

00:26:06.440 Did they come up at different times?

00:26:08.100 Or what was that like?

00:26:08.980 Well, it was a different world.

00:26:12.340 So I think that we need to understand that a post-Abergefell world has different rules attached to it.

00:26:19.880 Because the Obergefell decision, 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage, had embedded in it something called the dignitary harm clause.

00:26:30.680 And the dignitary harm clause says, if you deny my LGBTQ plus, minus, et cetera, et cetera, dignity, that's, you know, that's harm.

00:26:41.980 Now, in my generation, you know, if you didn't sell me a pizza, that was harm.

00:26:46.840 If I go in and you're, you know, you're a pizza owner and you're supposed to sell me a pizza and you don't sell me a pizza because I'm queer.

00:26:53.680 Well, I just want my pizza, well, I just want my pizza.

00:26:56.200 That was, you know, don't, that's it.

00:26:58.200 But now you see we are in a different world where if you fail to affirm who I am, now you're committing me harm.

00:27:07.580 So just, you know, one of the first things Ken Smith said to me is, Rosaria, I can accept you as you are, but I don't approve of you.

00:27:16.780 Right.

00:27:17.380 Now, I'm not so sure we could start there today.

00:27:22.560 But I wasn't at all offended by that.

00:27:25.380 I was a university professor.

00:27:27.580 I was a grown up.

00:27:29.460 I didn't need everybody to agree with me.

00:27:33.120 And if I did, I would have been, you know, flattened long before I met Ken Smith and all of these Christians. 1.00

00:27:40.380 And so I thought that was fine.

00:27:42.680 I wanted to, I genuinely wanted to know why they thought what they did.

00:27:47.880 And I wasn't, somehow, you know, I wasn't depending upon the whole world to affirm me.

00:27:54.000 Yeah.

00:27:54.360 And so that's, that's an important thing to think about.

00:27:58.800 We were actually grownups. 0.97

00:28:00.840 And the more that a society offers laws and values and ideas that are further and further away from biblical truth, the more foolish and immature we are going to create a citizenship.

00:28:19.240 And so it is never in a Christian's interest, as someone who is to love your neighbor as yourself, to put a law between a fellow image bearer and a holy God that would prevent her from coming to Christ.

00:28:38.680 And so something like the Obergefell decision is a terrible sin.

00:28:43.020 Christians should repent of this. 0.99

00:28:45.020 This is awful.

00:28:46.340 You know, and you certainly should not be, you know, sort of a la David French trying up, trying to come up with some bizarre way that you're going to import, you know, pluralism as some kind of a gospel defense.

00:29:03.080 That's crazy. 0.99

00:29:04.320 That's foolish. 0.99

00:29:05.600 And it makes me wonder if you want people like me to come to Christ. 0.99

00:29:11.880 I mean, do you want that or not?

00:29:14.640 I've never, I actually have not, I have not heard it explained that way.

00:29:20.180 Of course, I agree with you on the Obergefell decision and the kinds of laws that affirm what we know is sin is just not a definition of marriage that has ever legitimately existed.

00:29:33.100 Two men, two women now are seeing more than just two because why not? 0.95

00:29:37.320 It's limitless.

00:29:38.280 But I've never heard it explained that supporting a law that legalizes gay marriage is actually an inhibition to someone repenting and believing in the gospel.

00:29:50.880 Can you explain that a little bit further?

00:29:52.800 That's really interesting.

00:29:54.880 Yeah, absolutely.

00:29:55.640 And I think it's really, if you think about it, I don't think this is like, this is not Christian rocket science.

00:30:01.700 This is really, really simple.

00:30:03.860 The job of the civil magistrate is to punish evil and to allow good to flourish.

00:30:12.060 And if it flips that around, if it starts to punish the, if it starts to allow evil to flourish, then it by necessity, it will have to punish the good.

00:30:24.920 But just for a minute, think about how powerful this is.

00:30:28.580 There's only one entity that wants you, that prohibits repentance, wants you to not, not repent.

00:30:37.480 And that's Satan himself.

00:30:40.200 So any law that would make it hard for someone to repent of a sin is itself sin.

00:30:49.620 And any person who in any way supports that or even kind of muddies the waters on that is in gross violation of God's love for lost people.

