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From Source:
http://www.clothesfree.com/nudityandthebible.html
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.
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.
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.”
From Source:
http://www.clothesfree.com/nudityandthebible.html |
