CULTURAL MARXISM IN THE CHURCH
From the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Sympathy for the Devil
“And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion,
sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.” Mark 5:15
“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good,
and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” Acts 10:38
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Heb. 13:8
Many homosexuals have renounced the gay death style and embraced a heterosexual lifestyle. Robert Lopez, a professor at Southwestern Seminary who was raised by lesbians, turned from homosexuality in his late twenties and is now married with children. Dr. Lopez encourages gay men that it is not difficult to escape homosexuality, and he explains how to make the transition to heterosexuality, which is far more fulfilling than the gay death style.
“Yes you can stop being gay! Uncensored tips from an expert”
Like Robert Lopez, Dean Bailey was delivered out of homosexuality by God’s saving grace. Unlike Rosaria, he believes that homosexuality is a dysfunctional and harmful sexual behavior and that counseling, whether professional or pastoral, is not harmful but beneficial:
“Ex-gay man: ‘Homosexuality is just another human brokenness’”
“Dean Bailey, 50, is not afraid to tell anyone he is living proof that ‘sexual orientation’ can in fact be changed. But he prefers to use the word ‘restored’ rather than ‘changed.’….
“Bailey credits God for acting powerfully in his life to save him from himself, change his life for the good, and ultimately bring about his deliverance from homosexual attractions. God led him on a journey of trust that ultimately led to the heart of Jesus Christ. Here Bailey experienced the love, acceptance, and affirmation he had always craved…
‘Gay activists, for example, vehemently insist that this journey I’ve taken is harmful. They have even managed to get bills passed in California and New Jersey which outlaw counseling for persons desiring help toward becoming free from their homosexual behaviors and addictions…
‘There is no way to fully comprehend or predict the personal cost, effort and sacrifice involved for any individual, until that person embarks upon this journey by personal choice, by his or her own free will. Society should not be expected to make any accommodations for those who therefore refuse to take this journey, and remain trapped in the self-serving cycle of their own dysfunctional sexual behaviors. Nor should responsible parents be denied the lawful ability to seek out the professional help that their children may desperately need and desire. The reality of this entire issue is that homosexuality is a harmful behavior pattern, and not a human identity or a human ‘right.’
‘People often wonder why would the gay activists be trying to outlaw professional means of therapy and counseling for the pursuit of freedom from unwanted homosexual behaviors, if they truly embrace the ‘tolerance’ that they preach? What is it that they are actually so afraid of? I will tell you that what they fear the most is the breakdown and destruction of the inward lies that form the foundation of their own ‘gay’ identity, and everything that the ‘gay rights’ movement has been built upon. That is why gay activists will always insist that this form of dysfunctional sexual behavior is ‘who’ they are. It is the only way for them to remain secure in the falsehood.’”
“Reparative Therapy” is a term for counseling, including pastoral counseling, which helps homosexuals deal with contributing factors such as childhood molestation, or other traumatic experiences which leave a sexually abnormal imprint on the child’s memory. Homosexual activist organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Southern Poverty Law Center have successfully litigated against and shut down organizations that “promote the concept that an individual can change their sexual orientation or gender identity, either through prayer or other religious efforts, or through so-called ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapy.”
Professor Robert Gagnon identifies the “gay celibate Christian” “born this way” narrative as the culprit, fabricated for the purpose of shutting down successful Christian Reparative Therapy organizations:
“Sadly, many Evangelical Christian colleges and some evangelical organizations have had a love affair with the ‘celibate ‘gay’ Christian’ movement for the past few years and ignored Christians who, having come out of the homosexual life, have had decades of life experience in transformation ministry to same-sex attracted persons. These include ministry leaders associated with Restored Hope Network (Andy Comiskey, Jason Thompson, Stephen Black, Ron Citlau, Garry Ingraham, Anne Paulk, etc.) and others outside of RHN (Joe Dallas, Mario Bergner, etc.).”
The following video by Family Watch International demonstrates the success of Reparative Therapy in the lives of former homosexuals who struggled with same-sex attraction, primarily due to predisposing factors such as childhood sexual abuse, rejection from male peers, failure to bond with abusive fathers and other causative events.
“UNDERSTANDING SAME-SEX ATTRACTION”
According to Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, Rosaria Butterfield was a heterosexual who became a lesbian who became heterosexual again. In Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ, Rosaria argues that it is not necessarily an outcome of conversion to Jesus Christ that gays or lesbians will be delivered from same-sex attraction (SSA). Therefore, she asserts that Christians should give no hope to homosexuals or lesbians that they will be delivered from the bondage of same-sex attraction.
“Recently someone in my extended church community asked if the lesbian daughter of a mutual friend of ours was going to commit her life to Jesus and ‘go straight.’ I reminded the churchy lady (I live in the South, so indulge me here) that the young woman she mentioned had made a profession of faith, and I had no more knowledge of whether she would develop heterosexual attractions than I did if she was going to buy a puppy at the state fair this year. Homoerotic desire, these folks believe, is rooted in willful sin, bad choice-making, full-blown lust, and/ or lack of knowledge of or real faith in Jesus. Without intending it, they endorse a prosperity gospel about sexuality, one that falsely believes that Christ died on a cross and rose again to make you happy and prosperous on earth.”