00:31:05.480 I mean, I felt like I was being torn apart by wild horses when I came to Christ.

00:31:14.280 Now, I was obviously not, quote unquote, legally married, but I had co-authored the university's domestic partnership policy, which was actually a forerunner to gay marriage in the 90s.

00:31:27.980 That, you know, just getting my lesbian partner off my health insurance was really hard.

00:31:34.500 Yeah, wow.

00:31:35.660 I can't imagine how difficult it would be today.

00:31:39.780 Yeah.

00:31:40.380 So basically you're saying it creates even more of a hassle just logistically and practically for someone.

00:31:47.320 And it sucker punches you every step of the way.

00:31:50.840 How could you be doing this?

00:31:51.960 How can you be hurting someone?

00:31:53.140 How could you, you know, Satan loves you to think that you are so deep into your sin that to repent now would really be a trouble.

00:32:01.840 But just the opposite is true because wherever you are, I don't care where you are.

00:32:06.340 I don't care how deep it is.

00:32:07.860 If you repent right now, you have the Lord Jesus Christ as both your judge and your advocate.

00:32:16.580 Yes.

00:32:16.800 So he's your lawyer.

00:32:18.240 He'll get you out of it.

00:32:19.660 It is bad.

00:32:20.540 It is deep.

00:32:21.140 And I understand that.

00:32:22.460 Yes.

00:32:22.740 But if you repent and believe, you have the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

00:32:27.720 And so what you see among all of these, I don't know what to call them.

00:32:32.520 At this point, you have to make the distinction between Christians who want to go to heaven and Christians who want to have, I don't know, New York Times, you know, columns.

00:32:40.060 But the Christians who are very, very concerned about, you know, how difficult it would be for people to leave their, you know, their lives.

00:32:52.620 Do you not believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, who created the mountains and told them where to stand, who created man and woman in his image, not as his image, but in his image.

00:33:06.740 Yes.

00:33:07.100 Who created humanity with a design purpose.

00:33:12.800 Do you not think he knows how to make it all better?

00:33:17.740 Yeah.

00:33:18.060 Not just okay, but glorious.

00:33:21.660 Right.

00:33:22.280 I don't know.

00:33:24.060 I think that once, anyway, I just, I don't know.

00:33:27.520 It's baffling to me.

00:33:28.640 That's basically like saying, sorry, go ahead.

00:33:32.300 The only person who wants you to not repent is Satan and his minions.

00:33:36.160 And so if some Christian says, oh, I don't know.

00:33:39.080 I don't think we should dismantle gay marriage. 0.95

00:33:40.860 That would be so hard on these gay people.

00:33:43.360 You know, you might want to preach the gospel to that person. 0.96

00:33:46.320 Yeah.

00:33:46.980 Wow.

00:33:47.380 It's like saying that there is some, there are some messes or some complications that are totally

00:33:52.160 inextractable to God.

00:33:53.580 That they're just, they're too, it's not that they're too complicated for us, they're saying,

00:33:58.500 or for people, but that they're actually too complicated for God.

00:34:02.120 That he is even looking at this and saying, wow, you guys are too far gone.

00:34:06.760 And you're exactly right.

00:34:07.680 That is what Satan tells people.

00:34:09.400 That tells, that's what he tells people who are caught in sin.

00:34:11.920 You're too far into this lie.

00:34:13.940 You're too far into this mess.

00:34:15.840 You can't get out of it. 1.00

00:34:16.960 You might as well just end your life.

00:34:18.720 You might as well just go deeper into sin. 0.99

00:34:20.600 You might as well just lie a little bit more.

00:34:22.780 And I see that even more, I think, in the, whatever you want to call it, gender confusion,

00:34:30.640 gender deceit, transgender phenomenon in which someone's actual physical body is maimed, 0.94

00:34:40.440 perhaps irreversibly.

00:34:42.200 I mean, for that person to come to repentance, that is even, wow, that's even more difficult,

00:34:48.720 especially if you're someone, your entire young life, you've been affirmed as the opposite

00:34:53.740 sex.

