Theology in the Raw - 782: #782 - Gay Christian, Celibacy, and the Lord's Prayer: Dr. Wesley Hill

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

Preston sits down with one of his "mentors from a distance"--the one and only, Wes Hill. Wes is a celibate gay Christian (or a Christian who happens to be attracted to the same sex and not the opposite sex) and a biblical scholar. Wes and Preston talk a lot about the phrase "gay Christian" and why it's become so volatile in some evangelical circles. They also talk about Wes' most recent book "The Lord's Prayer" and what the prayer means in the context of Matthew's gospel. Wesley Hill is associate professor of biblical studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania and an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church. He is the author of Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan, second edition 2016), Paul and the Trinity: Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters (Eerdmans, 2015), Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Brazos, 2015), and The Lord's Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father (Lexham, 2019). A contributing editor for Comment magazine, he writes regularly for Christianity Today, The Living Church, and other publications, including SpiritualFriendship.org which he co-founded. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm going to be in Nashville, Tennessee, March 10th and March 11th, speaking on sexuality and gender-related questions. March 15th in Seattle, Washington, April 30th and May 1st in Philadelphia. And then I will be in Phoenix, May 6th and May 7th. To check out these events, you have to go to centerforfaith.com and go to the events link and see more information on where and when these events are taking place. And you can also register for these events through the website. That's centerforfaith.com. Go to the events link. Also, if you want to support this show, please go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. There is such a thing as a theology in the rock community. And once you say community,

it just makes it sound so much greater than maybe it really is. I don't know. But I've cultivated many awesome friendships through those of you out there, the 200 and whatever, 40 plus of you out there who have taken the time to go to patreon.com and to support the show. So thank you so, so much. I've enjoyed, um, getting to know you and I really appreciate the support that you give to the show. If you want to become part of that Theology in the Raw community, it's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. My guest on today's show is somebody that I cannot believe I haven't had on before. Dr. Wesley Hill. Dr. Wesley Hill is a graduate of Wheaton College of Durham University, where he

did an MA and his PhD in New Testament studies. He's been a professor for a number of years at Trinity School for Ministry, an Anglican evangelical seminary or an evangelical seminary in the Anglican tradition. Many of you know Wes because he has been a significant voice in the conversation about sexuality and faith. He's the author of several books, Washed and Waiting, Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality is an amazing book. Another amazing book is Spiritual Friendship, Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian. I haven't read his more academic book, Paul and the Trinity, but he just came out with another book called The Lord's Prayer. And it's just so, so good to get to know Wesley. We had a wonderful conversation. We talked a lot about his journey and sexuality.

And we gave a lot of attention to the whole debate about gay identity and whether somebody should use the phrase gay Christian. And I just, I don't know. I love everything he says. It doesn't mean I always agree, whatever. But I just, he's such a humble, godly guy, super sharp, super wise, and I hope you will see that as well in this conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and with my friend Wesley Hill, and this is embarrassing a little bit,

but we've known each other at least from a distance and got in some face-to-face encounters for the last several years. But this is your first time on my podcast. I can't believe it. Yeah, well, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be on here talking with you. For those of you listening who don't know who Wesley Hill is, Wes, why don't you give a brief just your journey, where you came from, just in your personal life, in your academic journey, and then where you are now. And then we'll jump into some, I'm sure, tangents that that will stir up.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I sometimes feel like I have multiple jobs, but my day job, my actual job is I teach at a seminary. I teach biblical studies, more specifically the New Testament at a small Anglican slash Episcopal seminary in, well, just outside Pittsburgh called Trinity School for Ministry. And I'm, this is hard for me to believe, but I'm in my eighth year of teaching here. So it's, I feel pretty rooted and, you know, have a home that I share with some good friends. So that's my professional life. I got bitten by the biblical studies bug when I was, well, I think even before my undergraduate days at Wheaton, but certainly by the time I was an undergrad at Wheaton, I remember

taking Greek 101 with Scott Haifman and just being really kind of the whole world of New Testament studies opened up to me in a way that was super compelling and interesting. of New Testament studies opened up to me in a way that was super compelling and interesting. And so I pursued that at the graduate level, went to Durham University and wrote on Paul's letters and Trinitarian theology, trying to bridge the biblical studies, systematic theology gap, which, you know, still exists in a lot of spaces in scholarship. So that was a really fun thing to work on. And yeah, I, in the process of being there, I ended up kind of also getting bitten by the Anglican bug. So I got confirmed in the Church of England when I was there. And so it's a,

