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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
1:12
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:13
Let's get into it.
1:14
Alright guys, normally I do podcast episodes about entire subjects or about entire people
1:18
or books or something like that.
1:20
But this episode is just about one word.
1:22
A single word.
1:24
Now this is a word that's use was incredibly common when I was growing up.
1:29
It's a word that we don't hear used much anymore in modern society.
1:32
We're more so used to it, maybe in private context, maybe you've said it or someone else
1:36
has said it.
1:37
But it's a word that I and all of my friends use with frequency while we were growing up
1:41
as a teenager, even into my early 20s.
1:44
It's just a word that was used frequently.
1:46
And that word is the word [inaudible], okay?
1:49
So obviously this word is a slur for homosexual men.
1:52
And here's the thing.
1:53
The thing with words is individual words when they're given so much power to hurt somebody.
1:57
I think there are some issues with that.
1:59
But to be quite honest, this single word has been used to malign and hurt a large amount
2:04
of people for a fairly extended period of time, okay?
2:07
And now I'm going to be using this word in this podcast today just to make a point about
2:11
its use.
2:12
And so I just want to be clear from the very beginning.
2:14
I know some people read the title of this and were like, whoa, what in the world's going
2:17
on?
2:18
We say it just now I'm probably going to say it several more times, but I'm not condoning
2:22
the use of this word.
2:23
And obviously if you listen to the entire episode and listen to the context with which
2:26
I'll be using it, it'll make a whole lot more sense.
2:28
So don't write me any crazy emails if you're not willing to listen to the entire podcast,
2:32
okay?
2:33
So one thing I will say about me individually is it's kind of embarrassing looking back.
2:37
I mean, to be to be completely honest, it's embarrassing to look back and remember how
2:42
often my friends and I used this word.
2:45
Like how often we used it in just common conversation or when we were talking about
2:50
other people that weren't there to defend themselves.
2:52
And here's the thing is I'm not even going to try to sugarcoat this or try to soften
2:56
this a bit, but I do want to provide some context.
2:58
So when used, this word was used basically to emasculate other males, right?
3:04
So I think back on the times when I use this, you know, in my preteen years as a teenager
3:08
in college or in anything like that, anytime that word was used, it was used to emasculate
3:12
someone else.
3:13
It kind of comes to mind, someone told me about this when I, you know, former co-worker,
3:18
they said, oh, you know, Louis CK has a really funny joke about words and how they're used.
3:21
And so I remember at that time going and looking up that joke and I'm not suggesting
3:25
that you do so, I'm going to be a, you know, basically summarizing it here.
3:29
But the word [inaudible] was one of the words that Louis CK talked about.
3:32
And he was basically like, you know, I kind of missed that word.
3:34
And so the point that he was making is every time that he used the word [inaudible], he was
3:39
using it to describe the way someone was acting, right?
3:43
And he wasn't describing someone that was homosexual.
3:45
It was just somebody that was, you know, asking or acting in an emasculated way or maybe in
3:49
a feminine way or something like that.
3:51
So again, I'm not excusing the word and saying that it's okay that it's used as long as it's
3:55
used in that way.
3:56
Don't misunderstand me.
3:57
But here's the thing that I think is the most, I guess, embarrassing part of everything about
4:03
this word, especially my use of it in the past, is as a Christian, I still use the word.
4:07
And I never really even thought twice about it, right?
4:10
Like, I would be in different groups, different settings, mixed company.
4:14
And some people I knew, some people I didn't know, no, and that word was just, it would
4:17
just come out.
4:18
My friends would say it.
4:19
I would say we're all Christians.
4:20
We all went to church.
4:21
And it was just something that was said, right?
4:23
And no one really, you know, it would have been very different at somebody said the N word
4:26
or maybe a slur against another race of some kind or something like that.
4:30
It would have been a much different type of a thing, but we just all used it and we didn't
4:34
even think twice about it.
4:35
And again, not excusing any of the behavior, I'm just saying, you know, it is what it is.
4:39
But all that changed when I read a single book, okay, and this book is the book washed
4:45
and waiting reflections on Christian faithfulness and homosexuality by Dr. Wesley Hill.
4:50
I think at the time he wrote the book, he was just Wesley Hill, but Dr. Wesley Hill.
4:54
And so this book was written by a, I mean, get ready for this.
4:57
This is a little bit of a tongue twister here and kind of hard to even understand, but
5:00
I'll say it a couple of times, but this is written by a non practicing, still desiring
5:05
homosexual Christian theologian, okay, non practicing, but still desiring homosexual Christian
5:11
theologian.
5:12
Okay.
5:13
This guy is an assistant professor of biblical studies at Trinity School for Ministry in
5:16
Pennsylvania.
5:18
And this book was released in 2010.
5:20
And I'm pretty sure that I read the book either in 2010 or 2011.
5:24
But to be honest with you guys, when I think back, I have no idea why I read this book,
5:29
like no clue.
5:30
I don't remember buying it.
5:32
I don't remember deciding to buy it.
5:34
I don't remember looking at it and thinking, oh, that should be interesting.
5:37
I don't even know how I found it.
5:38
Like I really have no clue.
5:41
And I'm sure, you know, God's laughing right now because he has an idea.
5:44
But the thing is guys is I could not be happier that I found this book.
5:48
I really couldn't be happier.
5:49
It's a, it's a really short read only.
5:51
I think it's, I have it on eversion.
5:52
So I'm pretty sure it's under 200 pages.
5:54
It's just not a very long book.
5:56
But this book completely revolutionized the way that I look at homosexuality and also
6:02
the way that I look at same sex attraction within the context of the capital C church.
6:07
So if that's not enough of a setup for you guys, then I don't know what else to do.
6:11
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through a lot of the high points of this book
6:15
and kind of describe to you maybe what I was feeling at the time while I was reading it.
6:19
And when we get to the end, we'll talk about kind of how some of my thoughts change in
6:22
certain areas.
6:23
There's a lot of the stuff that was discussed in this book was incredibly interesting.
6:27
Some of it was infuriating.
6:28
Some of it, you know, I thought was infuriating, but after got more context, it didn't go that
6:32
way.
6:33
So I'm just going to go ahead and get into the book.