00:34:54.520 I mean, really, Satan's got a foothold to tell you, nope, you are too far gone, right? 0.99

00:35:00.700 But Christians need to answer that. 1.00

00:35:03.520 Because at least what I have seen from my perspective, gospel promises may be the most

00:35:13.140 beautiful to our detransitioners out there, because the gospel promise is that God can't 1.00

00:35:19.640 be mocked.

00:35:20.700 So whatever in your sin or your confusion or your delusion or your mental illness or your

00:35:27.260 victimization, whatever you allow to happen to your body will not be permanent.

00:35:35.580 Because in the new Jerusalem, you will be the man that God made you to be. 0.95

00:35:41.320 You will be the woman that God made you to be.

00:35:43.480 And so there is the absolute ultimate hope in the gospel.

00:35:50.220 If not now, I mean, we have so many examples of detransitioners now who are living godly, 1.00

00:35:57.180 beautiful lives.

00:35:59.360 If not now, then certainly later.

00:36:03.580 So in Christ, there is the only hope.

00:36:13.480 And tell us, because you said you wrote an article about this recently that I thought

00:36:23.680 was very interesting, how Christians should approach not detransitioners, but people who

00:36:30.400 are gender confused, people who believe and present as the opposite sex.

00:36:34.980 You wrote how you kind of subscribe to this idea, which I've seen mostly propagated by

00:36:40.040 Preston Sprinkle and others, of pronoun politeness or pronoun hospitality.

00:36:46.120 Basically, the idea for those who are unfamiliar is that you kind of, that's how you get in

00:36:51.740 with someone.

00:36:52.460 That's how you earn their trust.

00:36:53.740 That's how you show that you're loving towards them.

00:36:55.660 You kind of affirm their stated identity by using their preferred pronouns.

00:36:59.540 So calling a man that you know a man is a she, et cetera. 1.00

00:37:02.880 And then that kind of gives you the entryway to eventually build a relationship and

00:37:09.880 share the gospel.

00:37:11.720 You were once kind of convinced by that line of reasoning, but recently you've said, nope,

00:37:15.980 that was a sin.

00:37:16.680 I repented of that.

00:37:17.640 So tell us about that.

00:37:19.800 Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:20.880 So, so yes, I mean, I definitely believed in that.

00:37:24.760 And, and, you know, that's kind of an old, an old, just, you know, an old follow through

00:37:29.800 from my gay rights days.

00:37:31.180 That's this whole pronoun hospitality thing.

00:37:33.520 Um, and I, you know, I know people, I, I have met people.

00:37:38.280 I know people who's, um, the particular imprint of Adam's sin on their life is this, this war

00:37:47.020 that is inside of them.

00:37:49.540 Uh, and this self-hatred about the, the, the sexual anatomy that they have.

00:37:55.480 And so the general idea was don't, don't, when you meet an unstable person, don't, don't

00:38:02.480 make it even more unstable.

00:38:04.480 Um, and so I believed, and I subscribed to that for, for years and years.

00:38:09.840 And, um, in the new book I have coming out in September, I have actually, uh, I think maybe,

00:38:15.720 I don't know, multiple pages of repentance of the things that I believed, even as a Christian,

00:38:21.580 the things that followed me through, um, why, I don't know. 0.97

00:38:25.440 Cause I'm stupid because my sanctification isn't, isn't complete. 0.75

00:38:29.780 Um, which is true for all of us. 0.98

00:38:32.000 Yeah, right.

00:38:32.840 Right.

00:38:33.160 But it, but it's worse for a public figure.

00:38:35.460 Public sins have they public sins, put your sins on blast.

00:38:39.720 Yeah.

00:38:40.220 So it's not like, you know, I'm just the, you know, the pastor's wife next door who, you

00:38:45.320 know, has muddled ideas.

00:38:46.700 No, I write them in books that lots of people read.

00:38:48.960 So that's the problem.

00:38:50.020 Um, but what's been really obvious of late is that the pronoun issue is no longer a

00:38:59.940 terminological issue.

00:39:01.500 And this is where Preston Sprinkle and Mark Yarhouse are either just, maybe they're just 0.95

00:39:07.280 fools or maybe they're deceptively wrong, but we've had this conversation now for a couple 0.96

00:39:13.480 of years. 0.99

00:39:13.900 So they get to be one or the other, or they get to repent.