it's a great thing to be able to teach it in Anglican seminary now. But my other, my other kind of main area of public work that I do, I write and speak a lot about sexuality, which is, I think, how we initially connected. So I realized when I was a teenager and honestly, probably earlier that I was gay and I was in a very conservative evangelical space and experienced a lot of embarrassment about that. It sort of felt like I didn't have any conscious choice over it. Like it just kind of landed in my lap, so to speak. But I still thought, wow, I should be able to like change this or I should be able to escape this somehow. And so carried a lot of shame with that and didn't tell anyone until I got to Wheaton as an undergrad. Um, but yeah, so, so through wrestling with my own sexuality and kind of, uh, very much wanting to do that as a Christian, wanting to think about my sexuality as a Christian,

um, uh, I, I started searching for, for books that would help. And I found, I found a bunch of books, but they, they tended to be about politics and theology. And they tended, the ones that were more about like real life, like pastoral life, seem to either want to say, you know, the way, the way you should live this out is find a husband and, you know, get married and have a kind of godly marriage in that sense. Or, you know, this is, this is the result of childhood trauma or deficit, and therefore you need to be in some kind of therapy or healing prayer in order to be delivered from this so that you can get married to a woman and start a family

that way. And there really wasn't anything that I found at the time that sort of said, well, what if this isn't something that you can engineer a fix for? You know, what if you can't pray this away? What if this is going to be my reality? And what if you at the same time still find yourself compelled by the traditional way of reading scripture that God intends sexuality to be reserved for male and female marriage and anyone who's not in that state is called to chastity, to abstinence. So I ended up writing a book, kind of a mashup of memoir and theology.

And I just tried to say, here's what it looks like to be both gay and also pursuing a life of intentional singleness. And to my knowledge, nobody had done that before. And so that kind of launched me off into this area of ministry that I'm still involved in today, which is kind of speaking about that, trying to educate churches and counselors about that and say, hey, there are actually a lot of us out here who are trying to live in that middle space of what's sometimes called side B or, um, you know, sometimes called a, a traditional Christian sexual ethic. Um, there, there are a lot of us who are trying to live that

out at the same time as being, you know, having an ongoing experience of same sex desire, same sex attraction, uh, homosexuality, whatever kind of label you want to put on it. Um, so I, yeah, I continue to do that. Um, with Ron Belo, who's a, who's an old friend, I co-founded a blog. I think, I think we started in 2012 called Spiritual Friendship, spiritualfriendship.org. We don't really do much with it anymore, but we kind of use that blog as a way to work out a lot of our questions about, you know, so what does it look like to be living this, this, this life? And what insights would we want to offer to other questions about, you know, so what does it look like to be living this, this, uh, this life and what insights would we want to offer to other Christians about, you know, how to love us and how

to welcome us into your lives. And, um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of the brief story of who I am and what I'm, what I'm up to these days. So your, your book, uh, Washington Waiting, I think it was published in 2009. Is that? I, yeah, 2009 or 2010. I think it came out 2010, early 2010, maybe. Were you doing your PhD when you wrote that book? I was doing my PhD when it came out, but I'd actually written it several years earlier and just kind of sat on the manuscript. I wasn't sure if I wanted it because that was kind of my coming out book, you know, and I, I was still kind of worried about the repercussions of what that would mean for my ministry and my, you know, my professional life if I if I came out in that way. So I, eventually, I just felt like I need to publish this, you know, I, it feels like a kind of,

you know, urge that that I should pay attention to. But yeah, yeah. For those who aren't aware, I mean, your book is, is a classic ahead of its time. It was the first book I read on the topic when I first wanted to kind of dig a little deeper. What does the Bible say about this topic? Picked up the book, blew, just blew me away. Because like most straight conservative evangelicals, you just have these real, just kind of weird categories of this. You know, there's a gay community out there and then the church over here and just

kind of, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You merge those in a real challenging and helpful way. And it just was, it's, I mean,

if, if, if anybody is, wants to engage this conversation, a lot of, a lot of my listeners do, this is, you know,

pick up on my podcast because of it. And if you haven't read Wes's book, man, you it's's it's the classic go-to and there's been good stuff written since then but um yeah that book has helped so many people thanks Preston yeah I mean it's it's it's one of the people people sometimes ask me you know how do you how do you end up writing something and for me it often starts with I want I want to read something and then I can't find it. And so I feel like I have to write what I would like to be able to read, but doesn't seem to exist yet. So that book was very much that way for me. I didn't realize your blog that you're not doing much with.

