So…I’ve been reading a book which I had ordered a couple weeks ago and came over the weekend: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. The timing is impeccable. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a feminist lesbian faculty member (PHD) at Syracuse University with a life goal to discredit the Religious Right and Christianity. Her life was hijacked by one pastor who didn’t condemn or push or preach but simply asked some questions. Long story short…after two years she came to Christ and began the most painful and agonizing journey her life had/has ever been on. In her book she tells about counseling a woman who was in a closeted lesbian relationship and a member of a Bible-believing church. Here is what she writes:

No one in the church knew. Therefore, no one in her church was praying for her. Therefore, she sought and received no counsel. There was no “bearing with the other” for her. No confession. No repentance. No healing. No joy in Christ. Just isolation. And shame. And pretense. Someone has sold her a pack of lies that said that God can heal your lying tongue or your broken heart, even cure your cancer if He chooses, but He can’t transform your sexuality. When asked why she didn’t share it, here is what she said: ‘Rosaria, if people in my church really believed that gay people could be transformed by Christ, they wouldn’t talk about us or pray about us in the hateful way they do.’  (p.25)

Rosaria goes on to say, “I think that churches would be places of greater intimacy and growth in Christ if people stopped lying about what we need, what we fear, where we fail, and how we sin.”

Are those lady’s words true about you? me? your church? Maybe we ought to start checking our tongues at the altar of God’s fire and have them cleansed.

And by the way: I would highly recommend the book. But plan for some late nights reading. 🙂