00:39:16.640 That's, that's the, that's the line I'm drawing in the sand here.

00:39:20.160 Um, because, um, we are no longer talking about terminology.

00:39:25.060 We're not talking about looking up in your synonym finder, you know, different versions

00:39:29.300 of the same words so that you can, you know, lighten up your writing.

00:39:33.600 We're talking about ideology.

00:39:35.740 We're talking about, um, uh, an idea that has a material force.

00:39:41.180 And I mean, my friend, Andrew Branch put it this way.

00:39:45.060 I thought it was brilliant.

00:39:45.860 Uh, you know, yesterday the DOJ filed a lawsuit challenging Tennessee's new law, protecting

00:39:52.900 minors from transgender ideology.

00:39:54.860 And this is my friend, Andrew said, he said, oh, look, the 14th amendment is now claimed 0.85

00:39:59.300 by the federal government over castrating minors.

00:40:02.800 Yeah.

00:40:03.540 Okay.

00:40:04.000 So how do we know that this is, uh, ideology, uh, what the DOJ did yesterday?

00:40:11.820 Yeah.

00:40:12.180 This isn't terminology. 0.99

00:40:13.780 And anybody who says it is, is either a fool or is working for Satan. 0.96

00:40:20.360 And if I can just quote the Bible here for a moment, 2nd Corinthians 4, 1, therefore having 0.97

00:40:27.520 this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart, but this is where I want to put

00:40:34.060 all those people I called out in my article on, on notice here, but we have renounced

00:40:40.380 disgraceful, underhanded ways.

00:40:42.820 We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word.

00:40:47.440 Wow.

00:40:48.320 Those who are still using personal transgender pronouns and claiming that they're just trying

00:40:54.740 to practice kindness are indeed practicing cunning and tampering with God's word.

00:41:04.600 This is really serious.

00:41:06.000 And so my article was meant to do two things.

00:41:08.960 It was to identify a problem, but also to call other, uh, public figures like myself who

00:41:17.200 had, uh, committed this sin for years and years to repentance, not course correction, but

00:41:24.740 repentance.

00:41:25.540 Those are different things, uh, because this is the Achan in the camp. 1.00

00:41:31.680 And if you remember from Joshua, what happened didn't go so well for Achan.

00:41:36.440 And if we in the evangelical church are wondering why it's not going so well for us, it's because

00:41:43.060 of sin, not the sin, not the makeup sins of the social justice warriors, but the actual

00:41:51.000 sins that the Bible teaches us, right.

00:41:54.740 Of which pronoun hospitality is one, you know, my friend MD Perkins pointed out to me recently

00:42:00.920 that pronouns are in the public domain.

00:42:04.140 And that means that you really can't control how somebody uses a word in the public domain.

00:42:10.560 And yet the fact that even the federal government thinks it has the right to do that tells you

00:42:16.840 we are in a moment where if you as a Christian want to actually fulfill the command in Psalm

00:42:25.920 96, 10, which says, say among the heathen that the Lord reigns, you will need to defy this.

00:42:35.060 But first, you need to clean house.

00:42:39.180 Evangelicals need to be called to the carpet. 1.00

00:42:42.620 And I'm willing to do that.

00:42:44.180 Yes.

00:42:44.780 I love how you put it in your article because you're reiterating, emphasizing the truth that

00:42:50.780 to call a man she is a lie.

00:42:53.440 It's a, it's a lie.

00:42:54.560 And it's a lie that goes against God's word.

00:42:57.540 Genesis 127, the first place that we see that God made us male and female.

00:43:01.800 We don't see any biblical category of being able to identify as a gender that is different

00:43:06.500 than our biological sex.

00:43:09.320 So to call someone something that is different than their biological sex is a lie.

00:43:13.220 And here's the question that you ask that I think is very poignant.

00:43:16.960 Does any real Christian believe crafting a relationship on falsehood will give the gospel a better 0.99

00:43:24.800 hearing?

00:43:25.460 And is that how people are converted by meeting God on sin's terms and hearing nice things

00:43:32.680 about themselves?

00:43:33.900 I think a lot of Christians really do believe that, though.

