I've noticed some troubling Christian theological positions on nudity (such as this
one), so I wanted to investigate the most cited passage when this topic comes up.
We read in Genesis 2:25 after Eve is created and becomes "one flesh" with Adam:
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Later, in Genesis 3:7 and immediately after the couple sins, we read:
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
After they made coverings out of the fig leaves, we read:
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself."
____________________________________________
My thoughts:
1. Adam and Eve were never ashamed to see
themselves naked. Shame here comes from God discovering them naked.
2. Even though Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves, they still hid from God when they heard Him coming. They claimed they did not want God to find them naked. It appears they thought their makeshift fig leaf coverings were inadequate. The fig leaves did not fully satiate their need.
Note: Shame in the OT world was connected to public reputation. Shame is the public exposure of guilt. In Genesis, Adam and Eve were attempting to prevent God from shaming them by fulfilling their own needs themselves. They were guilty, not of being naked openly (no one was there to see them besides God!), but of violating God's command and fracturing themselves from his gracious provisions.
3. Nakedness is seen throughout Scripture as neediness and/or weakness. This new awareness of their nakedness on the part of Adam and Eve suggests their boarder awareness of their total dependence on God - who had provided for them in the garden for all their needs.
4. In this sense, nudity is being communicated as
nonmoral. It is soley being used to communicate what they were lacking. As Job states eloquently, "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return."
5. For clarity, I'm not suggesting we should walk around naked. I believing clothing has an important purpose; however, I am suggesting that we shouldn't be so concerned with nakedness as to make exposure (accidental or not) an inherent immoral act. Context and intentions matter. We live under the New Covenant of Grace.
Your thoughts?