6:34
So here's the thing is when I read the very introduction, like the introductory paragraph
6:41
of this book, I was just kind of like, what in the world am I doing here?
6:46
Like, why, why this book?
6:47
Like it was just so confusing and, and so, so interesting all at the same time.
6:52
So I'm going to be reading a lot of different sections of the book today, but I'm going
6:55
to read you the very, very first paragraph of the introduction of the book.
6:59
Okay.
7:00
By the time I started high school, two things had become clear to me.
7:03
One was that I was a Christian.
7:05
My parents had raised me to be a believer in Jesus.
7:07
And as I moved towards independence from my family, I knew that I wanted to remain one
7:12
that I wanted to trust love and obey Christ, who had been crucified and raised from the
7:16
dead for us and for our salvation as the creed puts it.
7:20
The second thing was that I was gay.
7:23
For as long as I could remember, I had been drawn even as a child to other males in some
7:27
vaguely confusing way.
7:28
And after puberty, I had come to realize that I had a steady, strong, unremitting, exclusive
7:34
sexual attraction to persons of the same sex.
7:37
Okay.
7:38
So, so as a kid, again, who wasn't raised in church, we had pretty standard ideas about
7:43
homosexuals and things like that.
7:45
That first paragraph was just like a complete mind dump.
7:48
It was like, what, what in the world is going to happen here?
7:51
This is in the first few sentences of the book.
7:54
But then he goes into a little bit later in the introduction and kind of goes into a
7:58
little bit deeper detail about what the book is for, right?
8:02
So to kind of fill in the picture a little bit more.
8:04
So I'll go ahead and read that here.
8:06
So this book is neither about how to live faithfully as a practicing homosexual person,
8:10
nor about how to live faithfully as a fully healed or former homosexual man or woman.
8:15
J.I. Packer commenting on Paul's hopeful word for sexual sinners in 1 Corinthians 6-9
8:20
through 11 writes, "With some of the Corinthian Christians, Paul was celebrating the moral
8:25
empowering of the Holy Spirit in heterosexual terms.
8:28
With others of the Corinthians, today's homosexuals are called to prove, live out, and celebrate
8:33
the moral empowering of the Holy Spirit in homosexual terms."
8:37
This book is about what it means to do that, how practically and not a non-practicing but
8:43
still desiring homosexual Christian can prove, live out, and celebrate the grace of Christ
8:49
and the power of the Holy Spirit in homosexual terms.
8:52
This book is written mainly for those gay Christians who are already convinced that their
8:55
discipleship to Jesus necessarily commits them to the demanding, costly obedience of
9:01
choosing not to nurture their homosexual desires, whether through private fantasies or physical
9:05
relationships with other gay or lesbian people.
9:09
Okay, so obviously very, very weighty from the very beginning because if you've never
9:14
read anything like this before, if this has never been something that's been part of your
9:19
normal context and even just reading through the first few pages, you're just like, "Okay,
9:23
this is about to be a serious journey and I really, really need to buckle up."
9:27
So that's really what it was.
9:29
But in the early parts of this book, he kind of talks about as kind of alluded to above
9:33
that even in his childhood, he was never attracted to girls, like never looked at a girl and
9:39
was interested in them as anything other than a friend or a companion to have a discussion
9:44
with or something like that, right?
9:46
He was never attracted to them.
9:47
Now, he does recount being aroused by watching the other boys undressed during gym class,
9:53
right?
9:54
As some sort of weird feeling inside of him that he knew was wrong, that he shouldn't
9:57
feel that way, but that's just what he felt.
9:59
He was never aroused with the thought of a girl or of a woman.
10:03
And this kind of became an issue for Wesley Hill as he got older and continued his attendance
10:07
in church, so back to the book here.
10:10
As I left childhood behind and began to learn more about myself and the world I lived in,
10:14
I came to realize that what had happened to my mind and body was drastically different
10:17
from what had happened to my friends.
10:20
When I started meeting with a small group of guys at my church for prayer and accountability,
10:24
blessed was, predictably, one of the main topics of discussion.
10:27
We like to mentally undress girls we see.
10:30
What should we do about that?
10:31
One of the maturely asked our 20-something leader.
10:34
Come on, we're all red-blooded American males here.
10:36
Another one of the guys chimed in.
10:38
We can talk about our struggles openly.
10:40
I came to realize, with a mild sense of panic, that I couldn't talk about my struggle openly.
10:46
Couldn't identify with my friends as they discussed their frustrations with knowing
10:50
how to handle their hormones.
10:51
My problem was never mentally undressing girls.
10:54
As they talked, I planned how to keep my answers vague so that my difference would
10:58
remain a secret.
11:00
So again, I don't know how some of you guys are reacting to this content here, but this
11:05
is a guy who literally was wired a certain way and was unable to really come to grips
11:11
with how he was feeling.
11:13
This is in high school when he's in these men's groups and they're all kind of struggling.
11:17
This was something that didn't just stop in high school.
11:19
Obviously, this continued through college for a guy like Wesley Hill.
11:24
Now college for a lot of us is it's a time of self-discovery, the prefrontal cortex of
11:29
our brain still isn't fully developed.
11:31
So we're still making some pretty stupid decisions doing things out of emotion.
11:35
But for Wesley, he was still trying to figure out the thoughts in his head, why he was having
11:38
the thoughts in his head, why he was leaning in certain directions, and he was having trouble
11:43
still on college.
11:44
So I'll read this part here when he's referring to his time in college.
11:48
But in my reading, I also discovered that by far the majority of Christians on the basis
11:52
of their reading of several key passages from the Bible together with the weight of Christian
11:56
tradition, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, agreed that homosexual practice was sinful.
12:02
Having gay sex was off limits.
12:04
Christians talked regularly, I found, of God's original intention for creation and that indeed
12:08
God, strictly speaking, didn't make anyone homosexual.
12:12
Rather, homosexuality was one of a myriad of tragic consequences of living in a fallen
12:16
world stalked by the specters of sin and death.
12:20
As I read and thought about, excuse me, as I read and thought about homosexuality throughout
12:24
my four years of college, I felt that the things I had learned in writing my initial
12:28
paper as amateur as it was were confirmed.