I haven't been on in a while, but that's been a massive, the spiritualfriendship.org or .org? Right,.org. Yeah. I mean, and you can spend thousands, maybe spend thousands, but lots of time on that blog and just so many helpful posts there. Yeah, no, I wouldn't say it's gone completely dormant. I do. Alan Jacobs, who writes a lot about technology, made the comment several years ago that he thinks there are blogs that seem to kind of have a lifespan where, you know, you're focusing on one topic so intently and you do kind of reach a point where

you start repeating yourself. You know, you've kind of explored that theme. And I think, I don't know if Ron would say this, but I feel that way a little bit with that blog is it was very important for us to kind of be publicly working out some of our ideas. But I think we're kind of funneling those ideas more into like book projects or speaking projects now and maybe doing a bit less with blogging. And I don't know, maybe something, maybe part of it is, you know, in the year 2020, blogging is not the medium that it used to be. You know, it seems like we're kind of in the golden age of newsletters right now, but blogs don't seem to be as popular.

Wait, is that your, are newsletters a now, but blogs don't seem to be as popular. Wait, is that your newsletters thing? I mean, newsletters are huge. Yeah, I don't have one, but it seems like all my friends do. Well, I've got two, and people keep telling me, build that list, build that list. It's like important to do. No, I think that's, I mean, yeah, what do I know? Interesting. It seems like it's kind of the wave of the future.

The way I'm podcasting and especially YouTube seems to be the way to. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And podcasting and especially YouTube. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I appreciate you mentioning that because all of our posts are archived there. And I think I'm pretty proud of a lot of what we did there. I think we were trying to think out loud about some important stuff.

And so I would love it if your listeners would still check it out, even though we're not updating it as much as we used to. Well, here's what I love is in this space, there's lots of memoirs, there's lots of, I don't know, non-academic approaches to this conversation, making sometimes bold academic claims. What I love about your, I'm going to call it community, the spiritual friendship

community yeah um is that you guys are so intellectually wired and academically precise and thorough and that so as an academic who yeah i just when when anything's just not that thoughtful a little sloppy it's like i just it's hard for me to trust it you guys though have that academic depth and precision you're not you're not scared to write a 2,500 word blog, which violates all the blogging, which I'm like, dude, some things need a very lengthy treatment. Sure. Sure. Well, thanks. I think that, I think that's both a strength and a weakness of what we're up to. Cause I think the strengths are what you just said, you know, it, it allows us to be nuanced and, and try to go for precision and, and, and depth. But I do think there are a lot of people out there who, you know, before they need to be engaging with theology, they just need to know that there

are Christians who care about their minority sexuality, you know, and just need some actually just really, really practical encouragement about like, where do I find friends? You know, where do I find, um, you know, a counselor who might understand this? So, so we, we do sometimes get criticism that, you know, you guys are just so academic and, and I, my response to that tends to be, yeah, you're exactly right. We need, we need a lot more than just the spiritual friendship community. You know, we need, we need ministries like Revoice and like your ministry and, and others that are going to, that are going to be a bit less, um, you know, fixated on the, on the kind of academic task and a bit more holistic in terms of how you're, how you're approaching it.

So you've been out, uh, as a celibate gay Christian in, I'm going to come back to that phrase, by the way, that just, yeah, I had a little that just had a little twitch for over 10 years now with your book. What's been maybe the top one or two challenges living in this space, a gay man in the evangelical space, maintaining your traditional sexual ethic? Yeah. I think when I was in my twenties, I would have, the first thing I would have said would be loneliness. Um, and, and I think, I think, I think for me, that's like the ache of loneliness for a relationship, like for a romantic partner. Um, and I think part of that is just my own biography. Like I grew up with in a stable family, my parents had a strong

marriage. And so just from very early childhood, I assumed that that would be my life too, that I would one day get married and, and have a partner. And, you know, and I think I went, I went to a conservative Christian college, I went to Wheaton College, and it seemed like, you know, there were there were dozens of weddings that happened within within the year or two after I graduated, you know, there were dozens of weddings that happened within the year or two after I graduated. You know, people who had met one another in college. So I think marriage has always been this kind of almost idealized thing for me. And I think staring ahead at adulthood without that, you know, thinking about a lifetime of singleness, just felt incredibly lonely. So that was a real challenge. And I'm not,

I'm not going to say it's not still a challenge, but I think, you know, with, with some of the work on friendship I've done and some of the just in my own personal life, pursuing friendship and cultivating community, I think I feel way more hopeful about my future as a single adult than I ever have before. You know, I just, I feel like I have a, a rich network of people that really view me as family and, and, and, and just take care of me in all kinds of ways. You know, I actually, I share a home with a married couple and their two children who are my godchildren. And, uh, you know, so there's just not that kind of, the ache of loneliness is still there.

