My name is David Vance and I'm the minister of Redeemer Church and I would like to introduce to you this evening Dr. Rosaria Butterfield. Rosaria is a former professor at Syracuse University. She was there serving as Director of Undergraduate Studies and at age 36 she was tenured in English and Women's Studies. She taught courses in what's often called Queer Theory and was the faculty advisor for a number of LGBT associations and graduate students in that field. She wrote a scholarly book and a number of articles applying postmodern critical theory to issues of sexuality, feminism, politics and literature and in her magnificent book, I might say, The Secret Thought of an Unlikely Convert which we use both our men's and our women's studies by the way with great appreciation. She in a very vulnerable and a very wonderful and a very intelligent way describes what happened to her thoughts and life and heart when she came to love and follow Jesus Christ in 1999. And what happened afterward? She describes in the book the new life that she has in Christ. She's now married to a fellow Reformed Presbyterian minister named Kent Butterfield, who was gracious enough to preach for me a couple of years ago when I was on vacation. I'll probably get to meet him for the first time this summer at our Synod meeting. And she describes in the book their life, the joys and trials of fostering and adopting children and giving them a Christian and classical education, many other things about the life that she has now in Christ. Some of you have seen this book, I know, and others of you are being introduced to it tonight. This is my copy of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, and this is what it looks like. If you're interested in studying it with others, I have a 10-week study guide. that I subjected our study groups to and it goes through not just reading comprehension questions but a bible study and questions for discussion and application and optional practical activities so if you're up for that kind of challenge you can look at my website redeemerblacksburg.org and I put a link on the front page to the study guide Anything else we need to say? I don't think so. Welcome. I'm too short to actually see everybody back there. I need a booster chair. We'd like to welcome you again one and all and I'd like to offer a prayer at the beginning if you would allow me to do so. Let's pray please. Gracious Father, we come and we seek again your face, we seek your will, we seek your name, we seek to have all that is done this evening to be an honor to you, to be a blessing to those who are here, we seek to extend and to be overflowing with that love of Christ that we've known and so we pray that this would be the purpose of the evening and that people here should know that truly you are a good and gracious God. In Christ's name, Amen. Well, I'd like to begin by just introducing Rosario to you by way of a conversation, by way of kind of a question and answer for my own. And then the plan is in the second half of the evening to open it up to your questions and answers. And we have a microphone here on the left. If you can fight your way over and stand in line and make your make your questions from here, then everyone will be able to hear you. Is that all? Good. Great. Rosaria, the first sentence in your acknowledgements is that when you were 28 years old, you boldly declared yourself to be a lesbian. And by the age of 36, you write how you were one of the few tenured women at a large research university, very similar to our own, but not as good as we all know. Especially in space. Of course. Would you please describe your life at that time and your field of specialty? How long are we going to be here tonight? Not long enough for you to defend Syracuse but long enough to introduce yourself. I don't know how to explain it except for to say that I had always had very deep and connected and very intense relationships with women and at a certain point in my life you know I sort of started to shift I mean in the beginning I just thought well you know this is great and then at another point I thought well why am I feeling this way because the intensity had sort of shifted from a kind of homo-sociality to more of a sexual desire and then it got to a hey I really shouldn't feel this way and then at one point I just thought well this is who I am you know take it or leave it So in some ways that doesn't sound very, I don't know, very powerful but that was really my coming out process. Now during this time I also would have said to you if you asked me to check what box in sexual orientation I would have called myself heterosexual. I had dated men. I've never hated men. I've never failed to have good friendships with men. They just didn't show up on my scale. So... When I finally came out to myself and everybody else, and you should know that coming out in the gay and lesbian community is a rite of passage. It separates you from everybody else who's just feeling this way. It sort of declares who you are and one of the other things it really does is it totally offends all the people in your life who would normally be trying to interact with you on this. So it kind of shuts up a certain sector, if you know what I mean. So it has a certain utility in that way. So after I came out, I would say that life felt great. Life was great. It felt like I was being honest with myself and honest with you. And when I left Ohio State, that's where I did my Ph.D. now. They're not so good at sports, are they? When I left Ohio State to take a tenure track job at Syracuse, I left with my first lesbian partner. And in some ways that was that. And you began a career in a field and a specialty that reflected that life commitment? I did. Sometimes I think Christians are now just waking up to the this the strategy out there of that we see happening that we see sort of coming of age but when I was a graduate student it was clear who wanted to go into the field of queer theory and queer theory is a post-modern post-structural extension of gay and lesbian studies so whereas gay and lesbian studies valued identity politics, queer theory valued more of a continual understanding of sexuality and so it was very clear and so when I ended up in the English department at Syracuse that wasn't accidental I was recruited, mentored and hired with the hopes that I would someday take on the LGBT studies program so it started in women's studies because that was that was the gateway and everybody knew it so this wasn't you know this wasn't a secret it wasn't even an open secret it was just how we thought about changing the world and I'll tell you that we really saw it that way that when we would say gay is good We didn't mean I'm born this way, I can't help it, but I like it. We were saying there is a diversity imperative to sexual liberation that is good for everybody and as misguided as that is, I believed it with my whole heart. something happened when you wrote a critique of the promise keepers movement and its gender politics you were getting some mail, fan mail and hate mail and in a very vivid way in your book you describe how you had a very clean desk with two piles one on either side of the yeas and the nays I wrote this what I thought was going to be a teeny little editorial in the local newspaper about the promise keepers. and I don't even know why you know necessarily I don't know if maybe they took my favorite parking spot and it was annoying to me I mean you know it's major right um but but I will tell you that I as a as a professor and and to some degree I suppose some of this hasn't changed entirely you know I was just on a war against stupid and I just thought that the mission of the promise keepers was really stupid so I wrote an article And I just thought it was going to be a teeny little thing. They gave me a whole page. so you know I just my tenure book had just come out and I was really wondering couldn't some of you just read the tenure book so it would go into the next printing you know why is everybody reading this article and so you know hate mail fan mail they both both hate mail and fan mail in my life both then and now sort of register in the same way to me I you know I don't they're both kind of the same so they just went into different boxes but but Ken Smith who was the then pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church wrote me a letter that I couldn't put down. And I will tell you why I couldn't put it down. I am a user. I am a manipulator. I should have a PhD in it. And I was working on a book project on the religious right from a lesbian feminist perspective. And I thought, wow, here's somebody who can help me read the Bible to make my case against it. You know, I'm not... Struggling with pride, yes. Stupid, maybe not. I knew I couldn't read. I don't read Greek. I don't read Hebrew. I really felt like I needed somebody to help me through this. But I'll tell you the other thing that I liked about this letter is that it was grounded in ideas. My experience prior to this I interfaced with a lot of Christians. I taught a class that had 300 students. You know, you get everybody in that kind of a pool. I had done a speaker at Gay Pride marches in New York. You meet everybody. You know, Christians come out with their placards. My experience of dealing with Christians is that Christians were people who would use the Bible in the way that Marxists would call vulgar. Use the Bible in an effort to stop the conversation, not deepen it. and I thought that was fear driven and anti-intellectual and it just seemed to me if that's what people of the word did that was just totally bereft of any kind of potential community building approach. I'm an English professor, books build community, words make worlds. So this kind of hermeneutic of the Christians with whom I had interfaced just seemed silly. But Ken's letter was extremely engaging. And one of the things he engaged me on is this idea that the Bible is supernatural. I was a historical materialist by training. I believed that people emerged from history and proceeded for good or for ill that way. The idea that Jesus entered into history was a totally different idea and I realized that Ken Smith would be somebody who could really help me write this book. because I wanted to know why this book the Bible and this man Jesus got so many well-meaning people off track and he seemed like a smart guy and you decided to meet them then so they had in the letter I think invited you to meet or maybe to dinner and you said I'll take you up on that yeah well actually in the letter they said you know call me to talk about this I really want to talk about this and I was waffling at the time I was busy you know a tenured professor you know I worked about 80 hours a week I had too many friends and a colleague of mine who was also working on the religious right was the one who said Rosaria you know this is going to be really good for your research it's way worth a phone call He was an anthropologist. Anthropologists love making phone calls. I'm an introverted English professor. I don't love making phone calls. It was kind of a big deal. But I did. I called him up and we had a great conversation. I just grilled him. I asked him all the questions. and he passed the I'm willing to engage with you test and then he invited me to his house for dinner and then very quickly he said but if that makes you uncomfortable I'm happy to meet you at a restaurant and I thought that was very sweet of him but you