(The title preface and accompanying image below were given to my article when originally posted on the Seedbed blog for pastors. For an unknown reason, it was removed. It had been listed in the “Top 14 Articles for 2014,” but it disappeared. This is unfortunate for those with a sex-focus on the body that chains them to porn and body shame problems. I reproduce it here because its message remains prophetic and crucially needed by Christians caught up in the demonic lie of porno-prudery.)
Embracing Nakedness: Adopting God’s View of Bare Anatomy
by David L. Hatton (published on Seedbed.com, Jan. 9, 2014)
I’m a Wesleyan pastor who is grateful for the landmark Theology of the Body of Karol Wojtyla (late Pope John Paul II). No theologian ever dealt so comprehensively with God’s purpose for gendered human embodiment. This quote summarizes his theme:
“The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it.”
As an art lover and amateur artist, I was surprised to read Wojtyla’s ideas somewhat echoed by Henri Robert in his book The Art Spirit:
“There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body. In fact it is not only among artists but among all people that a greater appreciation and respect for the human body should develop. When we respect the nude we will no longer have any shame about it.”
But before ordination or art classes, I was an L&D nurse, and still am. I work routinely and intimately with bare female anatomy. If this raises any brows, I’ve hammered out my own quote that brings Wojtyla’s and Robert’s together:
“A Creator-honoring, incarnational view of the naked human body dispels the fantasy-laden, porno-prudish conception religiously taught and pornographically exploited in Western culture.”
For almost 25 years, I put up with the uncomfortable contradiction between my experiential view of hospital nudity and the one taught by my Christian upbringing. Finally, when God opened my eyes to the dysfunctional immaturity of our culture’s reaction to public breastfeeding, I did my homework. Through intense research about the phenomenon of human nakedness biblically, historically, culturally, and psycho-socially, I experienced a radical paradigm shift in my thinking. My studies showed me the American church’s urgent need of repentance, reformation and restitution for having adopted and promoted Victorianism’s flight from the body.
The bottom line is this: a prudish view of the body is a pornographic one. Religiously placing an obscene or indecent sexual connotation on the sight of gender-distinguishing body parts creates a sexually objectified body. Such legalism, if socially embraced, becomes the conceptual foundation for a pornographic culture, as ours is now. Also, this objectification trivializes the body language of human genitalia, allowing them to be ignored as features of personal gender identity and distinction. Take some time to do the math on this, and it should cause tears.
Theologically, beyond shining a spotlight on the church’s notorious support of Victorian prudery, these personal insights showed me how Gnosticism’s influence on the early church still lingers in popular Christian thinking.[1]
Practically, my discoveries led me to join some other pastors in creating a website to fight porn addiction. Our message at MCAG (mychainsaregone.org) is body acceptance, calling men to see women as the Creator does, in opposition to the traditional body-shame approach, which tells them, “Bounce your eyes!”
Ministerially, I feel like “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” Christian porno-prudery is so well established as a virtue that most are blind to its real nature as a vice. Yet it has kept Christians from being the world-renowned experts in sex education that our understanding of creation and the Incarnation ought to have made us. It has stopped multiple thousands of Christian art students from ever becoming skilled with the nude. If we hadn’t abandoned the human body by surrendering God’s image and temple into secular hands, these young artists might have become modern Michelangelos painting contemporary “Sistine-Chapel” ceilings. Such a holy display of human nudity in our churches might have been a realistic preventative to our current religious and social focus on naked anatomy as an avenue of lust and on gender-specific body parts as sex objects.
I explained the gist of this article to one senior pastor who agreed with my viewpoint but believed the situation hopeless, saying that society and the church are too far into this to ever be changed. I must disagree. The naked truth of reality changed me. Porno-prudery is a learned attitude that can be unlearned through repentance. Gnostic ideas that devalue matter and flesh can be dispelled from our pulpits. Preaching theologically-correct body acceptance can bring a reformation in Christian thinking that restores the strong incarnational message our modern world needs to hear.[2] Although it means swallowing our pride, even the last step is possible: restitution. If our porno-prudery has played a role in the development of a society riddled with porn addiction, body-image dysfunctions, gender confusion issues, human-trafficking, and more, we must confess our error, ask forgiveness, and start behaving as if the “fearfully and wonderfully made” naked human body never stopped being “very good” (Gen 1:31).