Actually, Romans 1 does teach that homosexual desire is rooted in willful sin, bad choice-making, full-blown lust, and a lack of knowledge of or real faith in Jesus. Verse 26 states that “vile affections” (same-sex attractions) are a curse God pronounces on those who have “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.”
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
God does not say that “vile affections” are a cross to be borne that will become a crown in heaven as some falsely teach, but that vile affections are a curse brought on homosexuals and lesbians for their wickedness in worshipping man in the place of God. Rosaria often cites The Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechism but only when it suits her purposes. The Westminster Larger Catechism in fact states that “vile affections” in Romans 1:26 are among “the punishments of God”:
Q. 28. What are the punishments of sin in this world?
A. The punishments of sin in this world are either inward, as blindness of mind, a reprobate sense, strong delusions, hardness of heart, horror of conscience, and vile affections (Rom. 1:26): or outward, as the curse of God upon the creatures for our sakes, and all other evils that befall us in our bodies, names, estates, relations, and employments; together with death itself.Ignoring what God’s Word and the Westminster Larger Catechism have to say on the subject of vile affections, Rosaria argues that those who have same-sex desires are not to blame (for worshiping the creature rather than the Creator), the reason being they were born in Original Sin, and that God made them with a proclivity to homoerotic desires which, of course, shifts the blame to God:
“We all make choices along the path of our life journeys, but if sin is only about bad choice-making, we don’t need a savior. Sin is bigger and deeper and longer than bad choice-making. All sin is a vestige of the fall and a transgression against God, but that doesn’t mean that patterns of temptation are themselves proof that we are actively sinning. While it is true that in conversion we are new creatures in Christ, it is also true that on this side of the resurrection we will struggle with all manner of sin, including, if God permits, homoerotic desire. That is the kicker, and I hear this all the time: ‘God would never make someone with a homosexual baseline.’ Really? Original Sin means that we are born in fallenness — both moral…and natural… So yes, we are all ‘born this way.’ And even after we are born again, we will all struggle with sin until we die and enter Glory or Jesus returns.” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 167-186)
Well, sin is about “bad choice-making” and, thankfully, God does have a “prosperity gospel about sexuality” since without holiness no one will see the Lord. God’s “prosperity gospel” is the good news of our spiritual riches in Christ, the first and foremost of which is freedom from the bondage of sin:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:” Eph. 1:3-4
“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” 3 John 1:2
In her book, Openness Unhindered, Rosaria Butterfield devoted an entire chapter to answering the question, “What does it mean to be gay?” She opens the chapter with an essentially Gnostic statement that the most important thing about a Christian is their “union with Christ” and that their “life in the flesh” is secondary.
“But the concept of sexual orientation blurs the relationship between personhood and sexual practice (desired or actual). Christians are called ‘saints’ in the Bible. We who bear Christ’s spilled blood are a royal priesthood. Any category of personhood that reduces a saint to a sum total of his or her fallen sexual behavior is not a friend of Christ…
“As Christian brothers and sisters, we affirm Christ in us and working through us by grace alone, not our patterns of temptations, special interests, or even our physical conditions…
“Our life in the flesh matters, but it is not the most important thing… The blood that ties us together and to our Savior and Friend trumps all.” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 2007-2008)
Rosaria’s statement derives from the Gnostic teaching that only that which is spiritual is good and all matter is evil. Since the body is material it is evil and therefore it doesn’t matter to God what Christians do with their bodies.
“There is no ontological category of sexual orientation. The idea of identity emerging from sexual desire embodies a philosophy of the soul that is false. Sexual orientation is a category that adds and stirs all solipsistic fallen sexual impulses and desires into a paradigm of individual entitlement, writing off God’s covenantal relationship to his people and his teleological design of sexuality within biblical marriage, and denying that their fruit rests in redemption through Christ’s blood alone…
“At its best, sexual orientation is a vestige of our flesh. The term itself cannot be labeled sin or grace. Sexual orientation fronts a category of personhood that privileges natural desires over redeemed ones. One’s sexual orientation—heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual or pansexual (and the list will not end here)—cannot be sanctified, because sanctification would indeed cause its eradication, as sanctification obliterates all pretenses of the staying power of natural virtue or vice over and against the power of the gospel.” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 1892-1895)
Rosaria contends that one’s “sexual orientation” cannot be sanctified because sanctification would cause its eradication; however, God commands that Christians be sanctified body, soul and spirit. Scripture is quite clear that our life in the flesh an indicator of whether or not we have life in Christ.
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” 1 Cor. 6:9-10
“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Thess. 5:23
“Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” 2 Cor. 7:1
Rosaria’s false teaching, derived from the Gnostic heresy, was thoroughly refuted the by the early Church Father, Irenaeus, in his treatise, Against Heresies. Specifically, Irenaeus was exposing the heresy of Valentinus, the most influential of the arch heretics whose Gnostic school endured for over 600 years and whose belief system exists even today. Irenaeus wrote of these heretics:
“But as to themselves, they hold that they shall be entirely and undoubtedly saved, not by means of conduct, but because they are spiritual by nature. For, just as it is impossible that material substance should partake of salvation (since, indeed, they maintain that it is incapable of receiving it), so again it is impossible that spiritual substance (by which they mean themselves) should ever come under the power of corruption, whatever the sort of actions in which they indulged. For even as gold, when submersed in filth, loses not on that account its beauty, but retains its own native qualities, the filth having no power to injure the gold, so they affirm that they cannot in any measure suffer hurt, or lose their spiritual substance, whatever the material actions in which they may be involved.