know the gay and lesbian community is also a community given to hospitality In any given gay and lesbian community, every day, somebody's home is open for people who are struggling with something. Oh, if only the church could say the same thing, right? In fact, I tell people, and I don't mean to scare them, but when I talk to parents who have lost children to gay and lesbian communities, I tell them that the church will have to work very hard to love that child as well as the community they're now in. And I know that can sound really heretical, but that is a community that really knows how to meet people where they're at. So I loved the idea of going to his home because I thought we could talk openly and I was curious to see how Christians lived. It was almost like going to the zoo or something. Like, ooh, how do they live? So the voyeur in me sort of took over as well. Should I be cleaning this up for you? The conversations that went on, you developed a friendship. We did. And you even write in the book that he almost became in some way like a father figure and that you could talk to him and really break your heart to him about things and he cared. Yeah, but not right away. You know, that is how our friendship ended up. But what happened at first was Ken and Floyd, they I couldn't hold on to the stereotypes I had about Christians because they were very well read. They were extremely interested in politics and culture. when we talked about sexuality they didn't drop down dead as if that was it they were just going to die on the spot they were people of the word in a way that was intriguing to me English professors just by nature we love cross referencing and especially if you can give me a direct quotation that is big and so the fact that he could the way that they used the bible to translate their life was really striking to me that they were good readers with evidence and also that they were willing to help me read the Bible even though I was planning on critiquing it that was really striking but probably the most striking thing was the first day at dinner at their house they failed to do two things It's in the rule book of how Christians deal with your local lesbian neighbor. Right? It's in the rule book. It's written down. It's not even in fine print. Number one, they did not share the gospel with me. And number two, they did not invite me to church. Which made me wonder if I was chopped liver. Right? You know, I could have told them how they should have shared the gospel. But seriously, what it did make me feel was that Ken and I, and Floyd as well, we could talk without me being a project. and the other thing that they told me after a while it was intriguing because we did we became fast friends and I asked them at one point if this is you know kind of weird for them in some ways I was feeling like I finally was a good liberal instead of just having dear friends who were you know 30 something you know white lesbians with a humanities PhD I finally had an evangelical Christian in there you know and that was that was big on my diversity list but you know Ken said to me that the most important thing a Christian can be is a good neighbor and I thought wow you know that's I agree that is a that is a big deal in the gay and lesbian community and so we had a place of agreement with each other and so we went on as neighbors and you know in Syracuse it's not quite like here you know in Syracuse neighbors may stand between you know you and death right you know who has a wood-burning stove that matters who has a chainsaw who has a snowblower you know no kidding these are not small things And so, you know, soon enough winter set in and immediately Ken would just call me with these concerns. Do you have a wood burning stove? We have a family who's cold. Hey, we have a snow blower. Do you need some help? Are you able to get, you know, and we lived very close to each other. So we were able to access each other's resources in that way and that was really important. but I was reading the Bible and Ken and Floyd were reading with me and that's what did you in? well what did me in what did me in was you know I could be the chairperson of over readers anonymous right you know and I was on a research leave so I was reading the Bible for about five hours a day And you know, that gives the Holy Spirit a lot of room in your life. I was just saying, oh if only we all could read the Bible five hours a day, right? But I was really becoming unmoored by some things and disarmed by other things. And the idea that this was a supernatural text was starting to become evidence to me. and so quite quickly my conversations with Ken and Floyd started to shift from what does it mean to what does it mean for me and they did not drive me they sort of followed me in this inquiry and that was really that was really astounding to me you began to read with a bit of intensity until it began to change you and suddenly it became obvious to a few close friends one whom you named Jay in the book there was a conversation one night for dinner where where Jay said Rosaria what is going on we're losing you what what what's happening Right, right. Well I think I mentioned that in the gay and lesbian community each home is open at different nights and my night was Thursday night. So Thursday night my partner and I would just have our home open for anybody in the community who had questions or needs or concerns. And I always tell people, especially as a pastor's wife, you know, Christians we need to do this. because you don't know what's going on with people you know at the coffee urn on the Lord's Day you have absolutely no idea but if homes are just open and it's organic people just show up and you feed them and you talk you really do know who your people are and what they need so I had a transgendered friend and transgendered refers to someone who has taken so many female hormones that he was chemically castrated but did not have the funds or the desire to go through the surgery so it's the ultimate liminal place and Jay cornered me in the kitchen and she said Rosaria you know you just got to stop right here this Bible reading is changing you and I'm scared you know I feel like we're losing you and everybody knew you know that I was doing a research project I've always been a pretty transparent person and but I was really I was really taken aback by Jay's question or comments and I said well oh bless you thank you and I said you know yeah I've been reading the Bible and and what if Oh, thank you. What if Jesus is a real and risen Lord? What if we are all in trouble? And Jay sat down and she looked very upset and she was my wise good friend and she said, Rosaria, I was a Presbyterian minister for 15 years and I prayed that Jesus would heal me and he did not. But if you would like, I will pray for you. And you know that encounter was a very powerful one. And it had happened on the tail end of another encounter that I'll tell you about. But the encounter with Jay was very powerful because of two things. Number one, it gave me a kind of secret tacit permission to keep reading the Bible. Because one of my very closest friends, someone I considered a wise counselor, had also rooted around in it for life purpose and meaning. But what she said about Jesus really pulled the rug out from underneath me. I was a peace and social justice activist. No peace and social justice activist wants some unequal opportunity God. So who is this Jesus who heals some and not others? The other thing that happened was a dear friend of mine who was the chaplain of the university he also was very concerned and it's kind of interesting I don't name him in the book because that's how you get sued. But he has emailed me since then and he has met with Ken Smith and this whole thing really upset him. It really, really upset him because he was a committed revisionist. and he had taken me out to lunch and he said Rosaria you can be a lesbian and be a Christian you just have to be moral in your application of sexuality but there is absolutely nothing in scripture that would suggest otherwise and it was a funny moment because you know God knows who you are and what you have and what you need so I am not a very talented woman I can do one thing I can read a book and size it up okay that's that's my job that's the widget I make read a book and size it up you know figure out its canonicity think about its language problems understand its hermeneutics and then yay or nay it about you know does it have integrity or not and I had just that week than teaching in a feminist theory class a kind of heresy of hermeneutics that's called creating canons within canons. This is what my feminist theory class is talking about. It's where if you have a canon You can't have a competing canon. The canon is one body of ideas. And the reason this is important in a peace and social justice world is you don't want to be arguing against each other. and the reason it's important in the Bible is either the Bible is a singular revelation or not. Either it's unified in its revelation or it's not. So it seemed to me that both the Bible and queer theory had this same sort of hermeneutical issue. So I said to this chaplain, so and so, why are you saying that? And he said, because Paul is not Jesus. This is a canon within a canon. You need to sit in my queer theory class and get clear on this. That doesn't fly. It doesn't fly in either one of our worlds. So those two encounters happened and I thought this is crazy who is this Jesus who heals some and not others and what had happened at that point was I was just ready to throw this research project away and I have a friend who drove with me tonight and she knows I get to a certain point in every research project and I'm ready to throw it away I'm there right now with another book so you can pray for me but you know because at a certain point you have to function you have to eat you have to walk your dog you have to do your grocery shopping and this research project had just it was too much and the reason it was too much was this It was one thing when the Bible was something I could square off with. Alright? It was one thing when I could, you know, almost like a tennis ball across the net. I could bat it back. But now it was getting under my skin. And that meant it was a foe of a much more dangerous kind. And so I just called it quits. I said that's it I am done with this research project and I've done this before and I'll probably do it again I took every file that was part of this book and I threw it away and then I declared to myself that's it I'm not going to read the bible again it's too much and so about a week went by dropped over how are you and I told him I said okay done if you want to be friends that's fine but there's no more research project he said oh good I'm so glad to hear that and there's also no more bible reading okay we're done and he said hmm Well, he didn't really say much at that first encounter. He just sort of let me, you know, throw off some steam. Then about a week later, he came to me and he said, you know, you were researching a good question. Just the fact that you don't want to write about it doesn't mean you still shouldn't pursue it at your own pace. And I said, but it's just, it's making me call unglued. It is too much for me. And he said, well, you know, you set the pace, but I'm going to encourage you to keep reading the Bible and he left and I thought well you know who are you to encourage me and then I remembered