00:43:37.980 Yeah, I do, too.

00:43:39.420 I mean, I recently had a situation in my community where, you know, there was, I mean, you know

00:43:45.840 the story.

00:43:46.500 There's a there's a swim team and and there's a transgender swimmer. 1.00

00:43:50.800 And then there are a lot of people trying to figure out what to do.

00:43:54.740 And, you know, and I would say how you deal with actually proclaiming the gospel in a hostile

00:44:06.700 world will be reflected in some way by the kind of church that you attend.

00:44:11.920 And if you are in a church that believes that God loves you, has a perfect plan for your life

00:44:16.380 and wants your five-year-old to have every enrichment opportunity available, you are you're going

00:44:22.840 to fail this test.

00:44:24.960 You're going to fundamentally be ashamed of the gospel.

00:44:28.800 You're going to defy what Paul says in Romans 116.

00:44:33.120 And you are going to anybody who thinks that you can't let me just put it out there.

00:44:37.500 Anybody who thinks that you can put your kids in government schools and that you can be a soft

00:44:43.420 presence and come out okay, you know, you are not living in reality because if you want

00:44:54.160 to be a soft presence in Sodom, you are either going to be apostate or you're going to come 0.97

00:45:01.800 out like lots.

00:45:03.420 Yeah.

00:45:03.820 Neither are those are like the high bar to aspire to.

00:45:07.700 Hmm.

00:45:08.600 That's an interesting way to put it.

00:45:10.940 The soft presence.

00:45:12.200 And you hear this kind of defense a lot.

00:45:14.000 Well, my children are a soft presence in the public school or I'm a soft presence.

00:45:19.580 And really what you're saying is that you don't want to be that the bright light that Jesus

00:45:24.520 calls us to be in the darkness.

00:45:25.700 You kind of want to be a diffused nightlight that isn't really noticed or isn't really seen,

00:45:32.780 but you can still say that you're on.

00:45:35.020 And you're saying that doesn't really work.

00:45:38.200 At some point, someone's going to come over and unplug you or cover you up.

00:45:42.840 Well, exactly.

00:45:43.680 And you know what?

00:45:44.500 You might have thought that worked 20 years ago because the you know, there were still

00:45:51.000 foundations that were holding.

00:45:53.240 And so, you know, you didn't have transgender ideology as part of an anti-bullying legislation

00:46:00.760 in the government schools.

00:46:02.020 So, you know, you you had a more control.

00:46:05.000 So I could hear I could imagine somebody 20 years ago saying, you know, well, here's why

00:46:09.080 it was different.

00:46:09.720 And OK, OK, I can understand might be different.

00:46:12.580 But the reality is after a burger fell.

00:46:16.660 Well, that middle road that people want to walk on and you know about that middle road because

00:46:23.100 Tim Keller loves that middle road.

00:46:24.640 It's the you know, it's it's the center church.

00:46:27.580 It's, you know, redeemed the city.

00:46:29.560 Well, that third way.

00:46:31.480 And I, you know, I used to write books about the third way.

00:46:33.500 So like I get it.

00:46:34.280 I used to believe that stuff.

00:46:35.500 So you can, you know, blame me for some of this, too.

00:46:38.140 But in war, borders closed in war, roads get washed out.

00:46:44.820 That middle road is washed out.

00:46:47.620 And the only way that you can walk on it right now is by conceding the moral language to the

00:46:54.880 left.

00:46:55.320 And if you yield the moral language to the left, you are in no business to be a Christian 0.86

00:47:04.080 presence, because to be a Christian presence means you have to say things that will be considered

00:47:11.480 bigotry.

00:47:13.360 Yes, they're not.

00:47:14.800 They're biblical.

00:47:16.100 But you can either feed the moral language to the left or you can offer biblical language.

00:47:23.260 And most of the people that I talk to, especially the nervous housewives who have put their children 1.00

00:47:29.760 in government schools so that they can get their nails done.

00:47:34.340 Most of those people think that they, you know, well, Rosaria, you know, we're to be, you

00:47:40.660 know, in the world, but not of the world.

00:47:42.420 Well, newsflash, you're not strong enough.

00:47:45.860 Right.

00:47:46.420 And now you need to work on that.