But it's it's it's it's a little bit more on the back burner now than the front burner in quite that way. So in my experience, and you could, I think, resonate with this. You know, we've seen a lot of people who are gay who try to, you know, pursue celibacy and end up switching their view and finding a romantic partner or whatever. It seems like in most cases, I'm just speaking anecdotally. It typically has some connection with the fact that they don't have that rich, vibrant, we'll say non-erotic, but deeply and profoundly intimate and welcoming and affirming community. And they're just trying to do the celibacy thing kind of on their own. Would you, would you affirm both of those truths that people, you know,

they do frequently kind of switch to the other view or whatever, find a romantic partner. And is it in your experience, do you see it connected with lack of genuine? I mean, I think some of my friends who have made that switch have, have articulated that, you know, I think some of my friends who have made that switch have articulated that, you know, that they've not found celibacy to be communal at all. You know, it feels like they're kind of having to white knuckle this thing on their own,

you know, and they don't have churches that really understand it or are supportive. And there's also just that human longing for closeness with another human being, right? I mean, I understand that. So, yeah, I mean, I've often thought, you know, how would the shape of the conversation in North American Christianity, you know, look different today if churches 30 years ago had said, you know, we exist in part to be family to those who don't have family of their own. Like if you are single in our church, you will not have to spend an evening alone if you don't want to, you know, like we're here for you. And I think the fact that we haven't done that very well, that's got to affect, you know, what people view as doable, you know, in terms of their discipleship. You know, like, I think if we just say to someone, hey, God wants you to be celibate, bye,

you know, like, good luck with that. Like, it's no wonder that people would find that unlivable. Yeah, gosh. I've heard several of my celibate gay Christian friends say, you know, I could live without sex, but I can't live without love and intimacy. And until the church understands the difference between all that, it's hard to live. That's right. Okay, why don't we, okay, so I've used the phrase a few times, you know, gay Christian, and this has become a lightning rod in some circles in evangelicalism in the last few, couple years, at least, maybe. It's funny, because i think in your book you used the phrase gay all the place nobody seemed to bat an eye until yeah um a few well-known conservative voices said that this is a not a good phrase to use and and i'm at the place to be honest with you man i i see some

sure pros like the the arguments on both sides like i'm like man that's a great point and wow yeah that's a good so you know and on our blog, we hosted Rachel Gilson, who doesn't think the phrase is helpful or give the term gay. And then Greg Coles who does, and they're both friends and they had a good, really healthy back and forth. And, and I'm just really, Oh, I need to look at that. That's great. It's really helpful. It's, it's a three part kind of back and forth. And the great thing is they're both friends and it's very clear and this isn't going to divide their friendship. And they do disagree on this, but why don't you, when you say, I am a gay Christian, what do you mean by that phrase? And maybe what are some misunderstandings that people have that they kind of project on you with

what you mean by that phrase? And I know, I just want to acknowledge that you're probably exhausted having to explain yourself ad nauseum in so many different contexts. But yeah, can you do it one more time? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting, Preston, because I think you're right that this has become pretty prominent in the last few years and specifically fixated on the, the,

the specific phrase gay Christian. And I, you know what? I wrote my book, spiritual friendship. That book came out in 2015 and the subtitle was finding love in the church as a celibate gay Christian. Yeah.

Um, but having said that, I don't think I, I'd have to go back through and do a search in the manuscript. I don't typically use the phrase gay Christian as a kind of standalone title. Like I don't go up and introduce myself, hey, I'm a gay Christian. You know, I, so that particular phrase is not something I'm wedded to or even particularly invested in. I usually, you know, if I refer to myself at all, I'll say I'm a Christian, I'm a professor, you know, I'm an Episcopalian. Oh, yeah, and I'm gay. Like, I don't tend to put gay with the noun, like gay Christian very much in,

in conversation. Anyway, that's maybe neither here nor there. I think the reason it's gotten so contentious, there are, there are evangelicals who feel that it is sort of claiming an identity, that you're building a sense of your selfhood around your sexual orientation in a way that could be in conflict with your ultimate allegiance, which is to Jesus. I think there are other Christians who worry that it doesn't leave enough room for God to make you not gay in the future. So if you kind of take this on as a, as a label, are you in a sense foreclosing the possibility of transformation and healing and those things?