you know this is my friend this is my friend who shared a snow blower with me this is my friend who you know I you know Floyd and I like to share bread baking recipes this is this is my friend and so I really only kept reading the Bible because Ken encouraged me to and Ken had the authority to influence me because we were friends. You began to be curious about church and worship. What do they do? Like in the zoo thing, right? It's a zoo thing. It's a zoo thing. One morning you're sitting across the street with your coffee and your article you're working on and they're flowing into the church with these buses and you think, what do they do? And how do they? One of those kids, right? What's going on? What was going on in you then? Well this is terrible. You became a church stalker. I was, I was a church stalker. I was truly, I was really, well first of all I had read the Ten Commandments and this whole keeping the Lord's Day holy and not working on the Lord's Day I thought that was total depravity. How would I maintain my kingdom if I didn't work 12 hours a day every day. This was insane. The church was a little bit close to my house and I had a kind of morning Sunday morning routine. It would involve getting up and taking care of the dogs and then going out to Starbucks and picking up the New York Times and picking up my coffee. And then driving home, the first time, my first church stalking experience, it was kind of on my way, not really, but kind of. And I thought, well, I'm just kind of curious, who goes to Ken Smith's church anyway? So not wanting to be seen, I had a truck with gay rights stickers. It's not like I would, my truck at the church and all the 15 person white passenger vans with the abortion stops a beating heart sticker. It wasn't going to go together in the parking lot. So I parked at the Coal Muffler across the street. And I didn't have my binoculars because I didn't need them. But I was, you know, I was intrigued. I was especially intrigued by these enormous families. You know, the van would open and the little ducks would start. Alright, so we've got a white van, so let's move on. Moving on to the next question. I didn't fully finish though. No, go ahead. You continued though to read, to think, to watch, to stalk. Yes, that's true. Until there was one day when you knew the truth. Well, maybe you'd known it before, but that Jesus was truly, what did you say, a risen and living Lord. and a Sunday morning came when you got out of the bed and went to worship yeah sort of yeah sort of I mean you know it's always hard to tell when people say well when were you converted you know I I both admire and I don't buy it when people say well you know it was December 22nd 1972 and you know well that may be when you remember but um here's what I do remember I um Ken said were you doing a lot of bible reading but are you doing any praying? I thought well no I'm not I mean I'm named after the rosary how much more do you need right I no I'm not praying and he said well you know you should you should pray and um and so I started I started to pray and one night I um discovered that I was sort of bizarrely and ironically interested in knowing if God could make someone like me a godly woman and what someone like me what my role would be as a Christian woman I mean I had this kind of uncanny oxymoronic desire to at least picture myself in God's kingdom which was really bizarre I wasn't drinking there is nothing that would distort my ability to think through that but it was just a question I had and so that night I prayed that the Lord would make me a godly woman and then I laughed out loud at how ridiculous that prayer was because it was about as absurd as they go and then I was fishing around in the Psalms and I wondered what God's will was for me and it struck me that the verb clauses in the Psalms are always so interesting to me that I you know could I will to do God's will I mean I knew I couldn't do God's will right that was clear but could I will to do God's will and so I prayed that the Lord would equip me to just will to do God's will and you know when I woke up the next morning I looked the same I felt the same you know but I kind of wondered if you know the Bible makes these claims that are way bigger than anybody else's claims you know when evolutionists talk about millions and millions of years that's teeny compared to when God talks about from before the foundations of the world And I wondered, am I who I think I am? Am I a lesbian? Am I an atheist? Am I an activist? Or is this a case of mistaken identity? Because I had read the Bible through about five times at this point. It's not like I was unfamiliar with it or with God's claims. And I was just curious to know if I was standing apart from them or inside of them. And so I did. I just woke up one morning that week. That week ended and Lord's Day rolled around and I woke up and I left the bed I shared with my lesbian lover and an hour later you know I sat in a pew at the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church and the reality of that one of the things that has always struck me especially now as a pastor's wife you know I sort of look cleaned up I mean when you hear me talk you know I'm not but you know you start to look cleaned up after a while and you know I've never forgotten that you know we should never presume to know the journey that another person takes to get to church that day you know whether it's a visitor or a new person or the pastor himself you know there are lions everywhere so I really I came I came just to kind of watch but I came with a question then the question was who is God and who am I in relation to God and one of the things that we do in a reformed Presbyterian church is we sing psalms a cappella and I was a music major in college before I discovered English and philosophy and I'm a sight reader and so it was you know one of the things that's always kind of irks me I'm very noise sensitive so churches with like loud music and banging and I mean I don't you know there's just not enough Advil in my world to put up with that but this was a striking thing to hear four part harmony and I loved it and I could sing any of the four parts and it was really fun and met some people in the church who were also part of the university it was very interesting and then I don't know probably at least six weeks later we were singing Psalm 119 portions of it obviously you sing all of Psalm 119 but it was line 56 and in the Psalter it was this is mine because forever all thy precepts I preserve and it's where David is talking about how even though he is a weak and sinful man he loves God's law and God's word more than anything else something happened after I sang those words and one was that I was in tune with the Holy Spirit enough to realize that I had just sung condemnation unto myself because this word was not mine I had hated it and despised it and trashed it I was not in God's law neither in heart or word or deed my partner and I were still together there wasn't any shift and so I thought for sure there must be a mistake here in the Psalter you know these wacky translations so I looked it up in the Bible and it got worse for me you know because the Bible said this has become mine and you know it really struck me that that helping verb has is a helping verb there has become I may be the only person converted by the use of a helping verb So, you know, Rachel Held Evans wrote a post about me called Not a Single Story. I'm still looking for somebody else who's been converted by Helping Verb, but maybe, maybe we, you know, we need some help there on that. But, you know, I, it really struck me that two years of struggling with this Bible really embodied the Helping Verb has. And it also struck me that a lot of people in the Bible had to struggle with identity with nationhood with hopes and dreams lost and dashed before they could claim those words also and so it was really in the context of that church moment that I realized that the Lord is real and the Lord is risen And the Lord has authority and holiness. Those are not new things, but what was new was this. That the Bible was a perfect, unified revelation of God. of who God is and it was also my one way highway to a holy God and it was really astounding for me to realize that I wanted to get on that highway. It's one thing to just acknowledge it and know it, read about it, study it, talk about it, but it was my undoing to realize that I wanted to be part of God's story for my life. And so there's really only one thing you have to do at that moment. And I always kid around about this because sometimes our churches can be so repressed. The guy whose back of the head I stared at for two years, he had no idea. right there's nothing but you know it was really later that week that I I decided I needed to know what real repentance was you know I was raised Catholic I know what confession means I know what it means to go to a priest and and confess your sins and have him absolve you of it but I had no idea what that meant now in the context of the Bible and so I went to Ken and I said okay I I'm in trouble and I need your help And this is what happened to me. And you would think he would say, okay, let's drop to your knees and repent of your sin. But he did not say that. He said the strangest thing. He said, were you baptized? He said, well, I'm Catholic. Of course I was baptized. He said, well, have you ever thought about your baptism? Have you ever repudiated it? I never thought about it. I was an infant. What are you talking about? Isn't this where you're supposed to tell me to drop to my knees and you're going to say the sinner's prayer with me? Ken never made it easy on me. He never made it easy on me. But it was really in the context of that that I learned that repentance really means well a couple of things but one is it really means simply that God was right all along and the only way that you can be ashamed then of the sin for which you need to repent is if you're very proud about it because all repentance means is that God was right all along and if God doesn't get to be right all along really, really who does? so that was a hard time two things happened one was what you call a comprehensive chaos as you had a number of commitments in your life to say the least right that were going to change and second you had a church that helped you through a comprehensive chaos. Could you speak very briefly about those things because there's been a lot of water under the bridge. Yeah, yeah well that was hard you know you confess your sin and you repent of your sin and the alarm rings and you swing your feet out of bed and they land and all the crap that you have. that you have created in your life so you know God definitely forgives you but you still have to face the world that you made one of the things I had to face was that it was my turn I was a recently you know recently tenured my turn to give the incoming address to all graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences that's a couple of thousand people and I was supposed to talk about queer theory and I realized I couldn't do it and so I wrote a lecture on Christian hermeneutics and I delivered that and you can imagine how well that went. If you came out before this is kind of like going back in or coming out as a Christian. It is no it was it was definitely it was definitely and then because I changed my field after tenure I had to go before an ethics board and defend that you know I had