Tag Archives: Suffering

Review: Home

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Home, for me, is Utah. My happiest memories were made in this valley just west of the Wasatch Mountains — a stone’s throw from my favorite hikes, hangouts, and loved ones. This year I’ve had an opportunity to travel to some of the world’s most beautiful places, but nothing beats coming home. On the other hand, Utah is smoggy, always under construction, marred with temples built to false gods, and the winter can overstay its welcome. Utah is simultaneously not my home. Its best qualities are glimpses of my future home on the new earth and its worst qualities keep me hungering for more — something better.

In her new book, Home, Elyse Fitzpatrick calls this hunger “homesickness.” It’s feeling restless, nostalgic, and unsatisfied in our own home, knowing we’re made for some other place — namely heaven. Fitzpatrick, aware of the glaring limitations, does her best to describe this place — not by giving overly speculative details, but by exploring sweeping themes in Scripture.

One of the major themes is resurrection. Fitzpatrick challenges us to reimagine heaven as a REAL place — physical bodies on a physical earth. None of this bodiless, harps-on-a-cloud business. The Bible gives a better picture: the resurrection of Jesus guarantees our own resurrection, which means we’ll live with God and our fellow saints in time and space. Heaven isn’t just the place we go when we die, where our spirits await reunion with our bodies; ultimately, heaven will be right here on a redeemed earth, when everything is made new. (She actually spends a good chunk of time talking about the meaning of “new” and how amazing it’ll be to live in a place where nothing gets old.) The new earth will not be completely unrecognizable, in the same way that Jesus’ resurrected body shares similarities with his old body. This continuity gives us a lot to imagine in terms of what we’ll know, love, and remember once we get there — not to mention the countless new wonders we can’t even begin to imagine!

And then there’s this awesome chapter on the city of heaven. Fitzpatrick lingers here because of how many people imagine heaven being this sort of farmland — spacious and rural. John the Revelator makes it pretty clear that heaven is a city, not only in terms of architecture (think the enormous cubed metropolis described in Revelation 21) but also as the hotbed of culture and, most importantly, the gathering of PEOPLE. Of course, this will be unlike any city we’ve ever known, completely free from the sinful things that drive us away from cities today. But she wants us to really think about the “garden city” God himself describes in his Word. As someone who enjoys escaping into the mountains, Fitzpatrick did a good job of helping me look forward to life in the big city.

I really appreciate the chapter on suffering, which is a recurring theme throughout Home. Fitzpatrick admits she wrote this book following a time of intense personal and ministerial troubles. She needed a reminder of her future home. But because she feels like her sufferings pale in comparison to fellow believers in Christ, she includes testimonies from those whose faith persevered through various trials — including disease, divorce, and the death of loved ones — as they held onto the hope of heaven. The theme of suffering reminds the reader that life isn’t always rosy… but heaven will be.

Another treasure was chapter ten, which describes how the Church is a foretaste of heaven. If we’re doing it right, “the church should be a place where we get glimpses, whiffs, whispers of [heaven] from time to time.” Jesus speaks to us through his Word, the sermon, and becomes “accessible to our senses” through the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I’m so thankful to be part of a church family that affirms that truth: each week foreshadows a greater communion to come, when we gather together with saints to worship God — only then it will be unhindered by sin.

For Fitzpatrick, writing this book was a reminder — the expectation of our future home. I think we all need that. We need books and pastors and friends to keep our eyes fixed on the horizon of heaven. We need to know SOMETHING of the place we’re headed — not only for ourselves, but also for the people looking for hope in all the wrong places. In either case, I think Home will help.

Review: Same-Sex Attraction And The Church

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One clue that I was gonna love Ed Shaw’s Same-Sex Attraction and the Church… Both Wesley Hill and Rosaria Butterfield, two leading (but very different) voices on the topic, endorsed the book. Their praise is printed alongside blurbs from Russell Moore, Justin Taylor, and Michael Horton — familiar names among evangelicals. I’m also told this was given to 10,000 people who attended this year’s Together for the Gospel conference. So I wanted to see what the buzz was about.

Dude, Ed did not disappoint. [Insert a million heart emojis here.]

Shaw has written something beautifully honest, yet surprisingly optimistic. As someone who experiences same-sex attraction, Shaw balances the STRUGGLES of his sexuality with the OPPORTUNITIES it’s given him to serve the Church and become more like Jesus. But the book is more than a personal narrative; it’s a call for the Church to change how we view celibacy, to make it easier for same-sex attracted Christians who want to remain faithful to God’s design for marriage and sexuality.