And then I think there are people who just worry about the cultural connotations, you know, their, their primary sense of, of homosexuality comes through something like, you know, a certain stereotype of promiscuity and sort of party lifestyle, things like this. And so for a Christian to take on that label, it seems in their minds to carry all of that baggage with it. My own views on this, I've written about this on the blog. Listeners can go to spiritual friendship.org and read more about it. I just, I would love for it not to be so big a deal. I'm like you, I can, I can hear good arguments on both sides. I have friends who land in different places on whether they prefer to label themselves as gay.

I think Eve Tushnet for me really hit the nail on the head when she said a lot, a lot of where you land on this, you know, if you're, if you're someone who is same-sex attracted and you're, you're debating within yourself, within your own conscience, you know, how do I label myself? How do I understand myself? A lot will depend on what, what are the communities to which you're most attached and to which you feel called to serve. So, you know, if your primary community is a local church that's pretty nervous about some of this, and you know that you're called to kind of be there to hopefully introduce more nuance and you know, care for those people in that space and kind of bring them along toward a more

holistic pastoral theology, you might want to avoid it. You might just want to stay same-sex attracted rather than gay, because you just know that that's going to, that's going to require so much explanation. It's going to be a stumbling block again and again, that, you know, given your calling, that may not be the best title for you to use. Now, you know, I think for me, that may not be the best title for you to use. Now, you know, I think for me, I have developed, you know, I really have never been involved in like the, the party scene at all in any way. I'm a, I'm very much an academic nerd. Nonetheless, I think,

I think I've developed really significant relationships with, with people who are gay or lesbian and who prefer to be known as gay or lesbian or queer or something like that. And so, you know, I think it's important for me just in terms of my own sense of solidarity with that community, those friends, those people, for me to use it. And it just feels, it feels the most comfortable to me. I think when I first started calling myself gay was after I had been through some pretty intense counseling experiences. They weren't, they weren't exactly conversion therapy, but they were in that genre. Um, I had one counselor who told me categorically, he said, if you want to be healed from your same sex attraction, you can be, um, like it's, it's, it was kind of a, you know know kind of a prosperity type of you know if you want this bad enough God will God will do it for you and and I just I just came to the conviction that second

Corinthians 12 you know when Paul asks God to remove this thorn in the flesh and and the Lord Jesus comes back and says no you know my my power is made perfect in weakness you're going to keep your thorn in the flesh and I'm going to be with you in that. I just became pretty convinced that that was going to be the path I was, I was called to walk that, that I was always going to deal with with same sex desire. That's just going to be part of my Christian experience.

And I do, as the Catholic catechism says, I do experience it as a trial in many ways. It's not an easy thing for me. It carries temptations to lust, you know, and but it, in, in the midst of all that to be able to say, Hey, I don't think this is changing. Yeah. And I, I don't, I'm not, I'm not looking for the next therapy or the next healing prayer service or the next retreat. It's going to make me straight for me just to, just to own the fact that this is my sexual orientation, and I think it probably will

be until I'm raised from the dead, you know, gay just feels more honest in that sense for me. It feels like a way of being honest about the fact that I'm actually not, I mean, God can do whatever he wants, but I'm not praying to God for orientation change. What I am praying for is chastity and faithfulness and like a life where I'm practicing, you know, custody of the eyes, trying to fight against lust. And so I don't know, is that helpful? That's kind of how I wind up landing on that. No, that's incredibly helpful. I um you wrote a blog i think it was a year ago were you even it was something about weariness uh do you remember the title of that because yeah it may have just been weariness yeah you gave in that blog you explain once again what you mean what you don't mean and you have links to several other so if there's it's kind of like a one-stop

shop of right wes's kind of journey in why he's not, I'll say, not against using the term gay. And in certain, going back to the subtitle of your book on friendship, where you use gay Christian, just linguistically, it would be odd to say of a Christian who is gay or of a Christian who wrestles with same-sex attraction. Like, that's just a weird, just linguistically. That's right. If I said something like this, you know what, I learned more about marriage from my divorced Christian friends. Yeah.

Just because I used the word divorced right in front of Christian friends, that doesn't mean, it's just a linguistic choice. I could say Christians who have been through a divorce, but that's just kind of odd that's right that's right and ron belgau wrote a post uh for us at some point where he just said you know we use the structure i am x yeah all the time in the english language and we don't necessarily mean every time we do that a strong ontological claim so like i could say I'm an American. And, you know, I mean, being an American matters to me, but it's not like I don't think I'm going to be American in eternity.