tenure so guess what they had to go with it but you know that was really hard but then there were maybe harder things I mean it's just hard to be publicly humiliated it's hard to become the example of what not to do it's hard to become the public idiot it's very hard but one of the things that was ever in my mind at this time was Romans 1 and one thing that the reality for me there's a lot in Romans 1 but one thing that was very powerful for me is the sense that if you cannot have God's blessing you will demand it of men and so it was almost like looking at the world through that lens was very helpful but the most difficult thing that happened was right around that time the time of giving the incoming address to graduate students one of my graduate students who was an international student and a lesbian had tried to commit suicide by putting herself on fire because I was her advisor it was like in loco parentis and so the hospital called and I had no idea what to do but I did know this she needed our lesbian community there and I needed my church community there and so for weeks the lesbian community and the church were interfacing in the hospital and then when it was time for my student to be released from the hospital where else would she go but Ken Smith's house and so it was a time of it was it was a very painful time where I was functioning a little bit like a bridge between these two communities and that was very hard and you know always very humbling always very humbling the joke in the book is that bridges get walked on bridges get walked on they do that's true I'd like to ask you some conclusions about your life lessons for us. And there is a picture of folks in the room, Christians who are trying to struggle to understand the real issues behind homosexuality and same-sex attraction and the things that you brought up tonight. and things that are beyond it and underneath it because the issues of sexuality are not the deep issues those are the result of other commitments yeah and that you know that's a big you know that's a that's the raging question right now isn't it what causes homosexuality and is it good or bad or morally neutral you know those are those are very hard questions and i would say too that if you even You couldn't happen right now because it's too politically charged. But back in my lesbian community, people would sort of talk about, hey, how did you get here? Sort of like we all talk in church. Hey, how did you get to this church? It was not uncommon for people in the lesbian community to say, what was your path to this? And I would say, I learned there, and I think it's still true, that sexuality is a bit, it's on a continuum. There are people who have a much more fixed notion of their sexuality than others. and for many of us sexuality is fluid and I think we see that especially in teenagers there's a lot of kind of misfiring and confusion and difficulty so I don't know I think that that seems sort of true to me now I would say for sure though that my experience of homosexuality was that it was not so much causal as it was consequential that it was not a root but a fruit that you know and this became important because for me at some point I did have to tackle my sexuality and what it was and what it meant and what it would mean to not to be the person I thought I was and it struck me that that anything that has an action has a motivator to it. Anything that is a verb has something that is prompting it. And so it seems to me that homosexuality, in terms of practice, I'm talking, you know, we're living in a day where you can't overqualify your words. So I'm talking about homosexual practice, right? You know, I was having sex with women because that's what I liked to do. And I had never thought that it was in any way morally inappropriate because, you know, you couldn't get sexually transmitted diseases and you couldn't get pregnant. So it seemed to me that I was good to go. and then I read the Bible a number of times and it struck me that if indeed I am God's that I don't get to lay claim over my sexuality that it gets to be God's also which was not a happy thought but it was just the reality and then that made me think about well what is the root of my homosexuality and for me it was pride and specifically the pride of not wanting any man to have authority over me and to not want to enter into what one of the lesbian scholars of my generation called compulsory heterosexuality it was the pride of simply wanting to exempt myself from patriarchy and you know that became sort of an interesting question because as soon as I came out as a Christian I had so many biblical feminists who wanted to mentor me. I mean it was kind of crazy. But you know I like to read and so that seemed to me okay I'm a feminist now I'm a Christian it would make sense that I would now be a biblical feminist that seemed obvious to me and so I started to read and here's where I got stuck. it seems to me that in order for biblical feminism to actually be a biblical exercise patriarchy had to be a sin that was a post fall experience in other words patriarchy had to come into the world after satan after the serpents because everything prior to the serpent entering into the garden was what? everything was good and see that's where I stuck that's where I had to and that was hard I just want you to know I'm talking about this like it's all very intellectual but it was very hard to not embrace biblical feminism because I spent my life really honing that particular aspect of my life but if patriarchy only came into a male headship only came into the world after the serpent then there would be no such thing as original sin because Adam's headship wouldn't have counted for anything and so that's where I was stuck I didn't like, I wasn't warm to this new reality, like so many things about my Christian life. But that's where I was stuck. So I think today though we need to acknowledge that just like there are many roads to our church, when you go to church this Lord's Day and you say, how did you get here? You're going to hear a hundred different stories. When you ask people in the gay and lesbian community, how did you get here? You can have a hundred different stories. And the question is, do we really believe there's a gospel road to each of their stories? Or only to some? And what do you do with people who say, I was born this way and I know it? Now, you know, when I say, yes, you were born this way and that's called original sin, I don't mean that in a dismissive way. I think sometimes it comes out in a dismissive way. But I was never somebody who at nine years old prayed that I would be a boy or at nine years old realized that I only had exclusive sexual desires for women. That was not in my world. But I know many people who feel that way. And the question is what is the gospel road? to the people who really feel that way, because that's a true representation of their reality. And if there is no gospel road, then we have no gospel. And here's the gospel road, here's what I believe to be the gospel road. You know, the reality is, God gives people certain afflictions. He does. God was sovereign over the serpents coming into the garden. You know, God didn't say, oh, how did that happen? he was sovereign over that and if you have friends for whom homosexual desire is abiding and binding daily reality that is a major cross to bear because not only does it come most people will tell you it's not the sex part at least people my age right? maybe not twenty something but most people will tell you that it isn't the thought that oh I will never as a Christian be allowed to have a godly sexual partner it's the loneliness it's the fear that I will always be alone and you know people if the church can't step into the paradigm of loneliness what good are we? so in some ways we need to think about this this is a first Corinthians 13 moment you know God no temptation will overcome you except for that for which God will give a way of escape common demand and way of escape but if the church is the way of escape But if we're just not open for business, maybe we're just too busy, but we're not there, then in some ways we're sort of, you know, we're adding, we're putting weight on the cross. You know, we know as Christians that if God is calling you to bear a cross, that the Lord Jesus himself promises to uphold the heavier part of it. But that doesn't give any license to Christians to lean heavy on it also. So I think that the issue of sexuality is multifaceted. I think, I know that in my case, my homosexuality was absolutely a consequence of my pride. And that it was, you know, my, it required a pretty rigorous repentance. What seems to be an unending rigorous repentance. but we have to leave room for the fact that people are different and while I might not like back to my kitchen in Syracuse my friend Jay said I prayed that God would heal me but he didn't at some point Jay and I parted ways because I moved we never stopped being friends but we sort of lost each other in a move but we disagreed about something it seemed to me that we're called to repent of our sins even sins that kind of crop up like a hiccup even involuntary reactions and Jay really felt differently that no that's not a sin and so we really parted ways that way and so I think it's a hard conversation to have with people And I don't think any of us want to feel like we are the poster child for a particularly difficult sin. I don't think any of us want to feel that way. But there is great liberty, right? It's called repentance unto life for a reason. So one of the challenges that I think we have is just simply to remember that people are not positions. You may have people in your life who are holding on to this idea, I am not in sin, I was born this way. and you know as a church we can just say well I'm sorry you know bad theology I don't buy it done you know or we can come up alongside people shoulder to shoulder and work that out over the long haul of friendship and I think the church desperately needs to do that I think we desperately need to come up alongside people maybe especially the people that we are tempted to be most critical of and work these things out over the long haul of friendship. I had a roommate who after some months came to me one night and broke his heart about uh what he had been struggling with and um i i said some some words of encouragement as he was a christian and he was the happiest guy in the world and um next day uh his his um I have read in your book about what to say to people and about how Ken stressed that he didn't approve of me as a lesbian but he accepted me as a lesbian and didn't approve of me and it is so hard to convince people of the critical distinction that we love them but we don't approve can you give us any help because we all are wrestling with that yeah that's really hard and while I didn't feel that Ken approved of me as a lesbian I very much felt that he affirmed me as a human being and one of the challenges is we become we can become kind of sucker punched in the current vocabulary of our day especially sexual orientation when people declare this is my sexual orientation you know in part that's almost a little bit like when I came out as a lesbian that's going to kind of shut you up right close the conversation but you know ultimately as Christians we are focused on soul orientation and for all the ways that Ken and I disagreed and we disagreed and you know Ken is still alive and we still disagree on