'Gay,' 'Christian,' and 'celibate' don't often appear in the same sentence. Yet many who sit next to us in the pew at church fit that description, says author Wesley Hill. As a celibate gay Christian, Hill gives us a glimpse of what it looks like to wrestle firsthand with God's 'No' to same-sex relationships. What does it mean for gay Christians to live faithful to God while struggling with the challenge of their homosexuality? What is God's will for believers who experience same-sex desires? Those who choose celibacy are often left to deal with loneliness and the hunger for relationships. How can gay Christians experience God's favor and blessing in the midst of a struggle that for many brings a crippling sense of shame and guilt? Weaving together reflections from his own life and the lives of other Christians, such as Henri Nouwen and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hill offers a fresh perspective on these questions. He advocates neither unqualified 'healing' for those who struggle, nor their accommodation to temptation, but rather faithfulness in the midst of brokenness. 'I hope this book may encourage other homosexual Christians to take the risky step of opening up their lives to others in the body of Christ,' Hill writes. 'In so doing, they may find, as I have, by grace, that being known is spiritually healthier than remaining behind closed doors, that the light is better than the darkness.'
Washed and Waiting
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"Gay," "Christian," and "celibate" don't often appear in the same sentence. Yet many who sit next to us in the pew at church fit that description, says author Wesley Hill. As a celibate gay Christian, Hill gives us a glimpse of what it looks like to wrestle firsthand with God's "No" to same-sex relationships. What does it mean for gay Christians to live faithful to God while struggling with the challenge of their homosexuality? What is God's will for believers who experience same-sex desires? Those who choose celibacy are often left to deal with loneliness and the hunger for relationships. How can gay Christians experience God's favor and blessing in the midst of a struggle that for many brings a crippling sense of shame and guilt?
Weaving together reflections from his own life and the lives of other Christians, such as Henri Nouwen and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hill offers a fresh perspective on these questions. He advocates neither unqualified "healing" for those who struggle, nor their accommodation to temptation, but rather faithfulness in the midst of brokenness. "I hope this book may encourage other homosexual Christians to take the risky step of opening up their lives to others in the body of Christ," Hill writes. "In so doing, they may find, as I have, by grace, that being known is spiritually healthier than remaining behind closed doors, that the light is better than the darkness."
About the Author
Wesley Hill graduated from Wheaton College and has an MA in Theology and Religion from Durham University in the UK. He is currently working toward a PhD in New Testament at Durham and has written for Books and Culture and Ransom Fellowship's magazine Critique.
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Wesley Hill graduated from Wheaton College and has an MA in Theology and Religion from Durham University in the UK. He is currently working toward a PhD in New Testament at Durham and has written for Books & Culture and Ransom Fellowship's magazine Critique.
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69 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Voice That Needs To Be Heard,
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This review is from: Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Paperback)
This weekend I had the chance to read Wesley Hill's new book, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. Wesley is an old acquaintance of mine from grad school days, and a gifted writer and brilliant thinker (he is currently doing his Ph.D in New Testament at Durham in the UK). Previously Wesley had penned a brief, powerful essay exploring his own personal experience of exclusive same-sex desires, reflecting in it on his own anguished struggle of learning to relate his sexuality to the Christian gospel in a meaningful and consistent way.