“3. Wherefore also it comes to pass, that the most perfect among them addict themselves without fear to all those kinds of forbidden deeds of which the Scriptures assure us that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:21 For instance, they make no scruple about eating meats offered in sacrifice to idols, imagining that they can in this way contract no defilement. Then, again, at every heathen festival celebrated in honour of the idols, these men are the first to assemble; and to such a pitch do they go, that some of them do not even keep away from that bloody spectacle hateful both to God and men, in which gladiators either fight with wild beasts, or singly encounter one another. Others of them yield themselves up to the lusts of the flesh with the utmost greediness, maintaining that carnal things should be allowed to the carnal nature, while spiritual things are provided for the spiritual. Some of them, moreover, are in the habit of defiling those women to whom they have taught the above doctrine, as has frequently been confessed by those women who have been led astray by certain of them, on their returning to the Church of God, and acknowledging this along with the rest of their errors. Others of them, too, openly and without a blush, having become passionately attached to certain women, seduce them away from their husbands, and contract marriages of their own with them. Others of them, again, who pretend at first to live in all modesty with them as with sisters, have in course of time been revealed in their true colours, when the sister has been found with child by her [pretended] brother.
“4. And committing many other abominations and impieties, they run us down (who from the fear of God guard against sinning even in thought or word) as utterly contemptible and ignorant persons, while they highly exalt themselves, and claim to be perfect, and the elect seed.” (Against Heresies, Book V.1.6)
Notice that the Gnostics “highly exalted themselves,” and denied their need for holiness because they were “spiritual by nature”—“the elect seed”—and therefore “perfect.” They indulged their fleshly lusts without fear and, so they thought, with impunity. Does this not sound like Rosaria and Neo-Calvinist 5-point theology with its spiritual elite—“the elect”—who are predestined to salvation and therefore they “highly exalt themselves” above ordinary Christians based on their spiritual knowledge (gnosis)?
Furthermore, it is the Calvinist leadership that is exhorting the Christian church to deny the obvious and embrace “gay Christians” as brothers and sisters because, we are to believe, they are also in “union with Christ.” Denying the obvious is a cardinal rule of Gnostics who rely on “how they feel” rather than their biological reality.
“Gnosticism does not accept the evidence of material reality and goes within for personal truth” (Peter Jones)
In Section 6: Queer Theory, it will be seen that homosexuality is an important stage on the path to the Gnostic sexual ideal which is “androgyny” or male-female.
“In the book entitled The Guilt of the Templars, we are told that ‘the Knights Templar’s confessions show them to have been basically homosexual warrior order... Other charges were that the Knights templar participated in black magic and pederasty (anal intercourse, usually with a boy). They practiced ‘phallicism or sex-worship and Satanism and venerated ‘The Baphomet,’ the idol of the Luciferians. The crime of sodomy was a rite of Templar initiation... Baphomet [was] an androgynous (meaning both male and female figure. Satan, like Baphomet, ‘is often pictured as a hermaphrotidic deity, having a male phallus an the breasts of a woman.’”(Cathy Burns, Hidden Secrets of the Eastern Star, p. 104)
Rosaria even distorts God’s gender as “male and female.” “By defining humanity according to sexual desires and segregating it according to its gendered object, Freud was—intentionally or not—suppressing the biblical category of being made in God’s image, male and female,…” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 1670)
Genesis 1:28: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
It makes sense that since Rosaria is teaching the Gnostic heresy—that “union with Christ” allows wicked and immoral conduct—then homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, and transgenderism are exalted states in the LGBTQ belief system, being transitional stages to their divine ideal: Androgyny.
The Gnostic sects of the Middle Ages preached the divinity of man, and called this false gospel the “Eternal Evangel.” In the 17th century, the Rosicrucians hijacked the Protestant Reformation and renamed it “Evangelical.” In 1846 the Evangelical Alliance was formed in in the Grand Lodge of England headquarters at Freemason Hall, London. The Evangelical Alliance is the parent organization of the World Evangelical Fellowship, which promotes the United Nations agenda as a NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
Having covertly introduced her readers to the Gnostic heresy, Rosaria introduces her friend and “Christian sister” Rebecca, a gay woman who denigrates the “ex-gay movement” and Reparative Therapy as well as conservative Christians who support these ministries. Rosaria also disparages Reparative Therapy as ineffective and deceptive.