things may I tell you that so we you know we disagreed but I never felt that he but let me put it in the positive I always knew that he had my soul orientation in mind and so it's important to not you know Ken respected me but not too much You know a little bit like I have a daughter who is 8 and like most 8 year old girls she is convinced if she gets a boo boo that she has a broken leg and I am amazed how a frozen band aid will fix that you know how quickly but you know there is something to be said for our lack of ability to diagnose ourselves. So I came to Ken with a particular diagnosis and Ken just didn't believe it. it doesn't mean he believed I was straight or whatever he just believed I was a soul that would last forever and that's where he was going to really hunker down with me so as much as I would try to get him to debate me he wouldn't do it he just wouldn't do it and I asked him later I said you know you wouldn't debate me I asked you point blank at one point do you think homosexuality is a sin and you never really you just totally changed the subject on me he said yeah he said I did he said you weren't listening why would I give you why would I talk if you're not listening you know so it was a you know it's sort of an interesting thing that when you are a sole carer for someone you're going to let some offenses slide you will be willing to be offended for the cause of Christ you're not going to care about winning the argument because if you do there's just going to be another argument that pops up after that but one of the challenges I think that we have is we do know that sexual sin has a certain predatory part to it and I don't mean that I'm not talking about homosexual sexual sin I mean sexual sin it's predatory for people who are struggling with internet pornography you know that at a certain point you lost the game and that's because sexual sin won't stop until it kills that's what a predator does and so at least I have experienced that talking to people who are sexually active apart from the creation ordinance of marriage who are sexually active and are in love it's like talking to a room full of drunks you cannot get someone's attention on that subject because it's too precious, it's too near, it's too dear and they feel their life depends upon it. But there are other things you can talk about. Ken Smith and I really did not spend any time Nor would we. I mean, it's sort of absurd. I remember one time on the radio, someone said, well, how did Ken talk to you about, you know, lesbian sexuality? And I just thought, ah, you know, are you insane? He talked to me about the things that mattered most. But he knew that was a topic that was just off limits. And that's perhaps why you and your roommate couldn't talk about that. Because that's off limits. You know, people will kill for their sexual idols. But that doesn't mean that you don't have a gospel road into their lives. So we have to think about that as Christians. Do we really believe that you have to be all cleaned up before I'm going to share the gospel with you? See, because that's sort of what we're saying. We're saying, well, you know, I don't know. It's too much. I think we have to be careful about that. I don't think we believe that, but sometimes we act like we do. I have some further questions, but I think maybe I'll save a few questions toward the end and maybe give the audience the time to ask questions and answers. We do have a microphone over here set up. and I would also like, we are going to receive an offering for Rosaria for the psalm book ministry that you are receiving also and if y'all would like to contribute then this goes to her anybody who would like to comment, ask a question, please do so from the microphone so everybody can hear and we'll start taking questions now. And please don't be shy. You know, ask raw questions. Don't ask good questions. And while they're thinking of their question, I'll ask one of mine. How about that? Okay. You say in the book that they brought the church to you. They didn't bring you to church. They didn't even invite you to church. For two years, they brought the church to you. What does that mean? Well, I asked Ken, you know, after a couple of years. I said, you know, you never invited me to church. Was I top liver? What was up with that? You just did not invite me to church. He said, I knew that was just, you know, you would feel like a project. And he said, in some ways, I didn't know how that would fly. You know, I really did not know how that would work. but the ways that he brought the church to me were this there is something called the means of grace that we talk about the means of grace, bible reading, prayer communion of the saints, union with Christ and there are other things that flow out of that repentance unto life How in the world would anybody, not raised in a Christian home, not affiliated with a church in any way, how would anybody know what those things are or if they exist if you don't manifest them in front of someone? And so that's what Ken did. Ken opened up his Christian life. When he repented of sin in front of me, that blew my mind. That was totally, it was not cleaned up at all. That was unbelievable. While he didn't invite me to church, his house was like a libri. It was the ultimate open door and members of his church were there and they'd have their Bibles out and they'd be talking and they weren't careful. you know they weren't careful they weren't they weren't acting as though the bible were this museum piece you know under glass I remember somebody spilling coffee on a bible and you know me thinking oh you know and people are like oh yeah I hear that happens all the time you know now what were you saying about so and so you know and that was just astounding to me you know that's how my people talk that's how my people engaged with ideas so that's how he brought the church to me he transparently exposed the means of grace that he could and revealed that he was living under the power of God essentially isn't the question I came here tonight planning to ask you but as you were talking I kept coming back and being curious. You talked about Jay and how that was kind of a defining moment in that conversation and how you noticed something in you. I kept thinking though, you haven't said too much about how your partner at the time reacted to all this and if she noticed anything in you. That's what I'm kind of curious, what she noticed and what she said. Yeah, oh man, it's getting warm. I'm going to take my jacket off here. Okay, my partner is a Cornell trained psychologist. Twelve years older than I was. She had a lot to say. And none of it could be repeated in front of a Christian audience. She thought I was crazy. She just thought I was losing my mind. She thought the tenure thing had just broken me. And that I was just, you know, I was crazy. I will tell you though about Jay. And I'll tell you about the lesbian community. People really stuck with me. It wasn't like, oh you became a Christian, you're a pariah. We don't want to deal with you. I had people come to church with me. When my student was recovering in the pastor's house, we were all there. It was amazing. God's common grace. is a powerful thing and sometimes Christians really trip over that in the gay and lesbian community they say but you know my lesbian neighbors are the most faithful people on the block you know they've been together 35 years everybody else is getting divorced after 10 and and oh no you know kind of like that's an image problem for Christians you know we should be thankful for God's common grace I'm thankful for God's common grace now that's not the only conversation to have but you know that's not such a bad thing Jay came to church with me once and you know that really put people out of their comfort zone because Jay has one of the most beautiful bass voices around and you know I did I had a deacon in the church come up to me and say well we prayed for your radical conversion but if we had known if we had known what it would have meant I don't know that I would have been paying quite as faithfully but you know that just raises questions do we meet people where they're at or not you know or do we say oh you got to get cleaned up here you know I have a brother who is gay and we we were both raised in the same household and raised the same and completely different walks of life but what would you sometimes I wonder how far I should go in my conversations with him on his personal life because he knows as you were saying he knows where we don't approve of his lifestyle but we you know accept him for who he is but do you have any guidelines of do I engage him in his personal life or do I just let that go? Yeah that is a very very good question you know I one of the things that Ken Smith did that was so I think revolutionary is he realized that being a lesbian was actually not the biggest sin in my life. In some ways what people in the gay and lesbian community want you to believe is that this is the most important thing about me. Love me, love my dog. Take it or leave it. And Ken just didn't buy that. I don't know. Ken just didn't buy it. He really believed that being an unbeliever was the biggest sin in my life and that's always where we were and we were in the gospels and in the epistles and in the psalms and that's always where we were because he also really believed as Romans says that it is the kindness of God that leads people to repentance I believe that God's elect people are everywhere including the gay and lesbian community and I think we need to treat people like that that doesn't mean that we baptize a sin or sanction it but I'm a pastor's wife and pastor's wives always have to do a little bit of conflict management mostly with myself and my mouth but sometimes with other people as well and if this Lord say you get up and you go to church and you say everything that's on your mind about everybody else in church how will that go for you? that will not go very well so I think in some ways it's fine to use the same modesty of speech that you would with your gay and lesbian loved ones and neighbors and family so that you can really major on the majors now the challenge is that we have too many churches that have denied Christ and so that becomes an added dimension but as you share the gospel you share the real gospel you know one thing that really struck me early on in the church we got to I think we were in Luke take up your cross daily and I said to Ken you know I said why did I have to give up the girlfriend you know what do you guys have to give up? and he said I don't know why don't you go ask people So I went around and I said, okay, I'm supposed to give up my girlfriend. Why don't you give up to be here? And you know, people said things that were astounding to me. And it really made me realize that true believers gave up their lives, not just their sexuality or, you know, this or that, but true believers have given up their lives for faith. in Jesus and that Jesus gave up his life for you to have the gift of that faith and so that was very powerful for me because it all seemed to me like Christians were just very cleaned up people you know some people just kind of slid in to the world view and the others just kind of some of us just kind of bumped out but I would say focus on the gospel It sort of dovetails into that because you've talked a lot about the gospel road and loving and how would you respond to a situation where, I mean I have a family