You know, I don't think this is a constitutive feature of my kind of self. Wes, we're all going to say the pledge, right? In the way that I think Christian is. Yeah, exactly. So just being, yeah, like you say aware of of the english language i mean sometimes um we make identity statements that aren't meant to be about our core sense of our identity yeah you know here's my one um the the pushback i get from the other side that i that i think is a good point um that identity markers even if

they're secondary or distant identity you know lowercase i identities whatever like i am a professor yeah it's part of who i am it's kind of how you know it's but it's not my primary identity yeah hopefully it's not um identity markers however great or, are not neutral in terms of either reinforcing, well, let's just say reinforcing a view of oneself. So like, you know, I'm thinking like the work of Jamie Smith and others where these kind of habits, even linguistic or identity habits, can even almost subconsciously feed into your self-reflection. subconsciously feed into your self-reflection.

And someone could say, because the term gay typically comes with more nuances and meaning and baggage than simply I'm attracted to the same sex and not the opposite sex. It could be almost subconsciously reinforcing a self-reflective identity more than you realize in an unhelpful direction or whatever have you thought about that what would you say well yeah i mean i think that probably is going to differ from culture to culture you know like like even depending on where you live in the u.s you know it might it might take on different connotations it might mean different things to people based on different life histories you know like, like, like let's say there's, there's been someone who's, who's,

you know, been promiscuous for 20 years and kind of feels like that whole time of his or her life was just so unfulfilling and, and that they just want to get as much distance from it as possible. You know, whereas I don't have that history. So for me, gay doesn't conjure up any kind of, um, negative experiences like that. So, so, um, yeah, I, I think, I think I'd want to, I'd want to just be cautious about, yeah, I'm not saying all your critics are doing this, but for people who have those concerns, um, that might not apply

to every single Christian who's, who's deciding whether to call him or herself gay. It is interesting that, real quick, the people that are most nervous, if not really against using the term, do have that kind of... Yeah, that's interesting. The term gay is associated with the debauchery, anti-Christian kind of life. Yeah. I think the other point I would just make is that any alternative is going to have its own liabilities too like i don't think there's any safe alternative i know that for me when i hear the phrase struggle with same-sex attraction which is often given as

the alternative right i'm not a gay christian i'm a christian who struggles with same-sex attraction you know that for me is very freighted with like ex-gay conversion therapy kind of connotations. And, and it, it frankly just really kind of unsettles me because I, I did have a brush with some of that, you know, in my own, in my own counseling experiences. So, you know, I think, I think just, just being honest about the fact that, and we should all do this, you know, those of us who disagree on terminology, let's all be honest about the fact that there just is no perfect linguistic term that's going to be just neutral and, you know, acceptable in all contexts or that's going to carry no problems with it. going to carry no problems with it. That's good. One more question, more pastoral, and then I want to talk about your most recent book on the Lord's Prayer. What would you say to our listeners? There's probably dozens of listeners out there, maybe even more, that are a 20-year-old Wesley

Hill. They're convinced right now in their journey of a traditional sexual ethic. They're still gay. They tried to pray it away. It hasn't gone away. And maybe they're just kind of looking forward to their future and thinking, man, how's this going to work? How am I going to make it? What would you, what kind of advice, pastoral advice would you say as somebody who is further down the road in this journey to somebody who's maybe starting out? Yeah.

Well, I vividly remember those days of being a 20 something. And I remember picturing myself, you know, at age 60 or 70, going home to an empty apartment, you know, not sure where I'm going to spend Christmas. You know, wondering who I should talk to about that funny thing that happened at work that day, you know, and just, just fearing, fearing, you know, moving into later adulthood without family, without friends. And so I think I would, I would encourage someone in that position to remember that when God calls you to something difficult, it's never a solely negative calling. It's always beckoning you towards something that is good and that is that is uh fulfilling and beautiful so i mean you know to take the classic example

when jesus comes you know and invites his disciples to leave their fishing nets behind he's not just asking them to stop at that you, let go of your nets and then just sit there. No, he's calling them into this, this new reality of the kingdom. They now have work to do. They have a mission to pursue. And I think, I think when I realized that, that, that I wasn't just being called to abstain from sex, but I was actually being called to pursue like closeness with other men. I was called to pursue male friendship and to delight in it and to cultivate it and to view this as part of my stewardship from God. Part of my reason for being in the world is to care about friendship and to pursue friendship. Once I realized that, that I had a positive calling and not just a negative calling. It really changed the way I thought about living my life. You know, I, I'm not saying that I still