12:31
Somehow, in some way, I would have to be faithful to this Christian conviction, that homosexual
12:36
lust, fantasies, and practice, whether self-stimulated or in partnership with another person, gay
12:41
or straight, were not God's will for my life.
12:44
The question for me became then, could I change and become heterosexual?
12:49
I had, of course, wondered this before, but instead of trying to keep my homosexual feelings
12:53
under wraps, maybe now was the time to try and in earnest with concerted effort to invert
12:57
them.
12:58
So basically, guys, he was going to try to ignore his homosexuality, right?
13:04
He was just going to try to bull through and try to make himself heterosexual and just
13:09
hope to goodness that at some point, he was just going to lose out on these feelings,
13:14
that these feelings were just going to dissipate and go away, or that somehow he was going
13:18
to get feelings for a woman in a heterosexual type of manner.
13:23
But that idea kind of came crashing down and it kind of took the help of a friend in a
13:27
similar circumstance, but with something different for that to change for him.
13:31
So back to the book here.
13:32
My friend Jenna, one of the most free-spirited and life-giving people I knew at the time,
13:36
started battling depression.
13:38
I didn't find out about her struggle until months after she had found help and was recovering
13:42
well.
13:43
Over lunch one day, Jenna described that dark time and told me something that had remained
13:47
with me ever since.
13:49
I just wanted to be whole again, Wes, and I thought that by pretending it wasn't there,
13:53
the depression would just go away, but ignoring it is not the path to redeeming.
13:58
If I wanted this depression to be redeemed, I had to face it head-on.
14:03
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, realizing those words were for me.
14:07
Ignoring is not the path to redeeming.
14:10
So guys, again, this is all basically in the introduction.
14:12
Okay, so pretty heavy stuff right here in the introduction, and I remember this time.
14:16
I remember reading this book at the time and I'm sitting at my desk and I'm like, man,
14:20
this is so confusing, but I just had to keep going, right?
14:23
But then the book kind of took a turn, right?
14:25
It took what I thought was like an incredible turn, and I was on my way to getting super
14:32
frustrated.
14:33
So I'll kind of take you through this.
14:34
So I'll read this paragraph to you, and then you can kind of see how what kind of emotions
14:38
this evokes in you.
14:39
It was probably very similar to what happened for me.
14:41
So back to the book.
14:42
There are other reasons the church's traditional "no" to homosexual practice doesn't seem
14:47
compelling.
14:48
One is that it simply seems out of character with the Christian message of love, grace,
14:52
and abundant life.
14:54
Occasionally, it strikes me again how strange it is to talk about the gospel.
14:58
Christianity is good news, demanding anything that would squelch my happiness, much less
15:03
demanding abstinence from homosexual partnerships and homoerotic passions and activities.
15:07
If the gospel really is full of hope and promise, surely it must endorse or at least
15:12
not oppose people entering into loving, erotically expressive same-sex relationships.
15:18
How could the gospel be opposed to love?
15:21
Okay, so at this point, it was like, what the hell?
15:24
Like, okay, you got me with the introduction.
15:26
You got me interested.
15:28
What is this nonsense?
15:29
What is this garbage?
15:30
But it really didn't stop.
15:31
So let's keep going.
15:33
Back to the book.
15:34
I hear and read similar statements transposed into theological key from Christians, too.
15:39
According to Genesis, it is not good that the man should be alone.
15:43
That's Genesis 218.
15:44
These Christians remind us of this.
15:46
What's more, Jesus castigated religious people who tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and
15:51
lay them on people's shoulders.
15:53
That's Matthew 24-4, and said that his own yoke is easy and his burden is light.
15:58
Matthew 11-30.
16:00
Surely this means that no gay or lesbian believer should have to go through life without a partner
16:05
who can satisfy his or her sexual desires.
16:07
As a Christian friend once wrote to me, "If healing prayer and counseling don't work
16:12
and a heterosexual relationship is not viable, then well-intentioned, monogamous, homosexual
16:17
relationships ought to be respected by the church."
16:20
In short, for a variety of reasons, deciding to accept the Bible and the church's teachings
16:25
against homosexual practice sometimes doesn't seem very easy.
16:30
So at this point, I remember being like, all right, I'm starting to get furious.
16:34
I think this is all bull crap.
16:35
This is one of those all-grace-no-law type of things like, I can't be down with this,
16:39
but then it just kept going, okay?
16:41
So here we go.
16:42
Back to the book.
16:43
I have pondered carefully, frequently, from this angle, then that.
16:46
What it is that keeps me as a homosexual Christian for pursuing my sexual fulfillment.
16:51
There is, after all, an obvious and easy solution for people like me who feel frustrated by
16:56
their homosexuality.
16:57
I could find a partner and learn to express, rather than repress, my homoerotic impulses.
17:03
Him Paul himself say, in one of his letters, that, "It is better to marry than to be a
17:07
flame with passion," 1 Corinthians 7-9, "Given that option, there must be a reason someone
17:13
would voluntarily remain in a state of frustration.
17:16
Why do I choose to abstain?"
17:17
On the surface, the Bible and the church's demand for homosexuals not to act on their
17:21
desires can seem old-fashioned, life-taking, oppressive.
17:25
But could it be that if I place that demand into a larger story than perhaps, just perhaps,
17:30
it won't seem as irrational, harsh, and unattainable as it otherwise might?
17:35
Could the Christian story of what God did for the world in Christ be a framework that
17:39
makes the rules, don't go to bed with a partner of the same sex, don't seek to cultivate
17:44
and nurture desires and fantasies of going to bed with a partner of the same sex?
17:48
Makes sense?
17:49
But at this point, the ship's kind of turning.
17:53
You can kind of sense that the ship is turning a little bit, and then Wesley Hill hits us
17:58
with this, and this is huge, huge, huge, right?
18:00
So I'm going to try to read this as deliberately as possible because I want you to get this
18:04
okay?
18:05
Back to the book.
18:06
These questions have been the deciding factor in my choice to say no to my homosexual desires.
18:12
In the end, what keeps me on the path I've chosen is not so much individual proof texts
18:16
from scripture or the sheer weight of the church's traditional teaching against homosexual
18:21
practice.