In my view, neither the world nor the church has done a good job in recent decades in thinking through the complicated issue of homosexuality, or in responding both graciously and truthfully to those who identify as gay or lesbian. This sad state of affairs makes Wesley's book all the more crucial and poignant. Here I provide a basic overview of the book (160pp), but above all else I hope that many of you will make it a point to pick up a copy of it and work through it yourselves. Whether you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with Wesley's own settled perspective, I think it unlikely you can remain unmoved as the author recounts his own story in often gut-wrenching detail, and you will certainly come to respect his authenticity and ruthless honesty throughout. Washed and Waiting takes its title and cue from two biblical passages. I Corinthians 6:9-11 refers to the "washed" spiritual status of Christians, while Romans 8:23-25 reminds us that we are "waiting" and groaning for the future consummation of our redemption. This is the famous "already/not yet" schema (as dry academics like to put it) that pervades the New Testament, and Wesley rightly sees that it is essential to narrating one's own life well as a Christian. If only one side or the other of the contrast is taken up and accepted, either insanity or moral compromise will result. Within these two distinctly Christian images, Wesley has slowly learned to recognize the presence of Christ in his life through-not in spite of-his faltering yet faithful struggles with homosexuality. As one who has experienced his homosexual orientation pre-consciously (it wasn't chosen), exclusively (he has never felt sexual attraction to women), and unremittingly (he has never experienced "healing" or transformation of his sexuality), Wesley is nonetheless forthright that his homosexuality is not the most defining characteristic of his life. He writes in the introduction: "I've taken care always to make `gay' or `homosexual' the adjective, and never the noun, in a longer phrase, such as `gay Christian' or `homosexual person.' In this way, I hope to send a subtle linguistic signal that being gay isn't the most important thing about my or any other gay person's identity. I am a Christian before I am anything else. My homosexuality is a part of my makeup, a facet of my personality. One day, I believe, whether in this life or in the resurrection, it will fade away. But my identity as a Christian-someone incorporated into Christ's body by his Spirit-will remain." (p. 22) Wesley unapologetically makes clear from the beginning that he is convinced-as difficult and as costly as the conviction is for him on a personal level-that the only legitimate Christian response to homosexual desires is to remain celibate. Engaging in same-sex romantic relationships is out of bounds in the kingdom of God-as, of course, are quite a few other things. In this he will not be popular with many, though I think his voice needs to be heard in a culture that is increasingly allowing only one side of an important conversation to be heard. After a lengthy, captivating introduction in which he shares his own biographical experience of being a gay Christian, Wesley moves on in chapter 1 ("A Story-Shaped Life") to give a brief defense of why he remains convinced that as a Christian he must say no to his sexual desires. To back up his own endorsement in this chapter, I also would highly recommend that any thoughtful Christians who are interested in exploring this issue further read Richard Hay's chapter on homosexuality in his magnificent book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation. Also, I found especially insightful Wesley's dawning realization that it is within the story of the gospel-creation, fall, redemption, consummation-that his own experience with homosexuality makes the most sense in the most all-encompassing way: the shame and the joy, the ugly and the beautiful, the depression and the anticipation fit within the story of the cross and resurrection. In chapter 2 ("The End of Lonlieness"), Wesley relentlessly opens up about the darkest layers of his life as a celibate gay Christian-namely, his longing for relationships of mutual desire and his fear that he will never know or be known in the way that his entire being aches for. In my own quite limited experience of knowing homosexual Christians with some level of intimacy, I have found Wesley's interpretation of his own experience to be the norm. At the same time, this perpetual feeling of profound loneliness is where I feel most "outside" my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who share this burden. So I am thankful for Wesley in humbly allowing me to gain a glimpse of what such a sacrifice has entailed (and continues to entail) for him in taking up his cross to follow Jesus as Lord. His ruminations in this chapter on God's design for the church-the community of believers who allow their lives to be shaped by the gospel-is powerful stuff. God's presence is meant to be mediated to us mainly through other followers of Jesus whom He likewise indwells through His Spirit. We need each other. What a glorious vision. What a heartbreaking tragedy that so much of the contempoary church is light years away from this calling, lost in games and trivality and obsession with self. Lord, have mercy on us. Chapter 3 ("The Divine Accolade") focuses on Wesley's life-long suspicion that he is shamefully and utterly displeasing to God on account of his sexual orientation and desires. While this still clearly remains a daily battle for Wesley, he lets the audience in on his hope: that in Jesus, sinners can become loved and beautiful before God. Indeed, one day we will receive praise from God Himself when the Lord-in Augustine's wondrous phrase-crowns His own gifts of grace in our lives, glorifying both Himself and us in the process. Relying on C. S. Lewis' classic essay "The Weight of Glory", Wesley points to the Christian hope of one day entering fully into a relationship-both with God in Christ and with other redeemed sinners-of desiring and being desired without shame or guilt, of giving and receiving without hesitation or reserve. We will be "a real ingredient in the divine happiness." In light of this tremendous weight of glory and satisfaction which is coming, our present sufferings are not worthy to be compared. Yet at the same time, in light of this still-outstanding promise which often appears to us as a faint specter on the horizon, we groan as we wait for it. By faith. Finally, I should mention that in several "interludes" Wesley includes helpful and touching accounts of two well-known gay Christians who also, like the author, came to the painful conclusion that God's purposes for their lives included celibacy: Henri Nouwen and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Yet being dead, they still speak. As does Wesley Hill, and I hope you will take the time to listen to his story.