To do this, Shaw takes us through nine “missteps” the Church has taken that make it HARDER for people to remain open to celibacy. I think it’s helpful to list all of them here:

•   Your identity is your sexuality
•   A family is Mom, Dad, and 2.4 children
•   If you’re born gay, it can’t be wrong to be gay
•   If it makes you happy, it must be right
•   Sex is where true intimacy is found
•   Men and women are equal and interchangeable
•   Godliness is heterosexuality
•   Celibacy is bad for you
•   Suffering is to be avoided

Shaw tackles each topic with biblical aplomb, showing us where we’ve adopted a worldly perspective and how to realign our beliefs with God’s Word. I found myself cheering for him as he urges the Church to redefine family the way Jesus does — not by blood but by adoption into God’s family. I smiled at the passages that see friendship (not just sex) as a means to true intimacy and fulfillment. I applauded his courage in challenging us to change how we measure holiness — to recognize that same-sex attracted Christians need not become heterosexual to experience real sanctification, and to understand that when God causes ALL THINGS to work together for good, that includes same-sex attraction. With every misconception Shaw obliterated, I became evermore joyful in my singleness. It’s crazy that a book can do that.

I felt especially convicted by the first and last chapters. With regard to the first misstep (see above), I realize how sexuality has become a bigger part of my identity than I’d like to think. That’s due in part to the culture’s influence on my worldview, but it also has something to do with writing so much about sexuality; I talk and think about it more than ever before. But ultimately I want to be known as a Christian, not a gay or celibate or [choose your adjective] Christian. With regard to the last misstep, Shaw reminded me that suffering plays an important role in becoming more like Christ (1 Peter 4:12-19) — something I can easily gloss over in my attempt to look at the bright side of life. Honestly, the struggle of same-sex attraction has lessened the more I’ve come to see singleness as the HAPPY ALTERNATIVE to marriage, but that doesn’t mean there’s no suffering in the Christian walk. I hope to never give that impression, because the Bible certainly doesn’t.

OK, personal stuff aside. Same-Sex Attraction and the Church is for all of us — to remind us WHY we believe marriage is reserved for a man and woman, and HOW we can serve those in our churches who, because of their sexuality, have chosen to remain celibate. Or, as Shaw says, “to rebuild the plausibility structure so that we can live in light of the Bible’s clear teaching.” He reminds us that the gospel is, indeed, GOOD NEWS! This book deserves more than a sales pitch, but seriously, BUY IT NOW! I walked away totally encouraged and convinced that, yes, the Church can make celibacy a good thing. I even read the appendices!

For more on Ed Shaw, check out his story at Living Out.

Review: Spiritual Friendship

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Talk about being behind the curve. Most Christians who identify as gay or same-sex attracted devoured this book and tweeted their reviews months ago. Luckily, Wesley Hill’s Spiritual Friendship is pretty timeless; after all, its themes are rooted in the musings of a 12th-century monk and, as the author suggests, the Bible itself. So there was really no rush. (Not like the rush to binge-watch Fuller House on Netflix, which I did.)

As he makes known in the subtitle, Hill is a celibate gay Christian. His first book, Washed and Waiting, started the conversation that launched a thousand other conversations (and blogs) about how those who experience same-sex attraction can live faithfully as Christians. Spiritual Friendship is a sort of sequel, fleshing out some of those ideas, raising more questions, and presenting friendship as a way for gay people to find love in the Church.

Part one explores friendship’s role in culture and Church history. Hill notes that, until very recently, friendship held an honored place among Christians, most notably in the long-lost tradition of “vowed friendships” between people of the same sex — ceremonies that bound two friends together, making them accountable to each other in the sight of God and man. Hill believes we should recover this practice, although it’s unclear how that would look in modern churches.

The concept of vowed friendships is what’s getting lots of buzz — and some beef — especially in Protestant circles, where tradition takes a backseat to the Bible. (Sola scriptura, you know.) We simply don’t find such ceremonies in Scripture. What we do find, Hill suggests, is a robust theology of friendship. He gives several examples of profound friendships in the Bible: David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, Jesus and his disciples. Friendships that look a lot like family. Friendships that model the love and devotion we’d expect of God’s people, but that we don’t often see in the Church today. Even if he can’t persuade us to revive certain (some would say, obscure) traditions, Hill does convince us that Christ-centered friendship is something we MUST pursue and promote.

Part two explores practical concerns for celibate gay folks in the Church, including an entire chapter on suffering for the sake of friendship. Hill doesn’t gloss over the disappointments and struggles that celibate gay Christians face — especially the fear of losing friends due to marriage, relocation, or our own weaknesses (i.e. codependence). He also talks about the problem of falling in love with your friends — something many gay Christians have experienced (and some straight ones, too, I imagine). Although I relate to Hill’s realism and raw emotion, I did start to worry that Spiritual Friendship would be a repeat of Washed and Waiting — a book I loved but felt lacked a certain hope. Thankfully, the final chapter eased my fears. The last pages are filled with hope, along with stories of how Hill has found healing through the gift of friendship. He rounds out the book by giving us ways to redeem friendship in the Church — advice I’d encourage all churchgoers to heed.

This book is thoughtful, often beautiful, but not everything I dreamed it would be. I think that’s because this conversation is still so new. The Church has really only begun to talk out loud about the complexities of living faithfully with SSA. That’s where I hope this blog and others like it will be of some help, as we continue to explore everyday ways to find happiness in our pursuit of holiness. For anyone who wants to better understand the hopes and fears of celibate gay Christians, Spiritual Friendship is a good place to start. And, Lord willing, there will be many more conversations, books, and blogs to come.