18:22
Instead, it is, I think, those texts and traditions and teachings as I see them from within the
18:28
true story of what God has done in Jesus Christ and the whole perspective on life and the
18:33
world that flows from that story as expressed definitively in the scriptures.
18:39
Like a piece from a jigsaw puzzle finally locked into its rightful place, the Bible and
18:43
the church's no to homosexual behavior makes sense to me.
18:47
It has the ring of truth as JB Phillips once said of the New Testament.
18:51
When I look at it as one piece within the larger Christian narrative, I abstain from
18:56
homosexual behavior because the power of that scriptural story.
19:01
So he kind of took us on a little bit of a side road there for a second.
19:05
You know, it kind of seemed like he was about to spend the next 150, 175 pages or so basically
19:10
convincing us all that homosexuality was actually correct that Jesus was actually okay with
19:14
it all and those types of things, but he brings it right back and then he basically just follows
19:18
on this train of thought for the remainder of the book.
19:21
And so guys, I'm not going to go into the entire book.
19:23
This is something I certainly want all of you to read on your own, but I am going to pull
19:27
out some different sections.
19:29
So one thing that was really interesting throughout the middle part of the book, he was he basically
19:32
talked about four ways in which the Christian story provides a context in which to make
19:37
some sense of the Bible's no to homosexual practice.
19:40
So we kind of got a little bit of that in the last section of the book that I just read,
19:44
but essentially he goes into more detail on four different things.
19:47
I'm going to go into those now.
19:50
The first one is the Christian story promises the forgiveness of sins, including homosexual
19:55
acts to anyone who will receive it through Jesus's death and resurrection, and this is
19:59
still in the book here.
20:01
One of the most striking things about the New Testament's teaching on homosexuality is
20:04
that right on the heels of the passages that condemn homosexual activity, there are without
20:09
exception, resounding affirmations of God's extravagant mercy and redemption.
20:14
God condemns homosexual behavior and amazingly, profligately, at great cost to himself lavishes
20:20
his love on homosexual persons.
20:22
So this is something that's important for us to realize, even as heterosexual male Christians,
20:26
that really the Christian story promises forgiveness for all sins.
20:30
Now, for us, every generation kind of has their varsity sins, their junior varsity sins,
20:35
but everything is seen the same way to God, right?
20:37
And so this first point that he's making is basically the context through which we can
20:40
see this.
20:41
This is another one of those sins that God can forgive somebody of if they act out on.
20:45
Okay.
20:46
So the second thing that he talks about is I'll just go right into the book and he'll talk
20:49
about the second one here.
20:51
And that is the message of what God has done through Christ reminds me that all Christians,
20:55
whatever their sexual orientation, to one degree or another, experience the same frustration
20:59
I do as God challenges, threatens, endangers, and transforms all of the natural desires
21:05
and affections.
21:06
The Elogen Robert Jensen observes, "After all is said and done, scripture is brutally
21:11
clear about homoerotic practice.
21:13
It is a moral disaster for anyone, just as adultery is a crime for anyone.
21:18
Of course, every mandate of the law is harder on some with their predilections than on others
21:22
with theirs.
21:23
In this fallen world, that is always true of law, divine or human.
21:27
Does God's law then mandate frustration for those unattracted or repelled by the opposite
21:32
sex?
21:33
I fear it does, just as given the fall, each of us with his or her predilections will be
21:37
blocked by God's law in some painful, perhaps deeply painful way."
21:42
So guys, he's talking about the fact that some things, some proclivities in our lives
21:47
are going to pull us in certain directions, but they're not all created equal in terms
21:52
of the level of pain that they might bring us, right?
21:55
So sometimes sanctification is a painful process.
21:58
And I think any of you listening to this podcast have gone through painful times that you've
22:01
been sanctified through the love of Jesus Christ.
22:05
This is something that you've felt and that you know to be true.
22:07
But God puts forth the law for how to live, right?
22:10
And we don't all naturally fit into it, right?
22:13
All of us have different things that are taking us away from God.
22:16
Things that are in our wiring, things that we've made choices to do, different addictions
22:21
that we have that are going to be basically kind of pulling us away, okay?
22:24
So back to the book here.
22:25
When we engage with God in Christ and take seriously the commands for purity that flow
22:29
from the gospel, we always find our sinful dreams and desires challenged and confronted.
22:34
When we homosexual Christians bring our sexuality before God, we begin or continue
22:38
a long costly process of having it transformed.
22:43
From God's perspective, our homoerotic inclinations are like the craving for salt of a person
22:48
who is dying of thirst to borrow Frederick Bachner's fine phrase.
22:53
Yet, when God begins to try and change the craving and give us the living water that
22:57
will ultimately quench our thirst, we scream in pain protesting that we were made for salt.
23:03
The change hurts.
23:05
Our homosexuals to be excluded from the community of faith, asked one gay Christian in a letter
23:09
to a friend.
23:10
Certainly not, he concluded, but anyone who joins such a community should know that it
23:15
is a place of transformation, a discipline, of learning, and not merely a place to be
23:19
comforted or indulged.
23:22
Engaging with God and entertaining the transformative life of the church does not mean that we get
23:26
a kind of a free pass, an unconditional love that leaves us where we are.
23:30
Instead, we get a fiercely demanding love, a divine love that will never let us escape
23:35
from its purifying, renovating, and ultimately healing grip.
23:40
And this means that our pain, the pain of having our deeply ingrained inclinations and
23:44
desires blocked and confronted by God's demanding for purity in the gospel, far from
23:48
being a sign of our failure to live the life God wants, may actually be the mark of our
23:53
faithfulness.
23:54
So that's just an incredible section there, guys.
23:56
It's a lot of stuff to unpack and I hope you caught most of that.
23:58
If you didn't, feel free to go ahead and rewind a little bit and get some more of that.
24:02
But this is an incredible thing that he's talking about this context through which culturally
24:06
we don't, we don't talk about it in this way as something that can be controlled, but something
24:10
that should be controlled even though it's one of our desires.
24:13
So the third thing he talks about here is this, the Christian story proclaims that our bodies
24:18
belong to God and have become members of the corporate communal body of Christ.