“Rebecca is sharing her heart and also her experience in the ‘ex-gay’ movement. This culture was shaped in part by theories rooted in Reparative Therapy and its claim that homosexuality is the result of experiences (trauma, bad parenting, sexual abuse) and its solution is heterosexuality. It often encouraged a ‘prosperity gospel’ approach to sexual healing and exaggerated success rates in ‘conversion’ from homosexual attraction to heterosexual attraction — according to Rebecca and many others who have been eye witnesses to such deception — setting this shift into heterosexuality as its most treasured goal, and bypassing the importance of glorifying Christ in our struggle. Reparative Therapy programs often made promises they couldn’t deliver, and broke the hearts and faith of many of their followers...It is impossible to deal with the humiliating details of our lives while the logs in the eyes of others are clobbering around like drunken drivers.” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 2455-2473)
Rebecca is referring to the termination of Exodus International whose president, Alan Chambers, shut down the organization and apologized to gays and lesbians for the damage inflicted on them by Reparative Therapy. Then Chambers admitted that Reparative Therapy really never helped him to overcome his homosexuality. Exodus International was a front for the gay liberation movement to demonstrate the impossibility and inadvisability of counseling homosexuals to change their orientation because they were “born this way” and failing to respond to therapy made them feel depressed. The demise of Exodus International became a media spectacle and, even though other ex-gay organizations were successfully helping homosexual exit the gay death style, the media consensus was that Reparative Therapy was dangerous and should be made illegal. Exodus International’s vice president, Mike Goeke, then collaborated with the Lausanne Committee to form the Exodus Global Alliance, whose new message is not that homosexuals can change but the Church must change its position on homosexuality.
See: “Evangelicals’ New Sexual Language: Where Did SSA Talking Points Come From?”
This same woman, Rebecca, is now justifying her lesbian proclivities and demanding that the Church affirm her refusal to repent:
“To bring our conversation about sexual identity and union with Christ to a more personal level, I want to introduce you to a friend who uses the self-representation ‘gay Christian.’ One thing to do when we are at an impasse with another Christian is to shut our mouths and give our Christian sister our full attention. I am grateful for my friend Rebecca and for her willingness to write this email to me (and to allow me to share our dialogue with you). This represents one email of many that we have exchanged over the past two years. You see, we are sisters in the Lord, but we disagree. And we are friends, and we disagree. Rebecca wrote this email out of love, and I share it out of love. Please hear my friend.
‘Since I was six years old and asked Jesus to fill me and guide my life, no other identity has meant more to me than the one I have in Christ. When I say I am gay, I am not taking on an identity. Nor do I have any desire to make my sexual orientation my identity. For me, saying I am gay is about being honest: I am attracted to other women. I didn’t choose that. But it’s real and it has significantly affected my life. Naming my reality is crucial. When things have no words, they remain confused and chaotic. Naming helps us to make sense of the world so we can live in it. In terms of language theory, language provides order. It’s like the person who has an ailment who goes from doctor to doctor desperately trying to figure out what is wrong and is finally relieved when the condition can be named. For me the word gay is no different than saying ‘I am deaf’ or ‘I am quadriplegic.’ It simply refers to the truth that I have an enduring affliction (whether based in biology or environment) that has not been healed despite many years of prayers. Some conditions are not healed this side of heaven. Like Paul, sometimes God allows a thorn to remain for his purposes.
‘Over the past twenty years I have wrestled with this question of how to be truthful about my reality. For a while I chose to say ‘I have same-sex attraction.’ I was part of the ex-gay movement at the time and using the term gay was frowned upon. We were encouraged to make contradictory and deceptive statements like, ‘I am not gay; I just have same-sex attraction.’ But I saw the tragic effects of that deception firsthand. I witnessed people rush prematurely into heterosexual marriages believing they were no longer gay. I saw leaders in the movement leave their spouses after ten or twenty years when the promised heterosexuality never transpired. And I have seen far too many return to same sex relationships after years of celibacy, having become disillusioned that they were, in fact, still gay. Conservative Christians capitalized on this deception too. They took these ex-gay testimonies of ‘I am not gay’ as literally true. Court arguments against same-sex marriage and other legislation have been made on the basis of alleged change in sexual orientation. I am not saying no one changes their sexual orientation, but it’s much more complicated than many conservatives have been willing to admit. I have seen the marriages of some of these Religious Right poster children crash and burn to the ground under the weight of the deception ‘I am not gay.’
‘In the past, gay meant an identity closely associated with the rise of LGBT rights. But a lot has changed in the last fifteen years. In today’s lexicon, gay no longer means an identity. Most people under the age of thirty associate the term, not with identity or behavior, but with attraction. Merriam-Webster.com defines gay as ‘sexually attracted to someone who is the same sex.’ Dictionary.com has ‘of, pertaining to, or exhibiting sexual desire or behavior directed toward a person or persons of one’s own sex; homosexual.’ The conservative Christian world is one of the only places where gay still means primarily an identity associated with a sociopolitical community. The problem that develops when Christians use privatized language to define terms in contradiction to common lexical use is the risk of appearing as liars. We know what we mean by our terms, but non-Christians don’t. So when we say ‘I am not gay’ but in truth we still have samesex attraction, we come across as frauds. We defame the cause of Christ by the appearance of deception.
‘Any Christian who objects to the use of the term gay need thoughtfully reckon with these legitimate concerns and propose alternatives that avoid the pitfalls of deception. It will not do to resort to theological abstractions about Original Sin or pat answers about sexual orientation change. The church needs to let go of its defensiveness and ask itself these questions: How do we help a young person come to grips with a potentially lifelong condition so that hope deferred doesn’t lead to disillusionment and abandonment of the faith? How do we help couples in mixed orientation marriages hold on to their marriages? What do we need to do to make lifelong celibacy a viable option in our culture for those who face that reality? How can we think cross-culturally and missionally with non-Christians who easily misinterpret our theological jargon so we don’t harm the cause of Christ?’