00:47:53.260 Gosh, I could talk to you for so much longer.

00:48:03.120 There's so many questions that I have of you, but I want to end with asking you to, to give

00:48:08.920 two messages.

00:48:10.800 And I, you know, as summarized as we can, I know that's difficult.

00:48:15.540 One to the Christian who is not struggling with the sin of sexual identity, if you want 1.00

00:48:22.780 to call it that, but who is not sure how to approach this sin lovingly.

00:48:29.960 Maybe they are nervous.

00:48:31.580 They're in the workplace or whatever.

00:48:33.340 There are some people even feel that they are being basically coerced to share their

00:48:38.420 own pronouns, which I think is a whole part of their ideological ritual that you shouldn't

00:48:42.940 be a part of, or they're, they love someone deeply in their lives who is gay and has a

00:48:49.160 partner or is quote unquote married and, or who thinks that they're the opposite sex and

00:48:55.180 they want to stand in truth, but they don't know how lovingly.

00:48:57.820 That's the first message.

00:48:58.880 What would you say to that person if you were standing in front of them and you only had

00:49:01.980 a few seconds to encourage them?

00:49:04.220 I'll, I'll let you answer that.

00:49:05.380 And then I'll ask you for the, for the last message.

00:49:08.200 Yeah, absolutely.

00:49:09.020 And I, and I think that's a real challenge, how to stay connected to your loved ones without

00:49:13.560 becoming indoctrinated or, you know, the alternate is also true.

00:49:18.240 How, how to stay connected without mocking and deriding and, uh, and, and, you know, just,

00:49:25.860 just retorting to just cruelty.

00:49:28.420 And I would say the strength of your church is going to determine that, but you, you, you

00:49:34.580 are to stay connected without being indoctrinated.

00:49:37.280 And I would just recommend, and I do in my article, uh, you know, the amazing life and

00:49:42.560 the ministry of a woman named Laura Perry Smalls, who is a counselor and, you know, she, and she

00:49:49.100 lived as a quote unquote transgendered man for, uh, you know, for years and years and years.

00:49:55.180 And during all those years, her loving conservative Christian family and church refused to use

00:50:02.220 her pronouns.

00:50:03.300 Um, and they did that because they loved her for real.

00:50:06.520 They loved her in real time.

00:50:07.720 They prayed for her.

00:50:08.540 They stayed connected to her.

00:50:09.880 And when the Lord, uh, transformed her heart and her mind, she went back to the people who

00:50:16.540 didn't lie to her, not to the people who did.

00:50:19.560 So I would just encourage you to stay, um, faithful in this waiting.

00:50:26.980 And it is very, very hard.

00:50:28.680 And the other thing I would say is don't discount how very truly traumatic this is for parents

00:50:34.420 and for loved ones. 0.89

00:50:36.120 And so, um, please do not worship in some weak, ridiculous mega church, just because you've 0.96

00:50:41.860 always been there. 0.97

00:50:42.920 Go to a church that's solid.

00:50:44.860 Go to a place that's preaching the real gospel and surround yourself with praying faithful

00:50:51.540 Christians. 0.51

00:50:52.760 And I would also say, and it's a hard one, but I think we all have to get up every morning

00:50:56.180 and pray to the Lord.

00:50:57.180 Lord, if I lose my job today for your glory, please protect me and my children.

00:51:01.760 Yeah.

00:51:02.140 Um, don't cave, don't cave.

00:51:05.200 Yep.

00:51:05.680 Um, Hebrews 11 is where you would look at.

00:51:08.280 Look, it's the same.

00:51:09.100 The gospel is going to win, whether you're sawn in two or whether you're saved from the

00:51:12.960 mouths of the lions.

00:51:13.760 Now I know which one you'd prefer because I know which one I'd prefer, but our lives

00:51:17.760 are not our own.

00:51:19.060 We are owned by Christ.

00:51:20.720 Yes.

00:51:21.120 And to the person who is struggling, they're either listening to this and they're very angry

00:51:26.080 and they're thinking, oh, these two bigots coming together, these two phobes coming together

00:51:30.000 and talking about this, or maybe they're listening and they're right on the precipice,

00:51:34.680 but the extractions that they would have to make in their lives as someone who thinks

00:51:40.340 they're transgender or homosexual, they're intimidated by them. 1.00

00:51:44.200 What would be your encouragement to those people?

