Don’t mistake Butterfield’s confidence for pride. Her heart throughout the book proclaims this message (my paraphrase): “God the sovereign creator brilliantly and beautifully designed men and women. We should obey what he tells us. We should live according to his design. We shouldn’t believe lies.” That assertiveness may strike some people as arrogant since it goes against the grain of worldly thinking, but worldly thinking goes against the grain of reality. Christians should not be embarrassed of anything that is true, especially anything that God has revealed in Scripture: “This book is for Christians not embarrassed by the Bible and its teaching on women’s roles and callings. An unbreakable biblical logic connects God’s design for men and women, God’s standards for sexual behavior, and the Bible’s teaching on sex roles in the family, church, and world” (p. xx).

Rosaria Butterfield used to be a lesbian activist who lived with a woman partner while serving as a tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University in New York. Now she is a Christian who is married to a Presbyterian pastor and who invests her time as a homeschool mom and grandmother and as a hospitable neighbor in North Carolina. (When she wrote this book, her four adopted children spanned ages sixteen to thirty-four.) The title of her new book specifies what she is warning against: Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023).
Butterfield’s Thesis
Here is one way to summarize Butterfield’s thesis: Don’t believe our culture’s lies about God’s design for men and women. She presents five lies and explains, “What all these lies have in common is they don’t think that God had a plan and purpose when he created men and women” (p. 290). At the root of the lies is what she calls “our nation’s reigning idol, a formidable monolith represented by the letters LGBTQ and the symbol +” (p. xxi; cf. p. 91).
Lie #1: Homosexuality Is Normal
The lie: The way you feel defines who you are. For example, if you are a female who feels sexually attracted only to women, then you are a lesbian. You have a homosexual orientation that is immutable. That is your core truth. That is your identity. And it is an identity that is good and normal.
According to “gay Christians,” a person’s homosexual orientation is morally neutral—like being blind or deaf. It’s not a sin that you should repent of. The church should not just welcome but empathetically approve of “sexual minorities.” When people sin in heterosexual and homosexual ways, the nature of the sexual sin is equally fallen.
The truth: Our sinful feelings do not determine our core identity. Those with homosexual desires are responsible to mortify their sinful desires. “The normalization of homosexuality is the central controlling narrative of our anti-Christian age” (p. 33). “Sexual orientation, a secular concept, began in the nineteenth century. You will not find the concept of sexual orientation in the Bible” (p. 67). “It all comes down to this: Do you trust your feelings, or do you trust the word of God?” (p. 98). We should have sympathy for those enslaved to sexual sin, but we should not empathize with the sin itself.
The identity narrative makes sense in our culture because people have swallowed the lie of intersectionality—the idea that the world consists of power struggles between oppressors (e.g., white, male, heterosexual, Christian, fit, free) and the oppressed (e.g., person of color, female, LGBTQ+, non-Christian, overweight, incarcerated). “Today, failing to affirm LGBTQ+ rights is considered an act of harm. … Today, even in the church, it seems, accepting someone without approving her is to reject her” (p. 59). Harm is now psychological, not material. The way to accrue social status is to claim an intersection of victim statuses. This creates a community that is “fractured, victim-minded, angry, and inconsolable”; it is “identity politics on steroids” and devoid of “a biblical category of sin” (p. 61). “The victimized identities that emerge from intersectionality are perpetually immature and in constant need of therapy and affirmation” (p. 62).
When people sin in heterosexual and homosexual ways, the nature of the sexual sin is not equally fallen: “The heterosexual pattern is natural even if a particular practice is sinful, as in adultery. If a man and a woman are committing fornication but they come to Christ and repent of their sin, they could someday get married and live in God’s obedience and blessing. But if a man and a man in a homosexual relationship come to Christ, they would need to break up in order to live in obedience and blessing. … Homosexual sin is a violation against both God’s pattern of creation and the moral law of God, while heterosexual sin violates the moral law of God exclusively” (p. 304). The hermeneutic that justifies women pastors is the same hermeneutic that justifies LGBTQ+. “Egalitarianism is the highway to LGBTQ+ church leadership” (p. 75).
Lie #2: Being a Spiritual Person Is Kinder Than Being a Biblical Christian
The lie: A spiritual person finds true spirituality inside himself or herself. Everything shares in a single divine power. Distinctions and hierarchies are abusive and violent.
The truth: There are two realities—God and not-God (i.e., the Creator and creation). And there are two kinds of people—those who love the triune God and those who defy him. It is not kind to be a person who misleads others to defy the Creator by living contrary to reality.
Lie #3: Feminism Is Good for the World and the Church
The lie: The traditional biblical view about God’s design for men and women is wrong. Male headship is a result of the fall. The Bible does not require a wife to submit to her husband, nor does the Bible forbid women from serving as pastors or elders. The traditional view results in sexual abuse. Any male-female sexual relationship that rejects sameness (i.e., interchangeability) and calls a wife to submit to her husband is foundational to rape culture.
The truth: The traditional biblical view about God’s design for men and women is true, good, and beautiful.