“I stand in solidarity with Rebecca on many key issues, and I am enlightened by her life journey. I share her desire for truthful self-representation, and acknowledge that sexuality rests on a continuum, ranging between fixedness and fluidity. Christopher Yuan often says it this way: God is able, but not obligated, to give you what you ask for. I heartily agree. Sexuality is not a choice (although sexual activity is). Nor is it a lifestyle—something that you put on and off with ease. I believe Rebecca when she says that sexuality is not for her an identity: that her full identity is in Christ. Rebecca and I agree that sanctification is not coterminous with heterosexuality.” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 2400-2446)
In other words, according to Rosaria, God is not obligated to wholly sanctify Rebecca, even though He requires holiness of body, soul and spirit: “May the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Rebecca has rejected Christian ministries which have enabled many homosexuals to exit the gay lifestyle because she prefers to remain a lesbian. Instead, she (and Rosaria) charge the Church with the responsibility of accommodating homosexuals while they continue in their sin with no thought of repentance. Christian churches need to counter this entitled mindset with the Biblical doctrine of individual responsibility:
“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” John 3:19-21
As Dan Bailey stated, “Society should not be expected to make any accommodations for those who therefore refuse to take this journey, and remain trapped in the self-serving cycle of their own dysfunctional sexual behaviors.”
The director of the Restored Hope Network states that Rosaria has misunderstood and misrepresented the nature of Reparative Therapy
“I do think she had some very valid points, but when she talked about reparative therapy or ministering to the depths of a soul, she completely missed the boat. I’m not sure where Rosaria obtained her view about reparative therapy in particular. It doesn’t seem she has understanding about counseling practices and providing opportunity for the Lord to heal emotional and relational wounds in the soul of an individual. Her critique doesn’t even come close to what Reparative Therapy actually is. Rather reparative therapy contends that there are underlying needs that a person has misaligned to tried to fix one’s intimacy and attachment needs through homosexual relating. Reparative therapy contends that legitimate attachment needs are underlying the homosexual drive.” Anne Paulk, Executive Director Restored Hope Network
In October 2014, the Southern Baptists convened a national conference with LGBT activists and it was during this conference that Al Mohler apologized for ‘being wrong about sexual orientation.’ In effect, he told homosexuals that, for 2,000 years the Christian Church has been wrong about homosexuality. Homosexuals are not “reprobate” as Romans 1:28 states, but rather “hurting” according to “a robust Biblical theology”—which is derived from secular psychology:
“Three Days in Nashville Talking to Southern Baptists about Homosexuality”
“Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, opened the conference with an example of such progress. ‘Early in this controversy, I felt it quite necessary, in order to make clear of the Gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation,’ he admitted, saying that he got that ‘wrong’ — ’I repent of that.’ He went on to explain, ‘I believe that a Biblical theological understanding, a robust Biblical theology, would point to us that human sexual affective* profiles — that who we are sexually — is far more deeply rooted than just the ‘will,’ if that were so easy.”
“Human sexual affective profiles” refers to emotions which is a ‘cornerstone’ of Freudian psychology.
*“Affectivity. A feeling or emotion as distinguished from cognition, thought, or action. Affect is a felt tendency towards anything which is intuitively appraised as good / bad or (beneficial /harmful).
“Freud makes his chief corner-stones…the unconscious, the abnormal, sex, and affectivity generally, with many genetic…factors.” (A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis)
Albert Mohler is preaching social psychology—the theories of Freud and Cultural Marxists who deny Christ and His redemption of men from the bondage of their sin. Homosexual affective profiles (emotional profiles) cancel out human responsibility for sin, since they cannot simply “will” to be chaste. This is a shifty way of blaming God for judging homosexual sin, or else redefining God as one who makes allowances for those who are in the bondage of same-sex attraction. Because they have this felt tendency, they are not responsible for their sexual orientation.
In a Southern Seminary news conference held on Oct. 5, 2015, Mohler charged Christians with having sinned against the LGBTQ community “by reducing a massive human struggle to simplistic explanations.”
“Southern Seminary, ACBC to Refute Protesters’ Claims in Morning News Conference”
“This conference, and the preconference, is all about helping Christians to respond with both love and truth in the midst of a moral revolution. We have sinned against the LGBT community by ignoring their presence among us, by remaining silent when we should speak the truth, and by reducing a massive human struggle to simplistic explanations.”
In other words, to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is too simplistic and therefore not an option. Mohler cannot claim that Christians sin by ignoring the LGBT community’s “presence among us” without also charging God with sin—for God has commanded His Church to “put away from among yourselves that wicked person.” (1 Cor. 5:13)
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.” 1John 5:2
Rosaria referred to Rebecca's “self-representation as a gay Christian” as proof that she is a “sister in Christ.” Mohler claims that “human sexual affective profiles” prove that homosexuals are in bondage to their sexual orientation. “Self-representation” and “affectivity” are concepts of Freudian and Cultural Marxist psychoanalysis. Self-representation, according to Freud and Adorno, arises from the fantasyland of the unconscious mind.
