In the "Christian world" there often seem to be two choices: living by rules and law OR living in the nebulous Land of Whatever which we may mistakenly call grace..
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. The latest issue of Christianity Today features her and her new book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant). (Link: My Train Wreck Conversion (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/january-february/my-train-wreck-conversion.html?start=3)
Rosaria's own words are compelling:
As a leftist lesbian professor, I despised Christians. Then I somehow became one.
Photo by Jimmy Williams
The word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard I choked, I couldn't hack it out. Those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. As a university professor, I tired of students who seemed to believe that "knowing Jesus" meant knowing little else. Christians in particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to insert a Bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it. ....
Then, one ordinary day, I came to Jesus, openhanded and naked. In this war of worldviews, Ken was there. Floy was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed. And I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved. But the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank, tentatively at first, then passionately, of the solace of the Holy Spirit. I rested in private peace, then community, and today in the shelter of a covenant family, where one calls me "wife" and many call me "mother."
I have not forgotten the blood Jesus surrendered for this life.
And my former life lurks in the edges of my heart, shiny and still like a knife.
WOW! I know enough theology to know that the Holy Spirit is Who drew Rosaria to Jesus like a moth to the flame and even more surely. But, I am struck by the rest of the story. Like a moth to the flame Rosaria was also drawn to Jesus by the marks of Jesus she saw in Ken and Floy and other followers of Jesus who stepped into her life for just such a time as this.
The radical restoration of Rosaria's heart is a work ONLY God can do but he does use you and me in the process. If we fall down on the side of rules and law, we don't show Rosaria the kind of love Jesus has for her. He takes us just as we are - crippled, lame, blind, deaf and all the rest - especially broken messes!
What Rosaria saw in Ken, Floy and others was NOT rules and law NOR was it the Land of Whatever! It was true grace lived out in radical love!
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