member that is now saying he's gay, but he's very much a still believer. He's not in a church right now because he's having a hard time finding a church that he feels comfortable in. But his main thought and kind of as he's trying to defend his lifestyle is well I still have a conscience and this is not burdening me but I still have a conscience about a lot of other things and I have to say he's of all the fruit and spirit he probably exhibits them more than a lot of other people I know. and that's the other thing, you shall know them by their fruit and Christ said that but that's sort of his argument so that's been a really touchy thing so how do I relate to you because I have sort of gone the love route because I want to maintain the relationship but what's your advice? I like the love route because the love route also gives you the elbow route. You see, it's only when you're really in a relationship of love can you offer a rebuke. And I think that's something that we really need to think about here. I'm not saying that you need to rebuke him, but I'm just saying that the context of the strength of your words should always match the intensity of your relationship with this person. So if you, you know, you must. Now there are a couple of things. One is that there are a group of people who will call themselves gay Christians but they are celibate. And so it is confusing because everybody is using the same word. How do you know? But I would say that if you feel a deep and abiding orientation to people of the same sex it's an affection but occasionally it pops up as a lust and as a desire but you are a faithful Christian and in the name of Christ you mortify that desire you sacrifice that desire for Christ and for Christ in you but if that's the case and I say you are a hero of the faith and not only are you a hero of the faith but you may be the safest person in my church having same sex desires does not make you an unsafe person if you know how to deal with them but not knowing what your sin pattern is and letting it rip apart your church not so good but if you are saying that you have a high view of scripture you have a high view of scripture but you know that God made you this way and you feel entitled to act on your sexuality in spite of both the positive and the negative witness in the Bible and the reason is because although you have a high view of scripture you also have a very high view of your own fruit this is what I would say to you as an English professor for years I have known many many people who had a very high view of Shakespeare but if you cannot scan a sonnet for iambic pentameter you have low literacy you may have a high view and low literacy and you know sadly it is not just people who are stumbling around with their own you know it is very hard to stand between your desire and a holy God but I would say we have way too many Christians stumbling around who have a high view of scripture and a very low literacy and I say shame on us because the reason that some of these heretical ideas even got any air time is because we don't know how to stop it so you know I would say it's appropriate to feel care and sadness and grief over the difficulty of being a young person But ultimately the fruit of the spirit is only an extension of the fruit of faith. And faith is always connected to repentance. Repentance unto life. So, Psalm 66, 18 says, if you cherish iniquity in your heart, the Lord will not listen. Importantly, that Psalm does not say, you know, if you have a sinful heart, the Lord will not listen. Because, you know, we would all be dead. There are two kinds of sinners, right? Redeemed ones and unredeemed ones. So, we'd be dead. But if you cherish it, and that's the problem with the gay rights agenda in the context of the church right now. It's an agenda based on cherishing a particular sin. and so it takes much wisdom and much prayer probably of the prayer and fasting kind it takes much sacrificial relationships real relationships don't lose your loved ones this is not a battle of the wits this is not high school debate team you are called to shake the gates of heaven for your loved ones. And the issue is faith. Don't kid yourself. The issue is not sex. It's not sexuality. It's faith in Christ. It's real faith in Christ. So hang in there. We're buzzing. So several people have come here struggling with same sex attractions and other things. Maybe talking about them as we've done so far, is there something you'd like to say to them? Well, as I've said, anybody who is struggling with a desire that is so innate that it just feels like life, feels like breathing. But you are committed to struggling in Christ. I firmly believe that you are a hero of the faith. and I would say that there's a temptation especially with the kind of polarizing language that we hear today there's a temptation to feel that it's not safe to tell people how you feel and that maybe you're just not safe and I would like to say that you need to resist both of those you need to tell people in your church that you're struggling because your struggle matters because you're part of the body and you're valued and people need to know who you are and where you're coming from but also because and it's not a shame to realize this you have certain vulnerabilities and fears that other people don't have It's not the same. I've heard often, well, it's just like other single Christians in the church. But it's really not. You know, because other single Christians in the church might someday get married. Right? Other single Christians in the church might someday have this isolation break. So, it is not fair to ask you to try to craft this life all by yourself that's where the body comes in so I want you to tell people in your church maybe not make it a I don't mean you should put it in the bulletin or something but make sure folks know who you are because they love you and they want to know who you are but the other thing is to realize that your desires do not make you unsafe you are not an unsafe friend You must have, we all must have friendships in the church with people who are of our same sex and gender. You are not unsafe because occasionally these boundaries get broken down. You know, I am a homeschool mom. Do you have any idea how bad homeschool mom boundaries are? I mean, I don't mean to sound like a crazy lady, but you know, there's a lot of bad boundaries. And that's not a bad, that doesn't mean that we're not safe with each other. It means you, you know, you back up, you repent of your sin, you go back, it's business as usual. Now, if you feel that you are sexually acting out, it isn't just at the level of feeling, but it's at practice, you urgently must tell someone. You urgently must tell someone because someone has to hold your ankles as you're dangling over the cliff. You know I'm part of a pretty small church and in the last three months we've had two horrific discipline cases both involving sex crimes both you know good married men but you know what neither of these sex crimes happened you know a month ago or two months ago they were three decades in the making Because that's how it goes. So if you are sexually acting out, guess what? You are in the safest place in the world to tell somebody. You are in the safest place in the world to tell somebody. And I would strongly recommend that you pick your pastor, your elders, somebody who is responsible for your soul before God. Don't play it safe. You might as well just go for the broke right now. You didn't show up here for nothing. But if we are just talking about a way of being, a way of feeling, a homosocial preference, you are not unsafe. You are not even abnormal. I am sorry to tell you that. There is really nothing, there is no sin. I was amazed the first time I read through the Bible how much more gracious the Bible is about sin than Christians. You know, the sin of homosexuality in the Bible is not the feeling or the temptation, it's the practice. Now yes, there's a relationship between feelings and practice, so you want to be mindful. But one of the things that being a Christian who struggles with homosexuality, one of the things it does is it makes you very wise. It makes you very careful. It makes you very capable of looking out for other people. And at least for me, one of the theologians that really helped me understand things was John Owen and he has this category of sin he does it actually Romans 7, 17 it's not I who sin but sin in me but he talks about indwelling sin he says what happens when the robber is in the house and you're there with him what do you do? So I think, let me tell you what he says to do. I guess I should answer the question. He says number one, starve him. And how do you starve the sin that's in your house? You feed on the word of God. But number two is don't isolate. Don't lock the doors and stay there. And the last thing you do not want to do is call it something else. I know too many people, and it's very tempting to do with sexual sin. You call it fluffy and you buy it a collar and a leash, and three months later when it's a tiger and it eats you alive, you're like, whoa, how'd that happen? So don't kid yourself. I think we all tend to think that we're in charge. But sin loves isolation. But here's the thing, church. It is an enormous thing to ask somebody to do these things. What I just asked people to do is quite frankly impossible if the church doesn't change. Because when should somebody do this? At the potluck that is A to N bring a covered dish and M to Z bring a... When? When can people actually bare their heart when everything is so programmed? when every facet of our Christian life is so perfectly calculated how can anybody truly bare their souls in something like that nobody but Christians would call that community most people would call that slavery so there is simply no room in your Christian world for people to just tell you the truth then you're part of the problem and the other thing the church needs to do is to really think about how you're talking about gay and lesbian issues there's a particular way right now that I'm starting to hear the church talk and I do not like it I have been asked personally by someone when the yuck factor about homosexuality finally hit me upside the head I have read blog posts where pastors are portraying gay sex scenes so that the Christian church will be disgusted and horrified and this is the gag reflex that's supposed to bring us all together Now I understand where that tactic comes from. It comes in part from abortion activism. You know, show the problem for what it is. But let me tell you something that happens when you start painting those sex scenes powerfully. Everybody in your church who's struggling knows nobody can talk to you. Alright, you have just now painted yourself as the most unsafe person in the church and if you're the pastor, God forbid. But the other thing that's going to happen is people like me are going to read that and I'm going to get all spun out I'm going to get all wigged out about my own past sins and about what it means and if I've really repented of it and then you're going to get a whole group of folks in the church who are going to guess what get turned on by that because it's pornography and so the Christian needs to not use pornography in talking about this and I've seen it much too much does anybody else know what I'm talking about? you're like wow Rosaria what world are you in? I guess I could send you some blog posts or I could send