Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan, 2010), 160 pages. $14.99.
In a debate that has frequently been characterized by heated polemics that simply reinforce everyone in their original positions, Wesley Hill’s voice is a welcome addition.
Washed and Waiting, Hill’s first book, is a sensitive exploration on homosexuality that approaches the subject not as a social phenomenon or an academic theological question, but as a personal struggle. In his own words, Hill’s story
testifies to the truth of the position the Christian church has held with almost total unanimity throughout the centuries—namely, that homosexuality was not God’s original creative intention for humanity, that it is, on the contrary, a tragic sign of human nature and relationships being fractured by sin, and therefore that homosexual practice goes against God’s express will for all human beings, especially those who trust in Christ.
As Hill’s prose indicates, Washed and Waiting is more than just the history of his struggle to remain faithful while struggling with gay desires. It’s a theologically informed narrative where Hill buttresses his own by interspersing the stories of Henry Nouwen and Gerard Manley Hopkins, both of whom were also gay and celibate Christians.
One final stylistic commendation: Hill, a graduate student in theology, also has a strong literary bent, which makes reading his work as enjoyable as it is edifying. Unlike many other books, though, the anecdotal and literary elements don’t drown out his exegesis or biblical reflection. Hill displays a deep and sound grasp of theology, weaving this insight into his narrative with the skill of a seasoned writer.
Substantively, some readers might be nervous by Hill’s use of “gay Christian” on grounds that it suggests a tacit accommodation of gay desires within the Christian life. But Hill is explicit that “gay” is the adjective and “Christian” the noun, and that “one day . . . whether in this life or the resurrection [his homosexuality] will fade away.” Hill interprets his gay desires through two Pauline passages, 1 Corinthians 6:11 (“but you were washed!”) and Romans 8:23 (“we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies”). Though Hill intentionally aims his book at other gay celibates within the church, the explorations have broader applicability to those who struggle with other sexual or nonsexual sins.
At the same time, Hill’s unique vantage point gives him an acute sensitivity to how traditional Christian sexual ethics are sometimes communicated. His central dogmatic point on the question of Scripture’s teaching is that the ethical prohibitions against gay practices and desires in Scripture are only comprehensible and achievable when understood from “within the true story of what God has done in Jesus Christ—and the whole experience on life and the world that flows from that story, as expressed definitively in Scripture.” It is only in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that “the demand that we say no to our homosexual impulses need not seem impossible.” Divorced from this context, Christian ethics sounds inevitably sounds both legalistic and impossibly repressive.
Besides providing conservative Christians a unique perspective on the challenges that those who struggle with gay desires in our midst face, Hill’s deeper point throughout is to dislodge sexuality from its place of pre-eminence within our thinking. Hill points to Jesus’ celibacy not as a special dispensation because of his deity but as a pattern for humanity, suggesting that those who renounce sexual behavior—homosexual or otherwise—can still find full, rich, and abundant lives. Hill strikes a variation on the same theme in his wrestling with loneliness, suggesting that the church—not marriage—is “the primary place where human love is best expressed and experienced.” As throughout, though, Hill never leaves this in the realm of abstract theology. He is brutally honest about the ways in which the church succeeds and fails in helping all of us overcome the ache for human intimacy.
While the robust affirmation of celibacy is clearly welcome, it also masks a danger of reducing the vocation of celibacy to a remedy for sin. In Matthew 19:12, Jesus opens the door for a non-reparative celibacy that is oriented toward bearing witness to our eschatological life in Christ, where “we are neither married nor given in marriage.” While Hill’s book is more of an applied reflection than comprehensive examination of human sexuality, his language at points left me wanting a more nuanced account of the different purposes of celibacy within the kingdom.
I’ll note one other concern. Near the end of the book, Hill writes, “Not only does our homosexuality give us a unique ministry within the church; it provides us with a greater sense of our woundedness and therefore of our dependence on God.” Greater, I wonder, than whom? It may seem true that the struggles gay people face within the church are greater than the healthy and heterosexual, but the dying, the disabled, and the infirm—not to mention the socially awkward, the proud, and the covetous—might know something of the dependency that gay people doubtlessly experience. My point is not to minimize the struggles that Hill and others face within the church, but to raise the question of whether Hill has kept up the very privileging of sexuality that he critiques in previous chapters.
