Note from blogger: don't get to the phrase "homosexual Christians" and stop reading. Rather, keep reading and let the author Wesley Hill tell what he means that by that odd phrase. The excerpt comes from a book in which Hill reflects on the biblical teaching on homosexuality out of his own personal struggles. And at 160 short pages, it's well worth your time.
"When we homosexual Christians bring our sexuality before God, we begin or continue a long, costly process of having it transformed. From God’s perspective, our homoerotic inclinations are like “the craving for salt of a person who is dying of thirst” (to borrow Frederick Buechner’s fine phrase). Yet when God begins to try to change the craving and give us the living water that will ultimately quench our thirst, we scream in pain, protesting that we were made for salt. The change hurts.
“Are homosexuals to be excluded from the community of faith?” asked one gay Christian in a letter to a friend. “Certainly not,” he concluded. “But anyone who joins such a community should know that it is a place of transformation, of discipline, of learning, and not merely a place to be comforted or indulged.” Engaging with God and entering the transformative life of the church does not mean we get a kind of “free pass,” an unconditional love that leaves us where we are. Instead, we get a fiercely demanding love, a divine love that will never let us escape from its purifying, renovating, and ultimately healing grip.
And this means that our pain—the pain of having our deeply ingrained inclinations and desires blocked and confronted by God’s demand for purity in the gospel—far from being a sign of our failure to live the life God wants, may actually be the mark of our faithfulness. We groan in frustration because of our fidelity to the gospel’s call. And though we may miss out in the short run on lives of personal fulfillment and sexual satisfaction, in the long run the cruelest thing that God could do would be to leave us alone with our desires, to spare us the affliction of his refining care.
“Not only does God in Christ take people as they are: He takes them in order to transform them into what He wants them to be,” writes historian Andrew Walls. In light of this, is it any surprise that we homosexual Christians must experience such a transformation along with the rest of the community of faith?
The Christian story proclaims that our bodies belong to God and have become members of the corporate, communal body of Christ. This is yet a third reason Scripture and the church’s no to homosexual practice make sense to me."
-Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (2011 A.D.) http://www.amazon.com/Washed-Waiting-Reflections-Faithfulness-Homosexuality/dp/0310330033/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330522662&sr=1-1
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