you some of my emails that would be nice but you just have to be careful be careful about be careful in your presumption that we're all on the same page as Christians we're all on the same team alright we're all on the same team and is marriage by God's design? absolutely But that doesn't mean that everybody is designed for marriage. Be careful, be careful that when you're talking you're remembering that there are people who feel differently than you do. The first time I read through Romans 1 and it talks about unnatural. I was really wigged out by that. Some people study the Renaissance like I do. We just love symmetry. I don't know what to say. I love symmetry. It's part of the Renaissance ideal. Some people are more classical in their understanding. They like asymmetry. What is unnatural? about homosexuality is that God declares it so. Quite frankly people God forbid my feelings become the arbiter of that and yours as well. Now it is a wonderful thing that God as he justifies you he sanctifies you and it is a wonderful thing to see to see your life being unburdened by some of the sin patterns of your past. But even sanctification is not something that is unilaterally dispensed equally across every Christian. We know that. That doesn't mean that we're not saved. In fact, it should suggest that we should have great compassion. So I think the church has to be set up for a couple of things. One is to really minister to people who have come out of homosexuality but are heterosexually married and want very much to live faithfully. I think the church also needs to think very strategically about how to step into the lives of celibate single people who are struggling with homosexuality and to realize that's a different population than all the other singles. And if the church isn't intentional about these things then we can't ask people to come to us because we're not trustworthy. We don't have anything to say. Just in reading about your experience at Wheaton, the Harvard of Christianity I guess, and I guess I was kind of disturbed by you know the culture there that there is you know that culture too and I didn't know how much you were speaking on Christian campuses and are you finding what you found at Wheaton yeah well for those of you who don't know I was at Wheaton in January and I was staying with my very dear friend Christopher Yuan and his family he wrote a book called Out of a Far Country and it's so much better than my book you really just have to read that book and we were praying in the family van before you know chapel I was to give a chapel address and you know Christopher looks up and he said oh wow you know there must be somebody on campus today there's a protest organizing on the chapel steps and I said oh wow I wonder who's on campus today you know and it's you know it's January in Chicago and I'm also thinking wow these students are hardy you know what I mean like nobody in North Carolina would be standing out there in a blizzard So we're kind of snooping, we kind of move the car up. Christopher says, Rosaria, your name is on those placards. So I went up and I shook their hands. I have had protesters before and I always make a time to meet with protesters afterwards. So I say, hi, nice to meet you. These are the most beautiful placards I have ever seen. I am an old Marxist. I remember what it was like to do these. It looks like you bought them at the pottery barn. I mean, you know, the Harvard of the Midwest. Well, there's a well-known biblical feminist who's funding protests against me on college campuses as part of the not a single story story. So I had, you know, they were very gracious. They had really a quiet, it wasn't really a protest. It was a demonstration, about a hundred students demonstrating. I invited them to meet with me afterwards and we arranged a room to do that and we had a wonderful time of talk and I learned about a real safety issue going on on campus that was serious enough that I had to dispatch somebody to get the ombud and you know we argued we did I mean not you know vocally but we disagreed you know we disagreed about what original sin meant that's very important by the way because in Hebrews the elementary principles well they're not elementary anymore so we disagreed about what original sin meant we disagreed about how to parse those scripture verses but ultimately I left that conversation realizing that you cannot put the hand of the hurting into the hand of the Savior without getting close enough to get hurt but I will tell you that I am not welcome on Christian campuses so immediately after that blew up I was disinvited. My speaking, my dance card got a little lighter. So that's, you know, that's where we are. That's where we are. I also spoke at the University of South Florida. RUF invited me there. And, you know, that's of course on YouTube. And there were protesters there. But, you know, every time I have protesters, you have the opportunity to share the gospel in a different way. Especially if they're going to meet with you afterwards. But it definitely has posed a security issue for me because I'm a mom. The reality is that it's already a sacrifice to leave and be here. But I have to think about those things. Thank you so much for coming. I have two questions. My name is Kendra. I'm a doctoral student in marriage and family therapy. So I work with a variety of presenting problems and teach students and also deal with this with my colleagues quite a bit. And that's my biggest concern right now is as I'm moving forward in a professional field that does not embrace my conservatism or my truths that I cling to. You said that when Ken wrote that letter to you there were things that provoked you and made you think and question and I'm just wondering if there's a couple questions or ideas that I could convey to people. Convincing doesn't work. I've realized that. Oh yeah. And I just I want to have something that sits with people that isn't offensive but just gets them thinking. Right, right, right. You know the most important thing and I'm so glad that you're in the field that you are in. You know sometimes we just Christians are such hand wringers right? We say oh you know What a terrible world we're in. We're supposed to thank God for the times that we are in. God is in the circumstances. And I'm grateful when I hear that there are Christians in fields that are well known to be anti-Christian. And the reason is because the ground zero thing that Christians are called to do is to steward God's ideas. And if you don't, someone else will. and not very well but the most disarming thing you can do is be close enough to people to be their friends that is very disarming and I think Christians often feel that where do I draw the line well I don't know that you have to draw a line I'm not quite sure at least my lesbian friends don't really ask me nobody asks me to approve gay and lesbian issues because it's all over the place the approval rating is high and Christians are on the losing team and you know what? Christians do better when we're on the losing team we do so horribly when we're winning we're proud and we're arrogant and we pompously stomp around about morality but when we're losing We're prayerful, and we're humble, and we're repentful. And, you know, we pray for a revival. We pray that we would be a host for the Holy Spirit. Well, pompous stomping around is not going to do it. So, you know, I think that you need to do exactly what you're doing. You know, you're in the field. You are engaged in dialogue with people but I think it's also appropriate to be thoughtful about the sacred cows in your field and at least when I was a graduate student you got big kudos for pointing out elephants in living rooms so I think in your field it's quite appropriate to be mindful about the way that this category sexual orientation has taken on so much hegemony and at least I'm a student of ideas of the history of ideas you know that term came from the 19th century from Freud as a clear replacement to the soul and even if you want to hang your hat on it and I don't want to hang my hat on it but even if you want to as a Christian you have to realize that it's part of the flesh two things are eternal things will survive to the new heavens and the new earth the souls of people and the word of God so I would just say don't lose heart have Christians pray for you get to know other biblical counselors who can pray for you also but don't feel like you're in the wrong place because you're all alone that God has put you there for such a time as this but get your church to pray for you and don't be afraid to make friends and don't be afraid to examine the idols every academic and intellectual discipline has a set of idols as a Christian you are not called to bow to those so think about what they are really think about that And I have a second question. This is a little bit different because we haven't talked about politics but there are plenty of Christians who say this is not my fight, I don't want to judge, this is an essential, something I want to care about. Do you feel like there's a role in political activism against gay rights or do you feel like this is a gospel movement and that side needs to be pushed away? Yeah, that's funny. I was speaking at Family Research Council a week before DOMA came out. and I had all these folks saying I can't go on Capitol Hill and share the gospel they'll stone me and I had to say well you know you gave me two bodyguards to talk to you because obviously you thought maybe there would be a problem you know don't waste your stoning see that's the thing if you want to go into politics don't waste it if you want to go into politics and I would add to that if you want to be the Christian president of well-known evangelical colleges have a little reformers deal about it you know I mean come on people the reformers knew that heads were going to roll and it was going to start with them and if you want to go into politics know what you're taking on but ultimately hearts and minds are not one But here's where it becomes an issue. I was speaking at a large, very large, well-known church and after the church the sweetest little old lady came up to me in her late 70s and she said, Rosaria, thank you, I've read your book. I just want you to know I've been lesbian partnered for 50 years. I have children and grandchildren. I have finally heard the gospel and my life is falling apart. Now, people, when I talk to this woman, the blood is on my hands. I know that. I authored, co-authored the first domestic partnership policy at Syracuse. I was an advocate for gay rights in these ways. The blood is on my hands. What I say to Christians is you don't want to be me right now. It is not the job of a Christian to put a roadblock between an image bearer of a holy God and God himself. And that's what bad laws do. So somewhere between those realities, you have to think it through yourself. These are callings that God will give you. But if you're going to be stoned to death for sharing the gospel, don't waste your stoning. Make it good. you know Stephen made it good and I'm not you know I think we're heading towards persecution you know at least at least I know I am you've been a nice group but you know I look at my calendar and it's not looking so pretty so you know you believe the God you believe in and I think that people will respect that and regard that but I'm quite frankly you know sick up to here with these you know Christian college presidents who think