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Already and the Not Yet,
By
This review is from: Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Paperback)
I saw Wesley speak yesterday at the Story:2010 conference in downtown Chicago. I volunteered and so didn't get the conference swag bag (which had his book in it), but I managed to score a copy at the end. I read almost all of it on the one hour train ride from the city out to my apartment.
What's so powerful about Wesley's 'testimony,' and this book in particular, is the way that he manages to bring together two things which are constantly painted as being in opposition to one another, both by the church and by wider culture. On the one hand, Wesley is up front and honest about being gay. As he went through puberty, he discovered that he consistently reacted differently than his male peers. His story defeats simplistic "gay is a choice" rhetoric as well as challenging the assumption that everyone who is gay must have some sort of childhood psychological trauma that, once addressed, will unlock that person's true heterosexuality. He grew up in a conservative, close, loving, Christian household, and had a relationship with both his mother and his father. He simply felt different about his sexuality from the get-go, often despite his best efforts. On the other hand, Wesley began to own, from a fairly young age, his Christianity. He believed in the gospel and found, as he grew older and read more, that he believed the Bible to be true; that he trusted Christ as the one who could save him from death and forgive him from sin; that he agreed with the Bible's overall narrative and picture of reality; that he believed the Bible to be accurate, authoritative, and sacred scripture. He is an evangelical and comparatively conservative Christian who went to school at Wheaton College and is currently working on his PhD dissertation (on Paul and the doctrine of the Trinity - I asked him about this at the conference when I had a chance to talk with him briefly!). The title "Washed and Waiting" reflects Wesley's understanding of the reality in which believers (gay and straight) find themselves: the reality of being saved and forgiven and transformed through Christ's resurrection while still awaiting the final and ultimate redemption that will only come at the consummation of the kingdom of God. His book is unique in that it articulates a distinctively homosexual response and wrestling with this reality: for someone who is gay, the only response that still takes seriously the authority of the Bible and the reality of salvation through Jesus Christ is celibacy. Wesley's excellent scriptural and theological articulation of life between the two poles of "washed" and "waiting" gives hope and encouragement to anybody - not just homosexuals - who struggles with persistent sin, doubt, loneliness, and struggles despite being a follower of Jesus. The truth that homosexuals and heterosexuals both find themselves ultimately faced with the same tension - living between the two poles of "washed" and "waiting" - has the potential to be a powerful message of reconciliation and strength in the evangelical church. There are other important themes touched on in this book, such as the fact that our present culture tends to suggest that the height of humanness and intimacy is sexual activity, while the New Testament, in opposition to this, says that the height of such things is membership in the body of Christ. I'll simply conclude by saying that Wesley's book offers an important two-sided corrective. On the one hand this book seeks to correct those who think a biblical worldview is stifling, restrictive, and damaging for gay persons. If what the Bible says about human flourishing is true - and there is good reason to think so - then it is only within God's plan for humanity that individual persons, gay or straight, can ultimately be set free and healed. On the other hand this book seeks to correct and challenge those evangelicals who are uncomfortable around or who avoid gay people, or who still persist in the simplistic (and psychologically / spiritually / historically untenable) notion that homosexuality is always and for all persons a choice. To them, Wesley would say simply: What are you doing to make your churches places where people who struggle with loneliness, shame, and isolation - which certainly includes celibate Christian homosexuals but is not limited to them - are welcomed, strengthened, warmed, supported, and loved? It's a challenging thought. I hope that Wesley continues