Nudity and the Bible?

 It is strange that considering the first thing that God got upset about was when Adam and Eve put clothes on - why do some people who claim to be his followers have exactly the opposite view? Many nudists are Christians who adhere to the Bible’s teachings. If you’re new to this lifestyle and are also religiously devout, you might be nervous about being deemed a sinner. After all, the Bible very clearly states that when Adam and Eve were in right with God, they were naked. When people are in right with God, they do not have to fear nudity. To answer God's question to Adam, "Who Told You That You Were Naked?", Satan was the only other one there who told Eve she and Adam will not die after eating the forbidden fruit and she was obliviously told they were naked and that God's greatest creation, the human body, was shameful and needed to be hidden. The mere sight of the body, the image of God, is not harmful or obscene. If fact, it is an insult to God to hide nudity for the sole purpose of shame.

If you believe that God created everything we experience on this planet, then God created free will and our ability to use that will. If God had originally created man and woman and intended them to live without clothing until they were exposed to underhanded ideas, then we should start at that point. If one chooses to live according to the Bible, then one hopes to live without sin. Therefore, a nudist can live freely in spite of Adam and Eve’s original sin, because free will separates him or her from the willful sinning of the original couple. Christian nudists choose to shun the shame and lust heaped upon the body as a result of Satan’s work. Perhaps the rest of society should do the same.

Everything evolves, but churches are stuck in an old-time mentality when it comes to nudity. If you look closely at Genesis, you will find that God did not intend for us to be ashamed of our bodies. Rather, it was a byproduct of Adam and Eve’s shame for committing the first sin. Christians believe that Jesus died to help rectify those sins so that all people who believe can stand before God unashamed. The church should emphasize this point of redemption when dealing with the human body.

If our bodies are gifts from God and built in His image, how can we be ashamed? Should we not celebrate such an awesome creation? The human body is beautiful and built perfectly. It is an intricate machine and a work of art at the same time. With such a great gift to behold, why is there such offense?

Perhaps, you still have doubts and are used to equating the naked human form with the sexual human form, rather than seeing one as mutually exclusive from the other. Matthew 5:27 says that it is considered a sin to look at a woman lustfully. Well, logic would have it that the more we are brought up to see the human body outside of sexual situations and as a beautiful creation, we will have nothing to lust over.

The Bible does not place restrictions on being nude. God commanded Isaiah to go out and preach publicly in the nude for three straight years! (Isaiah 20). The prophets were often symbolically naked. When Saul stripped off his clothes and provided a prophecy before the masses, the onlookers simply assumed he was a prophet and was acting at the behest of God (1 Samuel 19:24). King David danced nude in the City of David over the news of the Ark of the Covenant’s return. His wife criticized this practice and was punished and left childless until her death (2 Samuel 6:20-23). While God condemned the use of make-up, He openly celebrated the human form, as He did through Ezekiel, “made you grow like a plant of the field, naked and bare. You grew up and became tall, and arrived at full maiden-hood, the ORNAMENT OF ORNAMENTS; your breasts were fully formed and your pubic hair had grown” (Ezekiel 16:7). Since material was expensive and the climate hot, workers in Mesopotamia and Palestine, men and women, often labored nude in the fields. Peter fished naked (John 21:7). While lust for sexual contact is prescribed against in the Bible, the evidence is plentiful that God didn’t intend the human body to be considered shameful in its own right.

Yet the churches lost this vision as time passed. Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 400) said, "Adam was naked at the beginning, and unashamed. This is why your clothing must be taken off as baptism restores right relation to God." As new concepts of “modesty” developed around the sixth century,, and the body was no longer revered as beautiful and as the temple of God, but rather as something vile, filthy and naturally unclean. When St. Francis experienced his conversion, he removed his robes and walked nude in the piazza in Assisi. As the notion of the body changed, he was considered to be immodest, rather than provided the reverie given those in Biblical times. Further down the line, several popes required that the paintings of nude forms and statues by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel be hidden and fabrics painted to look like flowing linens were pasted over the “offensive” parts of the masterpieces. The painting was returned to its nude appearance in more recent times.

We doubt Jesus would be ashamed of his body or tell others to cover up especially during baptism. God said our bodies were good and intended humans to be unashamed. After Jesus died for our sins, we no longer need to be ashamed.

Still need convincing? Perhaps this anecdote will sway you completely. In the Gospel of Thomas, considered to be "superfluous to scripture" by the same council at Trent which determined what we today declare as "The Holy Bible," in Thomas 37, the disciples asked Jesus, “When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?” Jesus responded, “When you become like little children, and disrobe without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet and trample them, you shall see the Kingdom of God, and you will not be afraid.”

If you’re religious and a nudist, you should be not afraid. The human body is not shameful and is not inherently lustful. Romans 14:16 points out, “Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil.”

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