“A godly woman who is the wife of a godly man is receptive, teachable, and life-giving, her beauty increasing with her age because her Christian character is being more and more sanctified. … At its most basic distinction, God created men for strength, women for nurturance, and both for the other, her submission yielding to his headship creating the harmony of mutual work and worship of God. The simplicity, beauty, and perfection of the creation ordinance may be marred by sin but not by the designer’s perfect plan” (p. 158).
“A helpmate is not a doormat. She is smart and strong and knows how to think and advise her husband when called upon. While she may also have a job or career that contributes to the household, being a helpmate means that the husband’s vocation comes first” (p. 172).
“A godly woman is not called to universal submission. She is called to submit to her husband, elders, and civil authorities” (p. 161).
“A Christian’s best defense against abuse of all authority is membership in a biblically faithful church” (p. 162).
“When feminism is the interpretative tool for reading Scripture, the powerful, supernatural word of God shrinks into an easily manipulated tool of sociology, revealing power plays and oppressors and offering no hope beyond its creation of new possibilities and new words to express one’s never-ending hurt” (p. 177).
“Feminism’s war against patriarchy isn’t its only problem. By denying the centrality of the creation ordinance in defining woman and her glory, feminism insults women. Worse still, feminism can’t offer the protections against violence that it promises. In fact, feminism has become a place of such confusion that it cannot define what a woman is without offending the LGBTQ+ movement—especially the T part (transgenderism)” (p. 189).

Lie #4: Transgenderism Is Normal
The lie: Your sex is gender-fluid. The biological sex you are born as does not necessarily correspond to your gender. It is normal for a person recognized as a male at birth to later realize that he is actually a woman trapped in a man’s body. How you feel is the real you. There are more than just two sexes (the traditional gender binary is wrong), and there are even more genders. If your child is transitioning, you must comply or else you will be guilty of that child’s suicide: “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?”
The truth: God created mankind as either male or female. There are only two sexes—male and female. God designed males to be masculine, and God designed females to be feminine. It is sinful for a man to be effeminate or for a woman to be masculine.
Tragically, transgenderism has become “the cool and cutting-edge expression of individuality” (p. 198). The question “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?” is manipulative. The solution to a sinful desire—in this case, the sin of envy—is to put that sinful desire to death. The solution is not to enable your child’s sinful desires by pumping the body with hormones that do irreparable damage and by mutilating healthy body parts (“to lance off breasts and purge ovaries in the name of emancipation” [p. 199]).​​ “Love holds people to the impartial, objective, and safe standard of God’s truth, not the malleability of sinful desires and the posturing of sinful people” (p. 204).
Lie #5: Modesty Is an Outdated Burden That Serves Male Dominance and Holds Women Back
The lie: It is oppressive to call women to dress and act differently than men. If a woman dresses provocatively and entices a man to sinfully lust after her, then that is not the concern of the woman at all; it is solely the man’s problem. If a woman wants to exhibit her body or to express herself loudly and freely in an “unladylike” way, then male oppression shouldn’t hold her back.
The truth: “A godly woman is a modest woman” (p. 267). Butterfield approvingly quotes how Martha Peace and Kent Keller define modesty and immodesty:

modesty: “an inner attitude of the heart motivated by a love for God that seeks His glory through purity and humility; it often reveals itself in words, actions, expressions, and clothes”
immodesty: “an attitude of the heart that expresses itself with inappropriate words, actions, expressions and/or clothes that are flirtatious, manipulative, revealing, or suggestive of sensuality or pride”

Butterfield asserts, “No Christian woman wants to be seen in the eyes of God as a ‘provoking object.’ Women, don’t minimize the seriousness to your own soul if Satan uses you as a tool for any reason” (p. 278).
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Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Friday, September 8, 2023
God has already given up the greatest gift He could possibly give when He offered up His infinitely valuable Son to the cursed death of the cross for sinners like us. If He gives the greatest, we can be sure that He will not withhold the lesser. Christ is the measure of the greatness of the giving of God and becomes the standard by which believers are assured of the guarantee of God giving us every lesser blessing. 

