Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

 

 

 

Mat: 44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. "

The coming out as an ex-gay, the Professor Rosaria Champagne Butterfield is rare and the current toast of the conservatives since her testimony was published in Christianity Today in Feb 2013. Alas, it is all vanity.

Rosaria was on the far left side. An advocate of post modern queer theology, attended the Universalist church, a flaming feminist, an ardent evolutionist, and not to mention a lesbian.

She said that she operated from an intellectual academic "historical materialistic world view" whilst Christianity is from "a supernatural world view".

Although attending a Universalist church and an expert of Queer theology, Rosaria considered herself a non-Christian and indeed despised Christianity and was cynical.

In many churches, what Rosaria described is the kind of preachers we hear, a kind of sterile intellectualism, and pale idealism often lumping everything together and despising the Word of God as inspired and only following the Love teachings of Jesus. On the other extreme, we have preachers abusing the Word of God and making God's name in vain in their prosperity theology to make money out of the sincere faith of others.

So was she ever a Lesbian in the first place as there was little mention of her same sex experiences or desires/struggles since young. Was she living out the experiences as a victim of oppression? to fit her left wing identity rather than being an innate sexual orientation.

Rosaria was drawned to the Reformed Presbyterian Church where you read the English bible after translation as the literal word of God in a prescriptive sense. She should be reading in the origianl language.

She admitted that as a left wing christian, she was more a heathern dishing the bible.

It is not our intention to doubt her conversion to Christianity or whether she was a bi-sexual in the first place for which some of my lesbian friends are. But a fundamental mistake is made of associating salvation to the right sexual orientation.

Rosaria made the same mistake as many of my friends in making her sexual orientation as god, and so intertwined it with her Christian faith that the biblical Jesus is not the center.

What made Rosaria so intriguing is that she went to the far left to the far right, whilst many gay christian friends went from the far right to the far left.  

When her liberal Christian faith was desconstructed as superficial, so goes her sexual orientation.

Reconciliation between our Christian Faith and our sexual orientation is to know Jesus, that He came not to prepetuate the religious laws but that His only condemnation was our unbelief that Jesus Himself is the way, the truth and the life to God.

When we focused on religious laws, where sin can become arbitrary according to our labels and culture when the most ardent person of faith can be the greatest sinner for whom the pharisees were.

"You read a different bible" a liberal pastor once said to me when many left wing Christians and pastors were dishing the bible as erroneous, man inspired, and all myths.

There is a difference in reading the bible in the historical context to understand it rather to start of with the wrong preposition. When we see it as history with an understanding of the historical religious faith background, and as the revelation of Jesus, and desire to connect with the Christ within supernaturally, we are changed.

Alas, when we swing to the Christian far right as Professor Rosaria is now doing, we become obsessed by religious laws and self centered morality. This is again vanity.

Jesus is not in the left or the right wing culture of Christianity trying to create their own opposing kingdoms of earth, but His Kingdom is in heaven. He came that He might bring His own home for the highway to heaven is narrow.

It is said that Liberal Christianity has fallen which is spiritually not true since her legacy of the social welfare and health benefits to the poor and outcasts in the US is a perpetual legacy.

But the same could be said of the far right Christian churches such as the reformed presbyterian now attended by Rosaria which has been stagnant. At least their staying above water rather than the straight fall from height for the Episcopal and UCC.

John 7:16-19 Jesus said, “I didn’t make this up. What I teach comes from the One who sent me. Anyone who wants to do his will can test this teaching and know whether it’s from God or whether I’m making it up. A person making things up tries to make himself look good. But someone trying to honor the one who sent him sticks to the facts and doesn’t tamper with reality. It was Moses, wasn’t it, who gave you God’s Law? But none of you are living it. So why are you trying to kill me?”

It is about Jesus who represents grace and truth, and not Moses who represents the law. Our sexual orientation doesn't matter but who we see the biblical Jesus as, a good person and a prophet, or God incarnate, our Saviour beyond time, culture and circumstances.

Redemption is not redeeming our inward sexual orientation or an outward redemption making this earth a better place to live in, but a spiritual redemption of heaven above.

Therefore, we sake to be, when our lives are crucified with Christ.

Rom 12 1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

 

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