“For Freud, representation, drive and affect are the fundamental conditions structuring unconscious fantasy... Unconscious fantasy, to be sure, is constituted as representation, and is the moment of creation par excellence of the psyche... Freud makes clear that he regards representation as 'the most general and most striking’ characteristic of the unconscious, through which a thought, and as a rule a thought of something that is wished, is objectified...is represented as a scene, or, as it seems to us, is experienced’...” (p. 78)
“In contemporary psychoanalysis, in the work of its most radical clinicians and theoreticians, the subjectivity of the self is approached as comprising multivalent psychical forms, embedded in a field of interpersonal relationships, and in close connection with unconscious fantasy...
“In Castoriadis’s reading of Freud, the unconscious is...the essential psychical flux which underpins all representations of the self, of others, and of the social and cultural world. Such psychical flux...renders identity non-identical with itself, as Adorno would have it, or, in more psychoanalytic terms, it is that which means that every self-representation is intrinsically incomplete and lacking since the subject arises...from the unconscious.” (p.155)
This explains why Butterfield, Mohler and Moore oppose pastoral counseling and reparative therapy. They prefer Freudian psychology over Christian forms of counseling and they reject the Word of God on the spiritually life-threatening issue of homosexuality. Rosaria’s major field was Cultural Marxism (Freud, Marx, Darwin, Critical Theory and Queer Theory) and Albert Mohler was a liberal Southern Baptist who denied the inerrancy of Scripture. Together these high profile leaders are advancing the Cultural Marxist program of The Frankfurt School: “From the beginning, psychoanalysis in the Frankfurt School was conceived in terms of a reinterpretation of Freud and Marx.”
By opposing Reparative Therapy,” Rosaria, Mohler and Russell Moore are perpetuating the false narrative of the United Nations, which banned homosexual therapy as a human rights violation in 2013, as well as the agenda of the Human Rights Campaign, National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Southern Poverty Law Center which have successfully litigated against and shut down organizations that “promote the concept that an individual can change their sexual orientation or gender identity, either through prayer or other religious efforts, or through so-called ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapy.”
The Human Rights Campaign is among the well-funded LGBTQ powerhouses that distributes to their trained LGBT activists a “Christian Conversation Guide” with which to facilitate the LGBT “conversation” with Christian churches. So Rosaria’s is “new conversation” also in agreement with the “Christian Conversation Guide” of the Human Rights Campaign which is spending millions of dollars to train and support LGBT facilitators of the “new conversation” in Christian churches? The question begs, “Is Rosaria also a trained and paid LGBT facilitator”?
Albert Mohler, who introduced Rosaria Butterfield at the 2014 SBC Convention, was a Founding Fellow of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission which is an NGO of the United Nations. In 2013, representatives of the ERLC, whose President is Russell Moore who interviewed and promotes Butterfield, secretly met with the Human Rights Campaign. According to Rev Thomas Littleton’s Open Letter to Russell Moore:
“How Russell Moore Assisted the LGBTQ Agenda”
“I was asked, by a Christian brother in convention leadership, to meet with the activist who came to our city and state to organize communities and jump start the Human Rights Campaign’s state offices. It was an unofficial sit down so as not to validate the activist while trying to understand better their intentions and methods, for which they had $8.5 million in new funding to engage churches in three Southern states.
“Because of our candid approach to the meeting, we were told very openly that the goal was to silence opposition to gay marriage and to end the ‘traditional rhetoric that homosexuality is a sin and that we would go to hell if we engage in it.’ The various groups who were partnering with HRC were sending gay couples and transgender or “gender bending” teens into our churches to “test reaction.” There were new training manuals and tool kits being developed to persuade “Conflicted Christians” out of long held Biblical views. (I have copies of these, Dr. Moore, if you care to become more informed.) But the next revelation is the most shocking.
“I also found out about the ongoing dialogue between you and your offices on the one side, and the HRC and other LGBTQ activists on the other. The upcoming ERLC 2014 conference on the issues had created an excited buzz among LGBTQ activists especially on their social media. One of your conference speakers who was a “same sex attracted” or “Gay Christian” tweeted out mid-conference that “the Southern Baptist and gay community break bread together in Nashville.”
“Some of your staff boasted to the LGBTQ representatives who had been welcomed to the conference that “Dr. Moore is rebranding the whole organization of the ERLC.” I watched the broad spectrum gay organizations hosted by the ERLC use their social media with the ERLC logo as a back drop to broadcast to their followers the excited news of their individual critiques of your conference, thus validating themselves no matter how radical or small or new to the public arena such organizations were. It dawned on me that, whether intentionally or not, Dr. Moore, you were allowing our ERLC to be used for the same type of platform we had fought to prevent our late SBC minister’s legacy from becoming—a platform to promote the radical LGBTQ faith agenda.”
The Washington Post reported that the ERLC was unusually accommodating of the LGBT activists at the conference, where Russell Moore joined Mohler and Butterfield in condemning Reparative Therapy:
“NASHVILLE, Tenn. — When Southern Baptists convened a national conference here this week to discuss issues of human sexuality, bringing conservative evangelicals and LGBT Christian activists into the same ballroom was a recipe ripe for potential fireworks.
“Perhaps the most shocking thing was how few fireworks there were…
“The interactions were largely friendly, with none of the hostility seen from both sides in recent years. Inside the ballroom and out in the hallway, LGBT activists mingled with Southern Baptist leaders. From the crowd, gay advocates tweeted responses to the speakers on stage, at times seeming to overtake the conference’s Twitter hashtag.