don't feel depressed at times about not being a father, you know, or not being a husband. I do. I still, I still mourn those things in some ways, but, um, so there is that, there is that moment of renounce, renunciation, you know, renouncing something that is painful. But I think to contemplate the fact that I'm being called towards something beautiful. And, you know, Eve touched on that. One of the working titles for her book that she ended up writing was Called to Love. That was going to be her book about gay Christian stuff. And I just, I love that title as a kind of summary of, yeah, we have to say that even those of us who are celibate are called to love. We're not called

to abstain from love. We may be called to abstain from sex, but we're never called to abstain from love. And there are ways that even those of us without spouses and without children can be loved in the church and can pour ourselves out in love in the church. And I, you know, I wrote my spiritual friendship book kind of about that as a followup to Washington waiting. So. Well that I thank you for that. That's, that's very well stated. And, and I just want to say to you and to all of my friends out there who are same-sex attracted or gay or whatever

term you want to use that i've learned more about authentic genuine uh deep male intimacy because i've been thrown into this conversation maybe threw myself into or whatever. Like I've learned so much about genuine friendship, that deep non-erotic, but very much same sex, intimate friendship from my gay friends, most of whom are pursuing celibacy. So thank you for that. It's not just,

you know, grinning and burying it and being faithful, but you're actually contributing with the thorn that you're bearing to, to use your language or Paul's language. Yeah, exactly. actually contributing with the thorn that you're bearing to use your language or Paul's language that you, you know, that is actually helping the church, um, become more like Jesus. Um, so thank you for that. Well, thanks Preston. That's, that's, that's really what I want. So thanks. Yeah. Well, let, let's, uh, leave, uh, leave the gay behind for

not praying away, but let's, uh, pour our xk uh that's right let's i would uh uh turn a tight corner here and and your your your uh most recent book is it yeah it's out right the lord it's out that's right it's titled the lord's prayer right that's right um why so this seems like you know one of the most famous pieces of literature in history, the Lord's Prayer, certainly in Christian history. I would imagine that there's been many things written on it. People have probably studied it inside and out. So what is it about the Lord's Prayer? They're like, you know, I want to write a book on this.

And what led you to write it? And what is the book all about? Yeah. Well, thanks. Yeah. So the idea for the book was originally not mine. Your listeners, probably a lot of them will know that for many years in the church, the kind of basic pattern of discipleship is you learn the Apostles' Creed, which is the kind of summary of the story of the gospel. You know, the God of the Old Testament is the kind of summary of the story of the gospel. Um, you know, the, the, the God of the old Testament is the one who, who gave up his son, Jesus, uh, for us. And, and we now enjoy life with

him through the Holy spirit. So the apostles creed, the Lord's prayer, which is kind of the fundamental, um, uh, posture of discipleship toward Jesus. We, we, we joined him in praying to our father and the 10 commandments, um, which are, which are guidance for how we, how we live our lives. Um, so, you know, you, you, you find something, uh, like, like Luther's catechisms, you know, where he just walks you through each of those three things and says, this is the basis for discipleship. So this publisher in Bellingham, Washington, Lexham press, they're associated with Logos Bible software. They had a vision, one of their editors had a vision for a small series of books that would unpack those texts, you know, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments.

And so those are all out now. Ben Byers wrote on the Apostles' Creed, Peter Lightheart wrote on the Ten Commandments, and I wrote on the Lord's Prayer. So it's a fun little series, and they're actually planning future volumes that will kind of supplement, uh, as well. But, um, so they, they, they, they came to me and said, could you write something really small? You know, it's, it's not even 20,000 words. I think just something brief that will introduce this prayer that you could take into a Sunday school setting or a church Bible study, you know, and just, um, doesn't have a lot of theological jargon, you know, just kind of walk people through this prayer. And that was really exciting to me,

that vision. I, you know, my day job, as I mentioned, I teach at a seminary, but I also just love preaching. I serve at my church. I'm on staff at my church as a deacon, Lord willing, soon to be ordained a priest. And I just love helping people, like regular old people, regular Joes, understand the Bible better. And I love being in settings where I can't use all the fancy theological vocabulary, and I just have to try to make it accessible to people who may not know much about it.

So this was fun for me in that regard, to try to kind of introduce the Lord's Prayer. Obviously, like you say, we're all much about it. So this was fun for me in that regard to try to kind of introduce the Lord's Prayer. Obviously, like you say, we're all familiar with it. It's kind of old hat for a lot of us, but to try to remind people of what a remarkable text it is. And yeah, so that's kind of how it came about. So obviously, before you wrote the book, you're very familiar with it. What are some things that maybe stand out or stood out in the process of really digging deep into the prayer? Were there some nuggets there that you're like, oh my gosh, I never really thought about the prayer in this way.

