FIVE LIES OF OUR ANTI-CHRISTIAN AGE
By Rosaria Butterfield
Crossway. 344 pages. £21.99
ISBN 978 1 433 573 538
Rosaria Butterfield’s first book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (2012), described her conversion. Formerly a gay-rights activist, she left her tenured position, joined a church, married a pastor, and adopted (and home-educated) four children.
She also took every possible opportunity to reach out with the gospel to those who (as she had been) are trapped in destructive lies.
Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age, Butterfield’s latest book, aims to equip Christians to respond in a faithful, God-honouring and truly compassionate way to the pressures we face today: ‘This is a book about disarming the idol of our times – the world of LGBTQ+ that I in my sin helped build’ (p.316).
Butterfield writes within an American context, but her message is relevant to Christians living wherever the LGBTQ+ movement has traction. She argues that many well-intentioned Christians avoid confrontation by steering clear of the so-called culture wars. But if we end up ‘telling or repeating lies to keep the peace’ we only contribute to the problem. ‘Unconfronted lies have made a big mess for us’ (p.24).
Butterfield explains that if you control the vocabulary, you control the debate. In the name of compassion and understanding, many in the evangelical church have embraced LGBTQ+ terminology. Butterfield admits that after her conversion she compromised God’s truth in the name of compassion. For example, she assumed that it was kind to use whatever pronouns someone went under, even if in conflict with their biological sex. She now believes that such compromise is not truly compassionate.
Why does this all matter? Right now, as legislative bodies in all the UK jurisdictions are considering legislating against ‘conversion therapy’, this book could not be timelier. Rosaria Butterfield explains that efforts are being made to outlaw repentance. Ironically, at the very time when many demand ‘safe spaces’, any Christian who experiences the indwelling sin of homosexual desire or transgenderism, and wants to resist that sin, is hard-pressed to find a place of safety. The world tells them to ‘fulfil your desires’. But many in the church tell them the same!
‘Where is it safe to just repent of sin and be built up in the promises of God? Where is it safe to repent and flee from your sin and no longer be gay or trans?’ (p.27).
Butterfield recalls the time she described someone’s hands as ‘large’ (a demonstrable fact as the person in question was six foot two inches). She was accused of hate speech and told: ‘Who cares about your truth? Your truth isn’t my truth! Your truth hates my reality!’ (p.58).
Such thinking leads to the belief that any failure to affirm someone’s ‘orientation’ or ‘identity’ is ‘spiritual abuse’ (p.59). Behind all this, Butterfield argues, is the ideology of intersectionality. And behind that ideology is the denial of God as Creator and the denial of any transcendent truth.
Rosaria Butterfield traces the process by which ‘well-meaning Christians started to see conformity to culture as missional’. This led on a downward trajectory leading to the situation we see now: paganism wearing ‘the clothes of Christianity’ (p.124).
But how are we to navigate the everyday reality of pressure to celebrate wrongdoing in the name of ‘love’? This book provides clarity amid the confusion. What you feel is not who you are! We cannot ultimately dismantle the reality of God’s creation of male and female.