“While the substance remained much the same, the evangelicals’ shift in tone was noticeable. Moore regularly referred to people who are gay — not merely people who are sexual sinners in need of redemption — and denounced so-called ‘ex-gay’ therapy as ‘severely counterproductive.’
“Even the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., the veteran culture warrior and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., seemed to have a change in tune, if not an outright change of heart.
“‘Early in this controversy, I felt it quite necessary, in order to make clear the gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation,’ Mohler told the crowd. ‘I repent of that.’”
According to Rosaria Butterfield, God is pleased if former homosexuals and lesbians go through life suffering constant temptation, instead of experiencing deliverance from perverse desires. Rather than teaching recovering homosexuals to believe what the Word of God says of them—that they are new creations in Christ, having a new nature with the promise of victory over sinful desires—Rosaria posits that God is glorified in their continual struggles with desires to commit a sin that is an abomination to Him. Does this not make God Himself complicit in tempting such persons? Does this false teaching not leave believers in a constant battle against temptation that they will sometimes lose. God tells us clearly in His Word that such desires and struggles do not come from Him, nor do they please or glorify Him. Moreover, God does not set up anyone for temptation, but rather they are tempted through their own lusts.
“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” James 1:13-14
Rosaria’s advice for dealing with same-sex lust through constant struggle is described in Romans 7:
“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Romans 7:18-24
When Paul had struggled and failed time and again, he implored God for deliverance. In Romans 8 he declared God’s way of deliverance from sin – not through fleshly struggles which lead to frustration and failure, but by reckoning the old nature dead to sin and claiming his newness of life in Christ:
Romans 6
4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin…11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
“(1-11) A result is thus attained which the law of Moses could not accomplish, but which is accomplished in the gospel. The Christian is entirely freed from the law of sin and death, and from the condemnation that it entails. But he is so upon the condition that this freedom is for him a reality—that it really proceeds from the indwelling Spirit of Christ.
1) Therefore.—The Apostle had already, at the end of the last chapter, ‘touched the confines’ of that state of deliverance and of liberty which he is now going on to describe. The opening of this chapter is, therefore, connected in form with the close of the last. The intervention of Christ puts an end to the struggle waged within the soul. There is therefore no condemnation, &c.
2) Condemnation.—The condemnation which in the present and final judgment of God impends over the sinner, is removed by the intervention of Christ, and by the union of the believer with Him. By that union the power and empire of sin are thrown off and destroyed. (Comp. Romans 8:3.) There is a certain play on the word ‘condemn’ By ‘condemning’ the law of sin, Christ removed ‘condemnation’ from the sinner. He removed it objectively, or in the nature of things, and this removal is completed subjectively in the individual through that bond of mystical and moral attachment which makes what Christ has done his own act and deed.”
Instead of inspiring those who struggle with unholy desires to “reckon themselves dead to sin but alive unto God” through Jesus Christ (Romans 6:11), Rosaria consigns them to a life-long struggle with temptation which somehow glorifies God. She even quotes from Romans chapters 5-7, but then rejects the central point – that Christians are “dead to the law” (Rom. 7:4, 6) – as a prescription for failure which she then blames on “the evangelical position.” Ignoring Romans 8, she opts for the law-based Reformed teaching which the apostle Paul declared in Romans 7 was a prescription for failure.
“But after I was converted, it seemed like my struggle with sin was just ramping up. And, my pastor and church friends were discipling me to understand that the book of Romans, especially chapters 5–7, explained why. So, why do Christians still struggle with sin if we are new creatures for whom the old has passed away (2 Cor. 5:17)?
“Truly, one of the most maddening and confusing realities Christians face is why we continue to sin. Do we choose it? Does sin still abide in believers? If we are new creatures in Christ, why aren’t we simultaneously converted and sanctified in a complete and satisfying way? If God loves us, why doesn’t he change our sinful desires comprehensively? Why do believers still sin? And how could my deepest desires be sinful, when they are inseparable from my sense of self, when they themselves form a reality of selfhood that diffuses into character, not claiming a discrete turf in my heart, but claiming all that I experience? Put another way: If grace is supposed to heal me, why am I still stuck and sick? Has God passed me over? Does God not hear my prayers?
“There are two different Christian views on this conundrum of why believers sin. The dominant evangelical position says that God’s solution to shame is the full knowledge that we are new creatures in Christ. Beg for more grace. But don’t even try to obey the law because you are doomed to failure. And failure, declares this theology, is virtuous, inevitable, and good, as it shows forth God’s grace. Failure has become, as Jen Wilkin says, a virtue.2 Her excellent blog piece exposes the danger of this new glamorization of failure.