Yeah. So the, the, the approach that I took, obviously you could, you could write thousands of pages about the Lord's prayer, but I had read this little book on the sermon on the mount by Dale Allison, who's a new Testament scholar at Princeton. And it was just such a beautiful little book, kind of walking through the Sermon on the Mount. But he says the key to understanding the Sermon on the Mount is the rest of the life of Jesus as Matthew records it in his gospel. So if you're ever scratching your head and wondering, like, you know, what does it mean to turn the other cheek? You know, what does it mean to, you know, pursue a life where you don't worry about the food that you're going to eat or the clothes? He says, just look elsewhere

in the gospel of Matthew and see how Jesus himself lived that out. And I just thought, wow, what an interesting, I mean, it's obvious, right? But I'd never thought of it that way, that Jesus' own life is the best commentary on what he meant in his teaching. So I thought to myself, what if, what if I write on the Lord's prayer and just take every, every petition and use it as a window onto the life of Jesus. Let his life be the thing that illuminates what that prayer is all about. So, I mean, just to take an obvious example, you know, we may get to that phrase, your will be done. You know, what does it mean to pray for your will to be done?

Well, that's the very prayer that Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane right before he's arrested. He says, Lord, I want this cup to pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done. So I think that's intentional on Matthew's part. Matthew's saying, if you have questions about how to pray this prayer, just look at how Jesus himself kind of lived it out and embodied it. So that was the big insight for me, that we can read it as a kind of, it's almost like a spotlight, you know, that, that directs our attention to Jesus himself.

Interesting. That's fascinating. So do you, I mean, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here. The fact that the Lord's prayer has been used as, like you said, one of the three standard kind of, you know, catechizing texts or whatever, like in some people, you know, I grew up in a very low church, non-denominational, you know, catechizing texts or whatever. Like in some people, you know, I grew up in a very low church non-denominational, I guess I kind of think similar to the environment you grew up in. Because Catholics and liturgists use the Lord's prayer,

there's almost like this negative reaction against it. I mean, I grew up in a church. I didn't know the Lord's prayer. We never prayed. Because that's what the either liberals or Catholics do. Right, right. Exactly. It's weird.

It's like, it's so good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd be at funerals. I was like, everybody's reciting, all these pagans are reciting the Lord's Prayer. And I'm like, I'm fumbling around. I don't even know it. That's so funny. Yeah.

But do you think Matthew would appreciate that this text has become a piece of liturgy in the church's history? Do you think there is something that it was almost designed not just to be another random teaching of Jesus, but to kind of stand out of the spotlight? You know, it's interesting in my research for the book. You know, the people who advocate for this being liturgy, you know, like Luther, for example, thought we should all have it memorized and, you know, pray it every day. And they also thought that you could use it as a kind of template or like a model for your own extemporaneous prayer. And so I really like that kind of having a both and approach

where, you know, like I do want my nieces and nephews and my godchildren to have it memorized just to be able to say it at any point. I love that they say it in the liturgy in church on Sunday, but I also want them to be able to go through each line of it and think, this is not Jesus saying, I can only pray these things. He's saying, pray things like this. When I pray for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done, I can fill that in with all of my own requests. You know, Lord, let your will be done in this neighborhood in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, where I live. And within this neighbor's life, who I know is going through this tough loss in her life right now, Lord, let your kingdom come

there. You know, let your will be done there. So I, I think, I think I'd want to say it's great that it's liturgical. It's great that it's, you know, I think it's no accident that Matthew wrote it down. He wants us to know it in that sense and preserve it, the exact wording of it. But it shouldn't be used to stifle prayer. It should be used to kind of open up avenues of prayer. It's okay to riff on the Lord's prayer with maybe specific applications. Exactly. That's a good way to put it. Which you don't, unless you memorize it, you're not able to do. So memorize it.

Yeah. Okay. Exactly. Well, hey, thank you. I mean, gosh, thank you so much for your just ongoing work. I mean, I consider you like a mentor from a distance. Well, that's really sweet. As I'm fumbling around the straight evangelical in this sexuality conversation. And, and I just, I very much resonate with your heart for wanting to understand the rest of the Bible too. Yeah. Like I want to remind people, I like the whole thing and many other topics. Somehow I might write another book on that's not on the sexuality. So, um, yeah. Thanks for having me on Preston. I really appreciate it. And, um, uh, yeah,

I wish you well with the ministry and, um, look forward to when our paths cross again. Yeah. You too, man. Thanks for being on. I appreciate it. Thank you.