24:23
This is yet a third reason scripture and the church is no to homosexual practice makes
24:27
sense to me, though it sounds politically incorrect in modern ears.
24:31
The gospel has always said that God may demand from us what he wants, since we do not belong
24:37
to ourselves, strictly speaking, we have no inalienable rights.
24:41
So this is important where he's basically talking about the practicality of what the
24:44
body is.
24:45
So all of us think that, oh, it's my body, my choice.
24:47
You know, we talked about that on the abortion episode, which was the last episode of this
24:50
podcast and all, and all the way back on podcast number six.
24:54
And you know, that's just not really the way we look at it.
24:56
If you go back to the 21 day men's devotional that we have on the you version Bible app,
25:00
we talk about that in the physical week about how your body is not yours, like it was purchased
25:05
with a price.
25:06
And you're gonna have to honor in a way that God sees fit.
25:08
And the fourth and last thing he talks about is here.
25:11
Fourth and finally, the Christian story commends long suffering endurance as a participation
25:15
in the sufferings of Christ.
25:17
In light of this, my objection that abstaining from homosexual sex will be too difficult,
25:21
doesn't seem as strong or compelling as it once did.
25:25
While taking a German class in college, I learned that in some old to tonic and Scandinavian
25:29
religions and mythologies, there's an ideal of the faded warrior.
25:34
This is the champion who heads into battle fully aware that doom awaits him at the end.
25:38
Defeat rather than victory is the mark of the true hero.
25:41
The warrior goes out to meet his inevitable fate with open eyes.
25:46
So guys, again, a lot of really heavy stuff here.
25:48
I hope you're still with me at this point, but this is stuff that this guy was dealing
25:52
with right in just a few dozen pages, he's laying the stuff out there, but this took him
25:56
years to figure out like confusing moments, moments where he had to have been overcome
26:01
with emotion and confusion and anger and all kinds of different things.
26:05
But here's the thing guys is this is all kind of easy to say.
26:10
Like here I am sitting here recording this in my studio.
26:12
This is easy to say, but think about if you were actually wired this way.
26:17
Think about it.
26:18
These were your feelings, not just some sort of feelings, you know, out in the ether that
26:21
don't really connect to you.
26:23
Like this is going to be really, really hard to live out and he really talks about it in
26:27
those terms and we'll go back to the book here.
26:29
There's actually three different quotes from three different sections that I want to kind
26:32
of bring together for you to kind of put into context how hard this would be to do.
26:36
So here's the first one.
26:38
The sorrow and suffering we experience as homosexual Christians is that of saying goodbye to any
26:42
sure hope of satisfying our sexual cravings and choosing fidelity to the gospel.
26:48
We agree to bear up under this burden for as long as it's necessary.
26:52
The second one is here.
26:54
The homosexual Christian who chooses celibacy continually to one degree or another.
26:58
It seems to me finds himself or herself longing for something relationally that remains tragically
27:03
tantalizingly just out of reach and the last one here.
27:07
In some profound sense this love of God expressed in his yearning and blessing and experienced
27:12
in our hearts must spell the end of longing and loneliness for the homosexual Christian.
27:18
If there is a remedy for loneliness surely this must be it.
27:21
In the solitude of our celibacy God's desiring us, God's wanting us, is enough.
27:27
The love of God is more valuable than any human relationship.
27:31
So guys I want you to think about this for yourself.
27:33
So my assumption here is that the majority of the listeners here this podcast are male
27:38
and the majority of you listening to this are heterosexual that you don't have same
27:41
sex attraction.
27:42
I just want you to think about this.
27:45
Think about as a guy not being able to get your sexual cravings satisfied.
27:51
So just in basic terms I don't mean some crazy sexual fantasies I'm just like your normal
27:55
sexual cravings if you couldn't get them satisfied and that the thing keeping you from satisfying
28:00
them is God's law and think about your reaction to what would be happening then.
28:06
Would you maybe feel like God wasn't for you at that moment that if God was a loving
28:10
God he would just let you do the thing that you wanted to do.
28:13
So think about it in that context and I think that should kind of tell you where a guy like
28:17
Wesley Hill is coming from.
28:19
But also think about the fact that society is telling you that it's okay.
28:23
Society is telling you that man just go for it and it's really just at the edge of your
28:27
fingertips and all you have to do is go over that line just a little bit and you can be
28:33
satisfied in a way that you think is okay.
28:35
But here's a guy in Wesley Hill that is basically dedicated, I think he may have even said this
28:39
in an interview at one point, he's dedicated himself to going to bed alone for the remainder
28:44
of his life.
28:45
He's planning on leading a, you know, relationally, worldly, relationally, um, since to be very,
28:52
very lonely, right?
28:55
But the thing that keeps him going, the thing that keeps him fired up, the thing that keeps
28:59
him whole is the gospel and think about how powerful that is.
29:03
Think about the thing that you struggle with.
29:05
Think about the addiction or the way that you've gone, the mistakes that you've made.
29:09
And think about those things only being satiated by the gospel.
29:13
I mean, that's just, that's just incredible.
29:15
But the thing about this and this is a really important thing that I think Wesley Hill points
29:19
out is that the difficulty of this kind of life is going somewhere.
29:24
Like, it's not just difficult for the sake of being difficult.
29:27
I mean, a lot of you guys out there, you work out.
29:29
Think about if you worked out really, really hard and never saw any results.
29:34
So you ran sprints, but your cardio didn't get any better.
29:36
Like you did pull ups, but you could never get stronger.
29:39
Like just think about that.
29:41
But this is a difficulty for these people that is going in a certain direction.
29:46
And I really like how Wesley Hill ends his book and he ends it with this quote here.
29:50
Slowly ever so slowly, I am learning to do this.
29:54
I'm learning that my struggle to live faithfully before God in Christ with my homosexual orientation
29:59
is pleasing to him.
30:01
And I am waiting for the day when I will receive the divine accolade, when my labor of trust
30:06
and hope and self denial will be crowned with his praise.
30:09
Well done.
30:10
Good and faithful servant.
30:11
The Lord Christ will say, enter into the joy of your master.
30:15
So guys, just an incredible book.