that they're going to come out smooth by not taking a stance because God will not bless that and it will blow up and it's already blowing up and anytime I hear a college say I'm the Harvard of the evangelical world I say I'm just going to go to Harvard then because you got nothing We're going to be finishing up promptly at 9 o'clock, so if you do have any questions left, now is the time. I will ask a couple in the interim here, since Bill is at the microphone. Some of the common questions that come up in Christian circles, in the newspaper, were people born this way? way how does a quick what would you say in response to that? I would say I believe that that's probably true I don't I'm not shocked by that and I would say that that's original sin original sin says that we are all born this way the problem is this means something different but we are all born with a not just a predilection not just an inclination not just a you know likely we're going to goof up kind of you know it's not an attitudinal problem original sin is a constitutional problem and I believe God is even sovereign over that now let me say too that I also believe that in Psalm 19 we talk about Lord keep me from my willful sins and my hidden sins Some sins are willful, we act on them. Others are just there, they're just part of our fiber. And we have a different kind of relationship to those sins. And so I think we want to be careful that for some, we have many examples of sexual brokenness, which might not necessarily be sexual sin. So we don't have to be reactionary about this. Were you born that way? Yes, you were. You are, and if God has truly impressed that upon you, you may be a leader in your church to help other people understand that too. I can't believe how many people do not believe and do not know about how deep original sin is. And so that's important. There are also biological factors. Intersexuality is not a sin. Intersexuality is being born with both male and female genitalia. That is a medical condition. And we would just do well to stop calling, don't add that to the transgender category. It doesn't belong there. It's a medical condition. So I don't think we have to be defensive. about the fact that issues of biology and environment and hormones will affect people's sexuality but that doesn't mean there's not a gospel road to that person and that doesn't mean that is determinative of who you are. See that's what really gets to me. makes me very sad that we've created a whole population of people who believe that that is who they are who you are is an image bearer of a holy God in knowledge and righteousness and holiness set apart from before the foundations of the world and in glory there will be no struggle like this In a word, what you were born is not really the issue, but being born again is the real need. Absolutely, but that doesn't discount the remaining sin and also the shame of it or the inability to talk about it in a world that's so polarized. God forbid that the church allows the world to determine how we're going to talk about homosexuality, but too often that's not the case. Yes, I have two questions. One is quite brief, I think. What is your organization and what did we just take an offering for? It wasn't clear to me at all. You know, I'm not, I am a, I go to different places and I speak and when I do that often people will pay me to do that and I also donate a portion of what I give to some ways of providing the salsa to other churches that might need them. So we are psalm singers by denominational conviction. My press, the press that I publish with, Crown and Covenant, publishes psalters and secret thoughts of an unlikely convert. And so it's a bit of a joke that my book has gotten the denomination out of psalter debts. So I was recently speaking at a church with some pastors who considered themselves kind of hipster pastors and they told me that the only debt their denomination had was skinny jeans debts and I didn't know what that was. My second question is if you would address the topic of what's called reparative therapy. Oh I'd be happy to. And I have this book Portraits of Freedom 14 people who came out of homosexuality published by Inner Varsity several years ago and now it seems like since then with a whole folding of exodus it seems like since then even the Christian community is saying no that couldn't happen those people didn't really change there is no hope of changing so what do you think about that? we have a couple of questions there can God change you? well God always changes you if you are a new creature in Christ you have been changed Does that necessarily mean that your deep abiding patterns of sin and selfhood and desire will be changed in your gospel conversion? No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Because you know what? We are sanctified differentially and praise God in glory, we are good to go. The people will struggle with all manner of sin. The gospel calls us to holy sexuality. That is either chastity apart from marriage or heterosexual marriage. So the gospel doesn't call us to heterosexuality. It calls us to chastity or heterosexual marriage. And we would do really well to be clear on that. I am speaking at a large convention and the organizer gave me, hey would you speak on the subject my conversion out of homosexuality and I said no I will not speak on that subject because I was not converted out of homosexuality I was converted out of unbelief and then God started to work with me but you know what That year, the year of my conversion, if somebody had come up to me and tapped me and said, Rosaria, how do you feel? Isn't it great? Don't you just feel great? You must not feel like a lesbian anymore. I would have crumpled to the floor. But fortunately I was in a church where people said, you know Rosaria, guess what? You don't measure up. That's because Christ measures up in you. And for years, that was where I was. And that was fine. And if I had died in those years, I would be Christ. So, I love the way Christopher Yuan puts it. He says, you know, God is able but not obligated to change your sexual patterns. And I think it depends upon how deep they go. Alright, you know, I do a lot of counseling as a pastor's wife. It's not just the homosexuality that creates patterns of nagging, agony in people's lives. So, you know, we are, I like the way Sam Alberry says it, it's not just that we're all sinners, we're all sexual sinners. The problem with reparative therapy is that it is a kind of hyper over-actualized eschatology by believing that once converted you are fully changed in this area. And by thinking that since homosexuality is a sin, heterosexuality must be sanctifying. I counsel many more people with heterosexual sins than homosexual sins, even though I am who I am. So the other problem with reparative therapy so not only is it over actualized eschatology and what I mean by that is it's like it's a gospel that is the prosperity gospel according to sexuality and you know what don't buy it theology is terrible but here is where it's really bad Here's where the reparative therapy theology gets really bad. How do you repent of a sin? Repentance, at least according to the Bible, is a gift from God. It is simply not something that will be manufactured in group therapy. Now, what about our loved ones who are really on the fence? because they do not want to repent of their sin because this sin feels like life itself. Well, we could send them to group therapy and something will happen. But it might not be repentance. We would be better off to be shoulder to shoulder with them and really shake the gates of heaven for the gift of repentance to be given to them. You know, Exodus International became a real easy way to streamline the problem. Oh, you're gay? They'll fix you up right there. Now I know some people who really benefited from Exodus, but I know about a hundred more who were totally devastated by it and who were told that you must clearly not really be a Christian because your feelings haven't changed. So I wrote, I've only written two blog pieces in my life, I'm never going to do another because they always get me in trouble. But I did say, I did Exodus International, good riddance. This is the church's job, this is not the parachurch's job. And if you add the parachurch and wacky psychology, Satan is all over that and he loves it. So I think it's good. I mean, I'm sad that a lot of gospel integrity, you know, that's always the problem when good Christians give the nod, give the handshake. to bad organizations is a lot of gospel integrity just goes through the roof and then you do get to a situation where you say wow I guess nobody changes and then I get emails that say wow you are either what was I called recently you are either a neck up lesbian or you are a grin and bear it wife You must just be a dupe from the political machine. And so it is really sad. It's sad because God calls you and then he eclipses you. And during that season it's a kind of scary time, right? But that's where the church needs to come up beside people. not the parachurch you know Christ did not drop one drop of blood for the parachurch that includes our Christian colleges which have become idols of many Christian generations and these kind of parachurch ministries and I just pray that the church would rise up in the rubble of all of this so can God change people absolutely in fact that's what it means to be born again But will we struggle with all manner of sin? Yes. Will that include sexual sins for some? Absolutely. Does that answer your question? Yes. Ms. Aria, thank you so much for being with us tonight. It's 9 o'clock and I know you're driving back to Durham this evening so we're going to close it on time and I have to say a very brief, quick goodbye to her because she's going to be running out the door. She's going to be kicking out the door. I think that we're all done for this evening. As I mentioned earlier, if you want to pick up a copy of her book, it is at crowdingcovenants.org or com. I can't remember which it is. I think it's actually both. One of those. And it's on Amazon, and I brought a bunch of free copies. All right. You can make good friends with her. No, I'm going to hand them to you guys. If you want a study guide for that, at redeemerofblacksburg.org, our church's website, redeemerofblacksburg.org, you'll find a free study guide I put together with 10 lessons on it, and discuss the issues as you go through the Bible. And it's probably longer than the book. Thank you, thank you so much. We'll close with a brief prayer then. Father in heaven, we long to manifest again the greatness and the holiness, the goodness and love of Christ. To know it, to be changed by it, to cling to it. Sometimes it is a struggle for life and death for people. And so we pray for all those who go through such struggles that we discussed tonight. And we pray for your grace to be with them and for your church to support them and love them. And we pray for those who are far away that they should come and to be reconciled and to know that they likewise are loved, forgiven, washed clean, and given a position better than sons and daughters. We pray for Rosaria for her coming weeks and months of extra ministry on top of the regular things that she's doing in church and with her family. We pray that you would give her strength and joy in the work. And we thank you so much for the time that we could enjoy this evening in this conversation. In you, in Christ's name, amen.