Join us each Sunday at 10:30am, In-person or via Livestream!

We are the people of the book. The book, of course, is the Bible. Not books about the Bible. Not books that tell stories about people who are trying to follow the Bible. Not books about fictional characters that relate their lives to the Bible somehow. All these a good (I may be cringing a bit here) but they cannot be substitutes for gold. The Bible is a supernatural book, understood by supernatural enabling (1 Corinthians 2), for supernatural transformation that cannot happen any other way. Being "lost" in the text, in the same way, but very different, that we become lost in a novel or a movie or an adventure down the Amazon river. Of course, the adventure of the sons and daughters of God, as they traverse the pages of Scripture has no equal in this life. We are delving into the mysteries of godliness, the mystical depths of trinitarian salvation, the rescue of our own souls from God's justice. May we be people of the book! And Rosaria Butterfield understands it well.

You Are What—and How—You Read | The Gospel Coalition

By Rosaria Butterfield

I just returned from a well-known (and well-heeled) Christian college, where roughly 100 demonstrators gathered on the chapel steps to protest my address on the grounds that my testimony was dangerous. Later that day, I sat down with these beloved students, to listen, to learn, and to grieve. Homosexuality is a sin, but so is homophobia; the snarled composition of our own sin and the sin of others weighs heavily on us all. I came away from that meeting realizing—again—how decisively our reading practices shape our worldview. This may seem a quirky observation, but I know too well the world these students inhabit. I recall its contours and crevices, risks and perils, reading lists and hermeneutical allegiances. You see, I'm culpable. The blood is on my hands. The world of LGBTQ activism on college campuses is the world that I helped create. I was unfaltering in fidelity: the umbrella of equality stretching to embrace my lesbian identity, and the world that emerged from it held salvific potential. I bet my life on it, and I lost.

Rosaria-ButterfieldRosaria ButterfieldWhen I started to read the Bible it was to critique it, embarking on a research project on the Religious Right and their hatred against queers, or, at the time, people like me. A neighbor and pastor, Ken Smith, became my friend. He executed the art of dying: turning over the pages of your heart in the shadow of Scripture, giving me a living testimony of the fruit of repentance. He was a good reader—thorough, broad, and committed. Ken taught me that repentance was done unto life, and that abandoning the religion of self-righteousness was step number one. The Holy Spirit equipped me to practice what Ken preached, and one day, my heart started to beat to the tempo of my Lord's heart. A supernatural imposition, to be sure, but it didn't stop there.

I'd believed gender and sexuality were socially constructed and that I was the mistress of my own destiny and desire. Through the lens of experience, this was self-evident. I'd built my whole house on the foundation of "gender trouble" (the title of Judith Butler's book), and then stood by, helpless, as it burned to the ground. But the Bible was getting under my skin. Hours each day I poured over this text, arguing at first, then contemplating, and eventually surrendering. Three principles became insurmountable on my own terms: the trinitarian God's goodness, the trinitarian God's holiness, and the authority of Scripture. And then, Romans 1 nailed me to the cross: "claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man. . . . Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts . . . because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. . . . For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions" (Rom. 1:22-26).

Read the rest of the article here: You Are What—and How—You Read | The Gospel Coalition