30:17
Like I said, I really would suggest that all of you read that.
30:19
We'll talk about that more here in a little bit, but we just have to think about this
30:22
through the context of modernity as well, because look what modernity has done with homosexuality.
30:28
You know, public perception wise, and I said this in the last podcast in episode 24.
30:33
But in 2008, all the different candidates that were running for the democratic ticket
30:36
for president, every single one of them thought that same sex marriage should not be allowed,
30:41
right?
30:42
Every single one of them, at least publicly defended the biblical definition of marriage
30:46
and relationship as one woman and one man, right?
30:49
Here we are in 2018.
30:50
It's completely different.
30:51
And it's not like it just changed recently.
30:53
It changed years and years ago, right?
30:56
Another thing that I heard recently, I heard this on an interview that Mark Tristel was
30:59
Driscoll was giving, but one of the top 10 reasons listed for people not supporting Christianity
31:04
is it's quote unquote intolerance of homosexuality, right?
31:08
Just think about that.
31:09
But also we've seen a lot of different denominations.
31:11
There are gay people that are serving in ministry.
31:13
There openly gay people that are serving in roles that help out with children or singles
31:19
ministries.
31:20
Like this is not, it's not really uncommon.
31:23
And then in the last week, Pope Francis came out and, you know, said another Pope Francis-y
31:27
type thing.
31:28
I'll just go and read to you from this New York Times article, a Chilean survivor of
31:32
clerical sex abuse has said that Pope Francis told him in a private meeting this month that
31:36
God has made him gay and that both God and the pontiff loved him that way, a remarkable
31:41
expression of inclusion for the leader from the leader of the Roman Catholic church.
31:46
He said to me, Juan Carlos, that's not a problem.
31:48
Said Juan Carlos Cruz, the abuse survivor, describing having told the Pope that he was
31:52
gay in a long meeting in the Vatican.
31:55
You have to be happy with who you are.
31:57
God made you this way and loves you this way.
31:59
And the Pope loves you this way.
32:01
The Vatican declined to comment on the Pope's private remarks.
32:04
So the reason why they declined to say something about the Pope's private remarks is because
32:08
they actually think this way.
32:09
So we have that type of thing pop up.
32:11
We've had things like before, like, you know, num-nuts, Carl Lenz, whenever he came out in
32:15
2014.
32:16
And he basically, well, I'll go and read you the quote that he said.
32:20
This was in a Huffington Post article or is an interview that he did for them in 2014.
32:24
Jesus was in the thick of an era where homosexuality, just like it is today, was widely prevalent.
32:29
And I'm still waiting for someone to show me the quote where Jesus addressed it on the
32:33
record in front of people.
32:34
You won't find it because he never did.
32:37
All right.
32:38
Okay.
32:39
This is literally a ridiculous thing, but I'm not going to get too much into it here.
32:42
I'm going to include an article here at the end of this podcast.
32:45
But basically, I made a response to this that basically said Jesus did indeed talk about
32:49
homosexuality, like 100% and I'll go and read a little quote from an article that I'll share
32:54
with you later.
32:55
But Jesus says this in Matthew 519, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder,
32:59
adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.
33:03
These are what defile a person."
33:05
Yes, the word homosexuality never appears, but we're reading this verse through the eyes
33:11
of someone who understands 21st century English and the meaning of those words therein.
33:15
In reality, the Greek word used here for sexual immorality is "portnea," where we get the
33:20
modern word for porn.
33:21
In the 1st century, writer or reader would have understood that to mean any sexual relations
33:26
or acts outside of a marriage between one man and one woman.
33:29
So in the mind of the 1st century, writer, reader, they would have known that to include
33:34
adultery, polygamy, bestiality, and let, yes, homosexuality.
33:38
Thus, Jesus 100% made reference to homosexuality during his ministry.
33:43
Lentz is dead wrong on this subject.
33:45
So again, I don't want to get too far off onto the subject matter about Carl Lentz.
33:48
But the thing about it is, is there's a lot of cultural confusion here.
33:52
So modern culture tells us that we need to be accepting of this, that even in the church,
33:56
it needs to be accepting of this, but again, I want to bring us back to the main thing here,
34:00
which is Jesus is 100% grace and 100% truth.
34:03
I talk about this literally all the time, but I have to because people forget about it.
34:07
Jesus is not 50% grace and 50% truth.
34:10
He's 100% of both.
34:11
So I think it was on a Q&A podcast back a couple of weeks ago or months ago, where someone
34:15
asked me, you know, there's a couple of gay people in our choir, would Jesus come and
34:19
preach at our church?
34:20
And I think my answer was really short, I was like, yeah, of course he would, but he would
34:23
call a spade a spade.
34:24
He would say that, no, this is wrong behavior, but I love you and I forgive you if you will
34:28
turn from this, right?
34:30
And so it's kind of one of those things that I think is important to talk about here is
34:33
there's so much confusion.
34:35
And then you have how you were brought up, you have how you were raised, you have how
34:39
you interacted socially with other people, with other guys on your teams, or at work
34:44
or something like that, and there's things that you say and do and it just ends up kind
34:48
of being part of your paradigm, part of what you believed.
34:51
But this is one thing that I want to kind of say to you guys, and this is kind of how
34:54
I want to wrap this whole thing up and why I'm calling this podcast, why I stopped using
34:59
the word [inaudible], because I can boil it all down to one thing.
35:04
So I know a lot of times at the end of the podcast, I'll give you, well, here's my three
35:07
thoughts or here's five things that we can consider.
35:10
Here's my 10 favorites, whatever, whatever.
35:11
But I can boil this whole thing down into one single reason why I stopped using that
35:16
word.
35:17
And it's this, I didn't want to be a blockade between someone that suffers from same-sex
35:22
attraction and Jesus.
35:25
I don't want to be the person that blocks someone from potentially meeting Jesus.
35:30
Now, that is not putting myself at some sort of elevated level, that if I do something
35:36
like say this word or say it in an improper context, that somehow someone's never going
35:40
to be able to meet Jesus.
35:41
I'm not going to belittle the Holy Spirit in that way.
35:44
But the thing about it that I realized and that hit me really square in the nuts after
35:48
I read this book was if somebody struggles with same-sex attraction and they hear me
35:54
say that word, right?
35:56
So I'm in a social setting and I use that word, I make fun of somebody or something like that.
36:00
And I use it to demean another guy.
36:02
Do you think that that person's going to come to me for help or advice?
36:06
Like think about that.
36:08
That is the scenario that scared me to death and made me wonder if I had done that to somebody
36:14
at some point in my life during my teen years that I use that word.
36:18
I just use it flippantly and just kind of threw it out there.
36:21
What if somebody that I knew really well needed someone to talk to about their same-sex attraction
36:25
and they knew, well, I can't go to Kyle because, you know, he uses that word and he's around
36:30
a bunch of guys, a bunch of athletes or a bunch of whoever's and they all say that word.
36:33
So I can't talk to him.
36:34
I think I'll just not talk about it then.
36:37
I don't know that that situation happened.
36:38
No one's come to me after the fact.
36:41
But I realize that at some point in my life, I may be the only person that they'll ever
36:47
talk to about that and I want to make sure that I'm as open and easy to talk to when
36:51
it comes to that.
36:52
And here's the thing guys, you may be the only person they'll ever talk to as well.
36:56
That may be a scenario for you.
36:57
Like I remember one point there, there's a good buddy of mine.
37:01
He told me about his two of his best friends, two of his best friends are homosexual and
37:05
they're in a relationship together.
37:07
And you know, after the marriage law got passed, you know, basically ramrotted by this supreme
37:11
court down all of our throats that eventually these two were going to get married, right?
37:15
In my home state of Oklahoma.
37:18
And he talked to me about that and he's just kind of like, you know, I don't, I don't really
37:21
know like, should I say anything or, you know, you know, I know Christians were just supposed
37:25
to love people.
37:26
So should I just kind of let it go and blah, blah, blah on all these things?
37:29
And you know, he kind of caught me off guard with the conversation.
37:31
So I kind of just had to go with my gut and even now I feel like I may have said the right
37:34
thing.
37:35
But basically what I told him is I said, you are uniquely suited to talk to both of these
37:41
people in a way that I wouldn't because these people don't know me.
37:46
So if I just walked up to them as they were trying to plan out their wedding or something
37:49
like that, and I tried to tell them about how wrong homosexuality was and how the Bible
37:53
says this or the Bible says that, it would just fall in deaf ears because I don't know
37:56
them.
37:57
I don't have a relationship with these guys.
37:58
Like I don't love them.
37:59
I don't love them as a friend would love another friend, but he does like my buddy did love
38:05
these guys.
38:06
He loved them as friends.
38:07
Like he wanted what was best for them.
38:09
And I just told him and I encouraged him as I said, if not you, then who?
38:14
If you don't have this conversation with them, who will who's going to have this conversation
38:17
with them?
38:18
And so I encouraged him to talk to them about what what they were doing and about their
38:23
lifestyle and about the choices that they made.
38:25
And that's one thing I want to be very, very particular about here is about the word
38:29
choice.
38:31
So some of you may have been, you know, furious during my reading of this or you kind of think
38:36
you know where I'm going with all this and maybe it's outside of anything that you've
38:39
ever considered.
38:40
I don't really know what, but here's the deal.
38:43
God made us in a way that allowed for free will, right?
38:48
We're able to love.
38:49
I said this in the last podcast, but in order for us to have the ability to love, we have
38:52
to have free will, right?
38:53
We're not robots.
38:54
We're not automatons.
38:55
As CS Lewis called it in mere Christianity, like that's not who we are, but that does
39:01
not mean that we always have to act on our impulses in our inclinations, right?
39:06
So I am not wired for same sex attracted attraction.
39:10
I'm very attracted to females.
39:11
I've only ever been attracted to females, right?
39:14
So that's not something that I struggle with, but I have other struggles.
39:17
I have other issues that I have to deal with other crosses to bear, if you will.
39:21
But the thing about it is just because those are my inclinations to try and do those things
39:27
or be drawn towards that, those things, that doesn't mean that I have to succumb to them.
39:31
Oh, because that's just who I am.
39:33
I was born this way.
39:34
That's how I was wired.
39:36
That's not the case.
39:37
Like in my family, there's been some alcoholism in my family, different points.
39:41
I've had family members die because of alcoholism.
39:43
So I kind of have that in me somewhere genetically, right?
39:47
So do I just use that as an excuse to get blackout drunk every night?
39:51
I mean, no, like that'd be ridiculous, like in nobody in society would be okay with that.
39:57
The same is true with same sex attraction, whether you're a girl that's attracted to
40:00
other girls or a guy that's attracted to other guys.
40:03
Just because you are wired for that does not mean you need to act out on it, right?
40:08
There is no sin and temptation.
40:11
Being tempted is not sin, right?
40:13
I mean, just think about it.
40:14
Jesus was out in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.
40:17
He was tempted in every conceivable way and this is a man who never sinned.
40:21
So he was tempted, but he never sinned.
40:23
He never gave in to those temptations.
40:27
And I'm sitting here as a heterosexual male, trying to even like get in the brain of somebody
40:31
that's struggling this way and it's, I can't, like it's just not, I just don't understand
40:36
it.
40:37
But it's incredible to hear the story of a guy like Wesley Hill to Wesley Hill and to kind
40:41
of hear what he's had to do and what he's, you know, had to overcome in his own brain.
40:48
And guys, the reason why he's able to do that is because of the power of the gospel.
40:51
And that's the only reason because this is maybe the easiest time in the United States
40:56
in the history of the United States to come out as homosexual.
40:59
I mean, you know, if you come out as homosexual, like they're going to, you know, like your
41:03
post on Facebook several thousand times, they may even throw you your own parade.
41:06
Like it's just, that's the way that it is now.
41:08
It's not like this big dramatic thing anymore.
41:10
So he could just do that.
41:12
And there are certain pockets of Christianity and certain denominations that would welcome
41:15
him with open arms and tell him, you don't have to change at all.
41:17
God loves you no matter what.
41:19
Here's the thing.
41:20
God does love him no matter what, but God wants him to repent of the things that he's
41:23
done or the actions that he's taken towards a sinful way of, way of being, right?
41:30
And so that's the thing that I want all of us to kind of consider is we need to be thinking
41:34
about ourselves in this story, because I'm not going to be so naive to think that there
41:38
isn't somebody listening to this podcast that's struggling with same-sex attraction either.
41:43
Like the, the odds of that in really the statistics kind of bear out that somebody listening to
41:48
this podcast right now, that's a guy has struggled with same-sex attraction or is still struggling
41:52
with it.
41:53
Now, I mean, think about what it would be like for you to be able to go and get help because
41:58
here's the thing.
41:59
Let's say I was an alcoholic.
42:00
I'm not, but let's say I was I could go to my church today and walk up to one of the pastors
42:05
on staff and say, Hey, I'm an alcoholic, I need help.
42:08
And that's kind of easy, right?
42:09
Because everyone's kind of heard of that problem.
42:11
Like that's kind of an easy one.
42:12
Yeah, let's get you on the 12 steps.
42:14
Let's get all the alcohol taken out of your house and, you know, don't go to any bars.
42:17
Here's your accountability partner.
42:18
You know, that kind of stuff.
42:19
This one's a little different.
42:21
This requires a little bit more handholding.
42:22
This one requires requires a little bit.
42:25
It's a different process than just your normal 12-step process.
42:27
You know what I mean?
42:28
And so think about if you were in that situation, how you would want to be treated, like would
42:33
you want to hear a slur that's directed at somebody that has your problem out of mouths
42:37
of somebody that you trust and respect?
42:39
I don't think you would.
42:41
And so guys, this was an unbelievably challenging book.
42:44
It stretched me a lot of ways, but it's one of the most important books that I've ever
42:47
read.
42:48
And there may be other books out here on this exact subject that did a better job than Wesley
42:52
Hilden.
42:53
I don't know.
42:54
I don't really care.
42:55
But this book is on the 100 books that every modern Christian man should read lists on
42:57
our website.
42:58
And it's for this one reason that it's the only book that I've seen that I feel like
43:01
encapsulates the story in a somewhat autobiographical manner to where it's actually palatable for
43:06
the general audience, right?
43:08
And so for all of you guys, if this is a word that you use, you know, the word [inaudible],
43:15
I would strongly strongly urge you to stop doing that cold turkey right now.
43:20
And I got to be honest with you.
43:21
It's a word that just kind of comes up in your brain and it's something that you just
43:24
think and you say it and you that it on, all those things.
43:26
But just like anything else, you create new neural pathways where that word is no longer
43:30
included.
43:32
And that doesn't mean that you're perfect.
43:33
And guys, I was the first one to throw myself on the sword here.
43:35
This was a word I used a lot for a lot of years.
43:39
And I wish I could go back and change that, but I can't.
43:41
I can only change what I'm doing going forward.
43:43
But that's a word you're using.
43:44
You may be cutting off somebody who wants to talk to you, who sees you as a confidant
43:49
that they need help in this area, someone that you may be able to lead to Christ.
43:53
So if you cutting one word out of your vocabulary can end up, you know, leading to eternal salvation
43:58
for somebody, I can serve that worth it.
44:00
And here's the thing.
44:01
If there's anybody out there listening to this right now, if you have struggled with
44:04
same-sex attraction, you would consider yourself a Christian, that you want to be a follower
44:08
of Christ and you don't know exactly how to do that and a discipleship type manner with
44:12
Jesus.
44:13
And you feel like you're struggling because of some proclivity inside you towards same-sex
44:17
attraction.
44:18
Please reach out to us.
44:19
Please hit us up at info@undonta.live, please email us because we don't want you to feel
44:23
like you're alone.
44:24
All right.
44:25
If you just need to tell somebody, you don't know me.
44:26
So just throw it out there to me and we'll see what we can do to help you out, man.
44:29
But you shouldn't have to deal with this on your own.
44:31
All right, guys, we're going to do a quick resilience boost here.
44:33
And as you know, by now, we are a men's ministry in our mission.
44:36
It's cultivating manly resilience.
44:38
Specifically, we do that by providing content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical
44:42
toughness.
44:43
So today we're going to focus on spiritual and mental.
44:45
And I got two things for you.
44:46
You can probably see where this was going.
44:48
Go ahead and pick up this book and read it.
44:49
Okay.
44:50
It's called washed and waiting reflections on Christian faithfulness and homosexuality
44:53
by Wesley Hill.
44:54
So you can find it on Amazon.
44:56
I think there's audio book out there.
44:58
Not sure if Wesley Hills the one's reading it, but it's, it's, it's out there.
45:02
It's easy to find.
45:03
It's a short read, but it's an incredible book.
45:06
And then also I included the article in there that I made mention of earlier.
45:08
It's the article that I wrote for a dead man.
45:11
I think this was late last year, but it was basically entitled is Carl Linds, the most
45:15
dangerous person in Christian ministry, because I go into this discussion about what Jesus's
45:20
relationship to talking about homosexuality publicly was.
45:23
Okay.
45:24
Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode.
45:25
I really do appreciate it.
45:26
Please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud or Google play wherever you're listening to this
45:29
and refer your friends to listen and tag us on social media.
45:32
Okay.
45:33
Guys, if you do that, we'll find your post and we'll give it a like.
45:35
Okay.
45:36
If we deserve a five star review, please leave us a five star review.
45:38
That's how this is going to continue to grow guys.
45:40
Okay.
45:41
I'm booking speaking engagements for 2018.
45:43
So if you want me to come speak to your team, to your church, to your Sunday school, to
45:46
your retreat, whatever, hit me up info at undaunted.life again, that's info at undaunted.life.
45:52
Our website is www.undaunted.life, and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at
45:57
undauntedlife and on Facebook.com backslash undaunted life.
46:01
Check out our free devotionals on the U version Bible app.
46:03
Just search undaunted life under plans.
46:05
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their music
46:09
library for our content.
46:10
The intro outro track on this podcast is their song, King of Sorrow, which is off their latest
46:14
record entitled Phantom Anthem.
46:16
The links to all of this are in the description.
46:18
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
46:20
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical
46:25
toughness.
46:26
Keep seeking the Lion of Judo.