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[1] For further study on this, see my article, “Incarnational Truth about Humanity’s Sexual Nature (Doing Body-friendly Theology Free from Gnostic Prudery)”.
[2] Anyone truly serious about this area might like to read some of the same material I have on this subject in my webpage “Rebuilding a Godly View of the Unclad Human Body – Why and How to Stop ‘Thinking Dirty’ about God’s Image and Temple”.
[3] Here is that original L&D article, written way back in the 1990s :
“WHAT ABOUT THE HOSPITAL NUDITY PROBLEM?”
My short answer is simple…. It didn’t take me long in the nursing field to learn that our cultural ideas about nudity aren’t based on reality, but on a ridiculously false and sordid imagination. Naked anatomy becomes a problem only where unreal or irrational expectations make it one. By itself, the nude body doesn’t create the lustful thinking that preoccupies American culture. Jesus said that lust comes from an impure heart (Matthew 15:19), which is exactly what our society mentally nourishes by proclaiming the naked body an indecency.
So, based on Christ’s teaching, lust is never a direct result of merely seeing the opposite sex in an unclad condition. In the same way, our human dignity isn’t lost just because the opposite sex see us au naturel. Normal, non-sexual nudity ̶ so common in healthcare ̶ confirms these two statements. Your own hospital stay might provide a convincing example of this. If males are among your caregivers, and you find yourself without the embarrassment you anticipated, congratulations! You will see firsthand why my own experiences with female nudity have failed to produce the trouble our sex-crazed society predicts.
The human body, designed by our Creator in the precise appearance and form He meant for it, is not the problem. Society has artificially created a problem by fostering a lewd view of nudity that God never intended. However, the social problems arising from that view are real and sometimes devastating. All our lives we’ve been trained to think of nudity as a sexual issue. How refreshing to find it’s really a non-issue!
I often correct patients who say, “I guess this is where I lose my modesty.” I tell them, “Not at all! You’re as modest now as the day you were born.” True modesty is an attitude, both in mind and in behavior, not a state of dress or undress. Modesty can be lost by trying to attract attention through suggestive body postures or facial expressions, or even through wearing certain kinds of clothing, but not by simple nakedness.
Believe me, I’m not saying this because of growing numb to nudity through years of exposure to it. My work as a male nurse has in no way blinded me to God’s artistic beauty in the naked feminine form. I simply know the wholesome reality of appreciating such beauty without the lustful thinking that our culture grooms us to have and then declares unavoidable. Nor is my experience, and that of millions of others, just so much psychological wishful thinking. On the contrary, this surprising discovery about human nakedness is a healthy mental emancipation from warped thinking. Our culture has persistently sexualized and pornified the human body. But most people are liberated from this “vain imagination” almost instantaneously upon their first exposure to the “naked truth.”
I could say more. This is my short answer to “What about the hospital nudity problem?” My long answer (on another web page) gives a more thorough explanation. Since the popular, sexualized view of the body directly contradicts my own experience with nakedness, this area has been one of much personal thought and ongoing research. What I’ve learned historically, culturally, psychologically, and theologically, has unanimously confirmed the viewpoint expressed above. These discoveries and insights deepened my own appreciation for God’s original will in creating us in a nude condition. They have also expanded my understanding of how important our physical embodiment is in God’s plan. The human body, so exploited by society, is actually a realm of spiritual insight and celebration, when understood from a godly, creational perspective. If this short answer is insufficient and unconvincing, or if you are interested in learning more about why I believe as I do, study “My View On Nakedness” or read my book Meeting at the River.