to write. His theological acumen and writing style are both razor-sharp, and I'd be interested to see what he has to say about other areas of theology. But I also hope that this book inspires other people to be open and honest with their church communities about their sexual struggles. That area of struggle is so shame- and fear-inducing, and it's simply not biblical for local churches to hinder rather than help believers in this area. That arena must also be redeemed and believers must learn to be more honest about their own struggles, sexual and otherwise. Wesley's book is an important clarion call for all believers regardless of their sexual orientation. I hope it gains a wide hearing.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Relevant for all who struggle with temptation,
By
This review is from: Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Wesley Hill is a most counter-cultural person: he is a homosexual Christian who nevertheless believes that 1) the Bible is categorically against all forms of homosexual expression, including a loving, committed relationship and 2) this condemnation is sound. As such he has committed himself to celibacy, unless (or until) he develops an attraction to the opposite sex.
In this eloquent, fascinating book, Hill recounts his struggles as a homosexual Christian and gives an apologia for his current position. His struggle is two-fold: despite much prayer and pleading, he has not experienced a dramatic reversal of his sexual orientation, so he continues to be tempted by lustful feelings for other men. But because he believes it would be wrong to act on them, he experiences intense loneliness as well as shame. Given this two-front struggle, readers will wonder why he does not simply change his stance and enter a committed homosexual relationship. Why continue to abide by behavioral restrictions which most of our society views as outdated and puritanical anyway? The simple reason is that Hill believes the Gospel to be true: it reveals the truth about why God created the universe, including human beings, and what He intends for them. Because of that, the biblical condemnation of homosexuality is not arbitrary and tyrannical, but in fact a reflection of the way things ought to be in God's creation. If you're instructing someone how to use a car it is not arbitrary or tyrannical to insist that they must fill the tank with gasoline instead of vinegar: cars were made to run on gasoline, not vinegar. Even though this is a short book, Hill quite convincingly argues that the biblical narrative does, indeed, frown upon homosexual relationships. Thus, for a homosexual Christian who insists on being true to the Bible, celibacy is the only option. This is not to say that celibacy comes easily, even for a committed Christian. In fact, Hill recounts for us a life full of struggle, sighs, loneliness and desperation. After all, sexual longing is one of the most powerful desires we can experience, and we tend to view sexual expression as essential to living a fulfilling human life. By way of response, Hill suggests that this view of sexuality is an idol of modernity, and that sexual love, while amazing, is not the highest form of human love.By the end Hill is convinced that the God-given cure for loneliness is the kind of deep friendship that exists among the brothers and sisters in the Church, as well as the recognition that God Himself desires us, no matter our sexual orientation or our past sins. This is an incredibly powerful, uplifting little book. Hill writes eloquently and liberally quotes from classics in theology, literature and even film in support of his discussion. Some of the quotes themselves are worth the price of the book. But most importantly, Hill has given us an honest, searching account of the struggle of homosexual Christians to be faithful to the Gospel. Perhaps the most important thing that I took away from it is that, even though I'm not homosexual myself, I too face my own set of temptations and my own idols that I have to sacrifice in order to be faithful to the Gospel. For example, I am still single and must contend with the biblical mandate that sex be confined to the marriage bed. So his comments on the struggle with temptation are directly applicable to me personally, as I'm sure they would be to any reader regardless of their particular temptations. I am very grateful to Wesley Hill for writing this book, and I pray that he may find the acceptance and relational fulfillment that he is looking for.
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