The goodness of God ought to be among our foremost, continual meditations. The Scriptures teach us to meditate on His goodness in the spheres of both creation and redemption. The Lord is constantly giving. He gives to all mankind, “life and breath and all things” (Acts 17:25). We freely receive from His hand daily bread in abundance, homes in which to live, transportation, clothing, medical care, and every conceivable comfort under heaven. As Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). While God “richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17), there is yet a greater manifestation of His goodnes–namely, the giving of His Son. God the Father gave up His infinitely beloved Son to redeem sinners. God has also promised to give believers every other good thing for which they hope for all eternity. Scripture encourages believers to measure the goodness of God in the giving up of His Son in order to assure them of the certainty of every lesser gift He has promised them.
In Romans 8:32, the apostle drew a comparison between God’s greater and lesser gifts. Paul’s focus on the greatness of God’s giving of His Son forms the basis for the further assurance of the inclusion of the lesser gifts–the enjoyment of all things in the age to come. In this verse, Paul brings what is arguably the greater chapter in the greatest book in the Bible to a crescendo. He writes, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things” (Rom. 8:32)? There are two glorious truths upon which to meditate in these words. The first is that the Son is the greatest of the gifts of the Father. He is the Father’s infinitely beloved Son. There is nothing in all of creation that compares in any sense whatsoever to the infinite value of the Son. The second is that God assures believers that because He has not withheld the greatest gift of His Son we can rest content that He will not refuse to give us any lesser gifts that are good for us. By these two truths, our hearts and minds are lifted up with gratitude to God for the greatness of His giving.
The greatness of God’s giving of His Son is understood in a variety of ways. First, we see it in the circumstances surrounding Christ’s birth. Jesus was born at a time of great worldwide Roman taxation (Luke 2:1–7). Sinclair Ferguson has helpfully noted, “Jesus’ birth occurred during a census and taxation in Israel. Men continually take, but God graciously gives.” The “giving” of God is seen by way of contrast to the taking of men.
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Written by R. Scott Clark |
Friday, September 3, 2021
Ministry is not an exercise of power. It is fundamentally service. It is the opposite of lording it over. The imagery here is not that of glass towers full of the powerful but of the Suffering Servant girding himself with a towel and washing his disciples’ feet (John 13;12).

It is an old habit but on Mondays I often reflect on the nature of pastoral ministry and the challenges pastors face.In truth, Monday is the second day of the week but for pastors everything leads up to the Lord’s Day. All their prayers and preparations have been pointing toward Sundays. For them it is the culmination of the week. On Mondays they naturally reflect on what happened and on how it went.
Background and Bona Fides
Yesterday and this morning I have been thinking about the church-growth movement in light of what the New Testament says (and illustrates) about ministry. When I was first introduced to the church-growth school of thought, in seminary, I reacted against it but after I was called as young seminary graduate, as an assistant pastor, to a small, near-urban congregation nine minutes north of downtown Kansas City, Missouri my new duties required me to give the church-growth school another look. Perhaps I had been too negative toward the church-growth movement? Perhaps I needed to be more open-minded? For most of six years I tried to learn what I could from the movement. I studied and practiced evangelism. We expanded the diaconal ministry per Tim Keller’s Jericho Road. We tried, within our limits, to implement The Phone’s For You (™) to capitalize on “the law of large numbers,” and Evangelism Explosion (™). I became an EE trainer and taught classes to the congregation and to young people who traveled from across the Plains to Kansas City in the summers for two weeks of ministry and fun. The CRC had SWIM. The OPC had SAIL. We called it Project Jericho. We were going to march around the city, as it were, until the walls fell. Weather permitting (and even when it did not) we stood in parking lots and evangelized. We made fliers for the local St Patrick’s Day parade calling attention to St Patrick’s Christian faith. The ink was not set and my tan gloves turned green. We knocked on doors. I preached in the City Mission. We recorded radio programs and commercials. I imitated Denny Prutow’s idea of a telephone answering machine with a gospel message. We advertised the number in the classified ads in the newspaper (the Craig’s List of its day). I recited that phone number so often that, 30 years later, I can still recite it in my sleep. We sent out hundreds of newsletters each month in hopes of connecting with people and attracting new members. We mailed out evangelistic audio cassettes (think podcasts). We held car washes to raise money for the local shelter for unwed mothers (as an alternative to abortion). Some of us picketed the abortion mill in Johnson County, KS and even the local hospital. I pushed to revise the liturgy and the music to make the church more “seeker-sensitive” and “contemporary.” We became a busy church. Like the Apostle Paul, “I am talking like a madman” (2 Cor 11:23; ESV) in order to say that I am not taking potshots from the sidelines. I gave the church-growth program a fair try.
One day, in passing, one of the young people in my congregation said something to me like this, “You spend all your time and energy trying to reach outsiders but you don’t seem to think about us very much.” That stung but she had a point. I worked hard on my sermons, Sunday School lessons, Bible studies, and catechism classes but I was very much oriented to church growth. I was not very much oriented to what I now understand to be be an ordained means of grace approach to ministry.
For all that I learned and tried one aspect of the church-growth movement, perhaps the most fundamental aspect, always made me uneasy and makes me uneasy to this day: the church-growth model was a theology of glory and it turned ministers, who should be theologians of the cross, into theologians of glory. The selling point of the various methods and mentalities was numerical success: look at this congregation.
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