Reservations aside, Hill’s book is a remarkably sensitive treatment of the complexities of human sexuality that manages to fuse graciousness with a firm resolve in the authority of Scripture’s teachings. Hill insists that though our transformation—sexual or otherwise—might take longer than we desire, we have been washed by the blood of Christ and now wait in hope for the redemption of our bodies. Hill’s bracingly honest depiction of the shape that waiting takes is a gift to a movement that has sometimes struggled to understand, interpret, and respond in grace and charity to the tragic brokenness of a fallen world.
Tags: Homosexuality
“It is only in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that ‘the demand that we say no to our homosexual impulses need not seem impossible.’”
How does this apply to being a light in this dark world – even with unbelievers? In other words, how does natural law apply to homosexuality? Basically I recall recently reading Al Mohler saying that we should always have hope to make external moral changes in a society/culture around us because we are created in the image of God to express that image.
How does that mesh with the statement above?
One thing that continues to bother me is the special status that is accorded to being gay. Now it’s gay Christian. Why not prostitute Christian, or gluttoness Christian, or pornography Christian, or alcoholic Christian, or wife-beating Christian. I think you get my drift.
If I am truly washed, then I am also made new; the old man has died, and the new man has arisen with Christ. I am not that old man any more as I am made new in Christ, and as I continue to be conformed into His image I grow to be more like Christ and the old me is left further and further behind.
Does this mean that I have left the particular temptation to gluttony, or pornography, or alcohol, or homosexuality, or immorality behind. No, but it does mean that I have victory over those temptations when they occur by the power of Christ in me.
One of the problems in our church culture is that we, many times, have adopted the philosophy of the 12-step therapeutic culture. Such as once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic; once a sex-addict, always a sex addict, so that we are always in a state of recovery, but never recovered. This tends to be applied to being gay as well…once gay, always gay. The result of this is that people become defined/identified by what they were/who they were, not by who they are now. To use part of the title of the book…Paul tells all of us this in I Corinthians 6:11, “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of God.” Jeremiah 17:14 tells us this, “Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for You are my praise.” We are now in Christ, healed in Christ and saved in Christ. In Christ the old man is dead, long live the new man.
@Morris Brooks. When I read your comment, I enthusiastically repeated “Yes!” You’ve hit upon a major blind spot in our therapeutic churches. Walking in the newness of life, as the apostle Paul puts it, helps release us from what I regard as adjectival anxiety: “What does it mean to be a female Christian, gay Christian, black Christian, American Christian, et cetera?” All that is required now is to take up the cross and follow Jesus Christ. While I think Wesley Hill has written a terrific book, he’s still beholden to a newfangled psychological category that doesn’t belong to our Christian grammar. The biblical witness and ecclesial tradition holds a distinct vision for sexuality without sexual identity, as Jenell Williams Paris (professor of anthropology at Messiah College) argues in her forthcoming book, “The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are” (InterVarsity Press, April 2011).
“Not only does our homosexuality give us a unique ministry within the church; it provides us with a greater sense of our woundedness and therefore of our dependence on God.”
In short, “gay Christians,” or Christians struggling with same sex attraction are often at odds with themselves and our internalization of the Gospel (Christ’s righteousness and justification that is now ours), at odds with the world which attempts to identify us as gay or sexually-repressive, and at odds with the church which often desires to see a faster sanctification process in us than others.
While the stories of Christians struggling with same sex attraction are unique, our needs specific, and our healing and sanctification in its own time frame, these stories are a part of the grand story of the Gospel – that those who have sinned or exchanged the glory of God can find their justification, hope, and righteousness in Jesus—and not in themselves — and as a community of those “washed and waiting” can battle together to walk in purity and restore the glory of God in our lives. All Christians share in this grand story; there is no category for us greater than Christ’s.
What can we do with our past lives and current struggles (in same sex attraction, lust, greed, lust for control, alcoholism and a multitude of other sins) in a world that continues to identify and categorize? We share our stories, our struggles, and our unrighteousness and point the eyes of the world to Christ – to His Gospel and His righteousness in our life – not our own. In the words of Joseph Hart, we proclaim to the world: “His free distinguishing grace is the bottom on which is fixed the rest of my poor weary tempted soul. On this I ground my hope, often times when unsupported by any other evidence, save only the Spirit of adoption received from him. When my dry and empty barren soul is parched with thirst, he kindly bids me come to him and drink my fill at the fountainhead. In a word, he empowers me to say with experiential evidence, ‘Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.’ Amen and amen.”
As more and more of “categorical Christian” stories come up, I hope that they reflect through their unique perspectives the common message of the Gospel for a world that needs to hear.