“There is not one moment in the Bible where we see failure as a virtue. And anyone who conflates humility with failure fails to understand the importance of the first term and the seriousness of the second. A Reformed position offers a different perspective on the problem of why believers sin, and with this perspective, a different solution. Represented by the Puritan John Owen, a Reformed evangelical position teaches us that sin dwells within us (called indwelling sin) and continues in the life of a new creature. Sin must be dealt with in a posture of Christian combat, not in expected or celebrated defeat and failure. We are to use the full armor of all of the means of grace that God gives to us. This position teaches us that conversion gives you freedom from the crime of sin and gives you liberty to respond to God’s grace of conversion through repentance and obedience. Conversion gives you the freedom to repent, not the freedom to expect failure. It was then that I got it: repentance and the love for God—and the obedience to his law that grows from them—were the missing links between shame and grace.” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 1114-1119)
Rosaria never defines the broad term “evangelical” but uses it often as a pejorative when making sweeping generalizations of all non-Reformed Christians and Christian theology as Biblically illiterate as opposed to Reformed theology which is “intellectual” and doctrinally sound. Which brings to mind her own words: “One of my favorite poets, William Blake, said to generalize is to be an idiot. That’s not how Jesus treats people.”
There are so many false statements and misrepresentations of “evangelical” (meaning non-Reformed) theology in Rosaria’s books and not one of them is documented with an “evangelical” source. For example:
“The dominant evangelical position says that God’s solution to shame is the full knowledge that we are new creatures in Christ. Beg for more grace. But don’t even try to obey the law because you are doomed to failure. And failure, declares this theology, is virtuous, inevitable, and good, as it shows forth God’s grace. Failure has become, as Jen Wilkin says, a virtue.”
Rosaria’s misrepresentation of Christian doctrine is a tissue of lies worthy of a cultural Marxist. To discredit Christian theology, she created an “evangelical” straw man who is forever stuck in Romans 7. “O wretched man that I am!” her straw man woefully cries and begs God for more grace. Rosaria’s mischaracterization of Christian doctrine will steer many readers into Reformed theology which will bring them into bondage to the law. Like Calvin, instead of pointing believers to the Pauline epistles, which apply to the Church, Rosaria encourages them to study the psalms of David which are about Israel under the law:
“My problem was that Psalm 119 kept ringing in my ears. The psalm starts out with foregrounding David’s problem with shame. He cries, ‘Oh, that my ways may be established to keep your statutes! Then I shall not be ashamed when I look upon all your commandments’ (vv. 5–6). Here, David turns to the law to sort out his shame. It is not that he couldn’t have asked for grace. The Psalms are replete with cries for grace, mercy, and SOS calls for help in times of dire need. But David begs for the law to be effective in breaking down the strongholds of sin. David says here that he will be free of shame when he ‘looks upon all [of God’s] commandments (all of God’s moral law). David knew that the law does not save… And grace does not erase my need for the law.
“But what is wrong with me that I keep on committing sin after sin, even as a believer, even as one who knows better? If repentance unto life is my threshold to God, why do I make such plodding progress in growing to be like Jesus?” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 1083-1098)
Her problem is that the law does not ‘break down’ the strongholds of sin but works death in those who are under it:
Romans 7
10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.
11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.
12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
THE MAGNA CARTA OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY
Many of the Reformed persuasion are locked into the dispensation of Old Testament law—not that the law is evil, but man cannot keep it (Romans 7). For this reason, Paul stated that the law was not made for those who are “in Christ,” (who died to sin and possess His righteousness) but for the ungodly who are outside of Christ, one example being homosexuals:
“Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;” 1 Timothy 1:9-10
Consider also the many verses in Romans regarding the Christian’s relationship to “the law”:
6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
6:15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid…7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
7:6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
Instead of singing and studying the psalms of David, Christians who are stuck in Romans 7 should appropriate by faith what God says about them in Romans 6 and 8. In fact, many if not most of the old Christian hymns declare the born-again believer’s victory over sin which Jesus accomplished through His cross, His shed blood and resurrection. The reason so many Christians love the old hymns is because they speak of their own deliverance from the bondage of sin through the Cross of Christ.
In her haste to dispense with Reparative Therapy, Rosaria Butterfield glossed over a precious promise which born-again Christians may rightfully and must claim by faith as their birthright:
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
2 Corinthians 5:7 is no ‘pie in the sky’ promise of material riches, but an inheritance of spiritual riches — a new nature given to those who are in Christ. Romans 6 explains the very real spiritual transaction that takes place in those who are born again, which they must reckon on by faith if they will walk in the Spirit instead of the flesh:
3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.
8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:
9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
Jessie Penn Lewis calls Romans 6 the “Magna Carta of Christian Liberty”:
“The sixth chapter of Romans is the Magna Carta of spiritual liberty because it reveals God’s plan of deliverance through the Cross of Christ. Every babe in Christ needs to know the truth of this passage of Scripture. Romans 6 clearly explains the basis of deliverance, while there is only a brief reference to it in Galatians 5:24 and other passages.
“Only by understanding what it means to have died with Christ (Romans 6:3-8), and what it means to put to death the ‘deeds of the body’ (Romans 8:13), can the believer walk and act through the Spirit, and in this way become a spiritual man.”
Recommended books on Romans 5–8:
The Normal Christian Life by Watchmen Nee
Soul and Spirit: Finding Freedom in Christ by Penn-Lewis
1. Related articles by Pastor Matthis:
“Does The Gospel Coalition Believe in the Heinousness of Homosexuality?”
“The Gospel Coalition and A Children’s’ Book about Homosexuality”
“Russell Moore, Southern Baptist Convention and the Heinousness of Homosexuality”
