Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Wesley Hill's personal experiences and biblical reflections offer insight into how a nonpracticing gay Christian can "prove, live out, and celebrate" the grace of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.
For many who are on this path, it's a lonely one. The reality of loneliness and isolation of the celibate homosexual Christian is something that Hill lives and takes seriously in his pursuit of the gospel-centered life. To those on a similar journey, it's often a life of uncertainties and questions.
In Washed and Waiting, Hill explores the three main struggles that have been part of his daily effort to live faithfully:
Interspersed throughout these main sections are character sketches and stories of people who have experienced this journey's trials and triumphs.
Hill offers wise counsel that is biblically faithful, theologically serious, and oriented to the life and practice of the church. As a celibate gay Christian, he gives us a glimpse of what it looks like to wrestle firsthand with God's "No" to same-sex sexual intimacy and contemplate serious and difficult questions.
This is a Logos Reader Edition. Learn more.
- Includes a new afterword by Hill that continues his story since the book first released
- Explores the three main struggles that have been part of the authors daily effort to live faithfully
- Shares the struggles that gay Christians face as they seek to live faithful to God’s “no” to homosexuality
- Washed and Waiting - A Story-Shaped Life
- The Beautiful Incision - The End of Loneliness
- "Thou art Lightning and Love" - The Divine Accolade
Top Highlights
“‘The problem with your lesbian desires is not that you’re desperately craving human love (though we must not overlook even here the deceptive possibility of idolatry). The problem is that your good desire for human love is bent, broken—like all human desires to one degree or another. You need to be resocialized into the human community of the church. Your desire for sexual relationships with other women needs to be transformed, so that nonsexual relationships with men and women in the body of Christ in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit become life-giving to you.’” (Page 131)
“It dislodges our assumption that having sex is necessary to be truly, fully alive. If Jesus abstained and if he is the measure of what counts as true humanity, then I may abstain too—and trust that, in so doing, I will not ultimately lose.” (Page 95)
“My continuing struggle for holiness as a gay Christian can be a fragrant aroma to the Father. I am coming to believe that it will be, in C. S. Lewis’s words, ‘an ingredient in the divine happiness.’” (Page 172)
“‘I think we need a more robust understanding of how necessary human community is,’ the professor mused in response. ‘It’s no use trying to be more spiritual than God, you know! God is the one who created humans to want and need relationships, to crave human companionship, to want to be desired by other humans. God doesn’t want anyone to try to redirect their desire for community to himself. God is spirit. Instead, I think God wants people to experience his love through their experience of human community—specifically, the church. God created us physical-spiritual beings with deep longings for intimacy with other physical-spiritual beings. We’re not meant to replace these longings with anything. We’re meant to sanctify them.’” (Page 130)
Wesley Hill's work is a combination of profound personal honesty and deep pastoral reflection. His academically gifted mind ap-plied to the careful exegesis of God's Word has led him to countercultural yet biblical conclusions and applications. Wesley's passion to glorify Jesus by living faithfully as a Christian man who happens to have a homosexual orientation is an inspiration to every struggling believer who wishes things were different than they are. His insights and biblical reflections will be a substantial help to many fellow agonizers as they live out their faith in a fallen world. This book can provide life-changing encouragement to any believer who yearns to be Faithful to the God who has accomplished salvation—a salvation that is already but not yet. For we who are in Christ are all "washed and waiting."
—Tom Steller, Academic Dean, Bethlehem College, and Seminary
Wesley Hill has written a courageous book. His story will resonate with the unique experience of other Christians with same-sex feelings they did not choose. But his theological perspective broadens his message to include all believers who are struggling to live faithfully in a broken world. This book will also challenge churches to be communities of costly love where men and women can be real with each other.
—Mardi Kerns, Labri Fellowship
Washed and Waiting is vividly written and deeply reflective. It is also an enormously risky project in that it openly presents Wesley Hill's struggles to come to terms with his sexuality and his hard-won decision to live a celibate life. Books on this subject may be intelligent or theologically responsible or honest, but I've never seen one that possessed all three virtues—until now. Any Christian who wants to grapple seriously, biblically, and charitably with human sexuality must read this book.
—Alan Jacobs, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Baylor University’s Honors College