@MorrisBrooks
Is a more nuanced view needed of those terms? “Wife-beating Christian,” if used, would be a problem indeed, as it would imply that the man was continuing to act on the impulse to beat his wife; that same deconstruction could be applied to those other terms. The glutton who indulges that temptation is a glutton indeed. Wesley seems to be making the point that he is washed, but the pressue or inclination remains. That does not mean though, since that temptation is resisted, that he is an “insert-type-of-sin-here Christian.” It doesn’t strike me that this is some charter for licence or therapy for this issue; it’s simply acknowledging a reality. One that actually we all face, just in different and varied areas of life and thought!
Those are great scriptures that you quote, truly hopeful, and our godliness and holiness of life is to be ever increasing; but they are not to be read as offering perfect release from all temptation or sin before the Lord returns. All of us (myself certainly) battle and fail with sin; we feel the temptation, and sometimes we act, sometimes we resist. For many guys it’s the battle against (heterosexual) lust, for others it’s honesty, for others it’s pride, and so on and so forth. Lord willing we resist in increasing measure and are conformed more to Christ! But the experience of Romans 7 remains, it just presents itself in different ways. Wesley seems throughout this book to fully affirm the joyful conclusion of Paul in Rom 7:24-25 while acknowledging that for him and others the battle against their sexual orientation remains, and remains painful. That doesn’t mean he’s asking for special status.
Being a new creation now is not the perfect new creation we one day will be; may the Lord haste the day when our faith, as well as Wesley’s, will be sight! I know that for me on this issue this was really helpful; it’s always harder to empathise with something that is utterly outside our own frame of reference, which this issue is for many of us, at least in a personal way. This has and will help me to love my brothers (and sisters) who face the life-long struggle with this issue but fight that fight with perseverance and Christ-trusting faith. Some may be freed, others may find that freedom as Wes says on the last day. But it surely should provoke us to love and prayer for them?
I really hope that makes sense; don’t mean to be polemic, but felt it was worth putting across some thoughts.
Hamish,
I don’t think you are being polemic, I would agree with what you have stated. There are few points to what I was saying.
1. After becoming a Christian, we are a Christian, not a fill in blank Christian. Our identity is now rooted in Christ, we are new creatures in Him, and our identity should no longer stem from who we were/what we were before.
2. If we are washed, then we are truly washed, which includes being regenerated, and, if truly regenerated, the old man is dead. So I am no longer…fill in the blank. This is why I have the problem with the tag gay Christian. Yes, someone who has been saved may still struggle with those urges, or any other urging; but they won’t dominate him or her any longer. They will continue to have victory over them, and grow more and more like Christ and less and less like their old self. In Romans 13:14 Paul goes on to tell us, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regards to its lusts.” Romans 7 is real, for all of us, but it is also between Romans 6 (he who died is freed from sin, sin shall no longer be master over you, you are freed from sin and enslaved to God) and Romans 8:1-15, which culminates in “So then, brethren, we are not under obligation to the flesh…for you have not received a spirit of slavery, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out Abba Father.”
3. In the therapeutic, 12-step culture that surrounds us, you are never recovered, but always in recovery. That has been brought into the church, and is unbiblical. Which is why I quoted Jeremiah 17:14, and is why an understanding of what it means to be washed and regenerated is important.
The real issue for all of us, is not who we were, but who we are now and who we are being conformed into. Our identity is no longer rooted in our past, but is rooted in Christ. Therefore we are Christians, not any special kind of Christian, but just Christians pure and simple; for the ground at the foot of the Cross is level for us all.
Morris,
Thanks for that; a helpful clarification that helps me to understand better where you’re coming from. I totally agree with what you’re saying; our prime identifier is as “Christian” with no qualifier attached. I guess within the context of writing a book some sort of identifier is needed, and within the context of the title as “Washed” in the past tense I’m sure Wesley would agree! On that I’m with you, as I am about the problems of a therapeutic culture.
I also agree that if one’s view is “never recovered, always recovering” that’s a real problem, and it clearly has been imbibed by many of our churches; I just don’t think that that is what the book is pushing or that it is beholden to that idea. I think we can hang too much on the semantics (in this case “gay Christian”) if we divorce them from the context in which they’re set. In this instance, I think that the context helpfully controls how we are to understand the phrase. If it were a widespread use irrespective of careful context or a thorough view of atonement there’d be an issue.
Thanks for taking the time to elaborate!
[...] Gospel Coalition: Matthew Lee Anderson, Review of Washed and Waiting [...]