00:51:46.400 Yeah, absolutely.

00:51:47.700 Well, I probably both of us would say, you know, reach out to us, um, come to our churches.

00:51:53.340 If you're my neighbor, you know, join me.

00:51:55.960 Um, uh, you know, and again, uh, the scripture verse that I would say when, when, when I know

00:52:01.560 when I was really struggling and it's a serious struggle, it's not, it's not a struggle.

00:52:06.520 Sexual sin, um, is a really serious struggle because it's a, it's something that's inside

00:52:12.060 you, not outside of you.

00:52:13.340 But something that's always been very comforting as also in second Corinthians, we are afflicted

00:52:18.380 in every way, but not crushed.

00:52:20.160 Okay.

00:52:20.540 You're afflicted.

00:52:21.660 You're not crushed.

00:52:22.560 You're Christian perplexed, but not driven to despair.

00:52:26.740 Okay.

00:52:27.060 You're perplexed.

00:52:27.980 Why do I feel this way?

00:52:29.680 What, why, you know, how can I go on?

00:52:32.880 Um, you are persecuted, but not forsaken.

00:52:35.420 You will never be forsaken by Christ.

00:52:37.380 You are struck down, but not destroyed.

00:52:39.980 Um, you are always carrying in the body, the death of Jesus.

00:52:43.980 So this is to someone who's a Christian and struggling, um, and someone who is not a Christian

00:52:49.980 and struggling, I would say you need to get out from the middle of the intersection.

00:52:54.560 All right.

00:52:55.100 You need to get to one side or the other.

00:52:57.560 And the only safe side is in Christ.

00:53:01.340 He made you.

00:53:02.840 He knows you.

00:53:04.460 He will take care of you.

00:53:06.600 Um, and the church is here for you.

00:53:09.060 And, um, and yes, I understand that according to the, to the, the law of the land, we're

00:53:14.640 bigots.

00:53:15.060 I mean, just by not wanting to use pronouns, I'm a bigot, but I think that's, I think that's 0.99

00:53:19.820 ideologically driven and I think it's, it's foolish. 0.91

00:53:22.880 And I don't think you should believe that. 0.99

00:53:24.840 Yes.

00:53:25.440 I think that you should believe God.

00:53:28.940 Who's more likely to make a mistake in what you're thinking right now.

00:53:32.900 You are, are the God who made the universe.

00:53:35.700 Well, it's, you know, we are fallible.

00:53:39.520 God is not homosexuality and transgenderism are not immutable.

00:53:45.800 God is immutable.

00:53:47.840 Yes.

00:53:48.180 And the only safe place to stand right now is at the foot of the cross.

00:53:52.920 So come join us.

00:53:54.440 Yes.

00:53:54.920 Amen.

00:53:55.460 Thank you so much, Rosaria.

00:53:57.300 And people can find your books wherever books are sold.

00:54:00.460 You can just type in her name, but you've also got another book coming out this fall.

00:54:03.860 You said, I think you said September five lies of our anti-Christian age.

00:54:09.600 Is it available for pre-sale right now or not quite yet?

00:54:12.360 Yes, it is.

00:54:13.020 It is.

00:54:13.480 Okay, great.

00:54:14.000 Then I encourage people five lies of our anti-Christian age to go out and go ahead and

00:54:18.600 claim your copy.

00:54:20.080 I can't wait to read it.

00:54:20.940 I'm super excited.

00:54:22.380 Rosaria.

00:54:22.920 Thank you so much.

00:54:23.660 Thank you just for your Christ empowered courage and your obedience and the example that he's

00:54:29.200 allowed you to set for all of us in repentance.

00:54:31.340 I really appreciate that so much.

00:54:34.920 Well, all glory goes to God.

00:54:37.360 Yes, and amen.

00:54:38.120 Thank you so much, Rosaria.

00:54:39.800 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 27, 2023

Ep 796 ｜ Former Lesbian Activist Calls “Soft” Christians to Repentance ｜ Guest： Rosaria Butterfield

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript