Book Recommendation - The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert

By Anthony:

I recently finished this autobiography (testimony) by Rosaria Butterfield called - The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith.  Butterfield has gotten a lot of press recently for her amazing story of transformation, and I'm so glad to have finally read her book.  I want to heartily recommend it to you.

Although I think her story gets the most attention because she was a practicing lesbian before coming to Christ, the book is really not about homosexuality.  It's a story about God's grace and God's power to choose whoever he wants for salvation.  Butterfield writes with honesty, bluntness, and she is not afraid to criticize the church, while at the same time clearly she deeply appreciates the Church.   I don't agree with her on everything for sure, but her story made me put down the book and talk to God and tell him how great he is.  That's reason enough to read the book.

Here are my points in brief for why you should read this book.

• It is short and really easy to read.  She writes well.  It is interesting.

• It gives us a powerful example of how to do evangelism well.  It shows a picture of patient, loving, long-term evangelism with a focus on hospitality and dialogue.  Yet it shows the importance of Christians not being afraid to tell the truth about both God's judgment on sin, and also the good news of the Gospel.  But even with the powerful lessons about how to share our faith and love people well, it powerfully shows that our conversion is ultimately up to God, it is he who enters our lives, he who changes our hearts, and he who chooses us.

• It crushes the false prosperity gospel.  Butterfield says that coming to Christ was like a train-wreck in her life.  While she gained God's love, salvation, and the real meaning in life, she lost everything she had before - her promising career as a professor in gay studies, friendships, community, her lesbian partner, etc.  We need to count the cost if we want to be Christ's disciple.

• The book shows the importance and difficulty and hope of sanctification.  Few books have so clearly shown the all encompassing reality of sanctification, that submitting to God means submitting everything to him, no matter how difficult.  Our relationship to God changes everything in our lives (including our sexuality, for all of us).  But her story also shows how sanctification is a long and often very painful process.  And yet to me it is such a hopeful picture of sanctification.  This woman who was a radical secularist and lesbian is now living her life for Christ, writing books to edify the Church, and is married to a pastor.

• This book will help the Church know how to better love gay people in our communities, as she offers some helpful criticisms.  Yet the book also helps us to stand firm on the truth of God's Word and not to be ashamed even if it offends people.

• Other topics that she muses about in the book that you may or may not find interesting:  adoption and foster parenting, worship and the regulative principle, feminism, university studies, and tolerance/intolerance.