Time Frames and Taboo Data Blog

 He walked with a determined stride out onto the football field and the packed crowd in the stadium suddenly erupted with all kinds of reactions.  Security personnel and various staffers were rushing out to apprehend the man, but it was obvious that he had no means for destructive action.  Nonetheless, the clamor was intense, the TV cameras had all swung around to catch the scuffle on the  field, and half the crowd was on its feet.  The reason for the alarm?   He was naked.

The great hoopla over someone appearing au naturel in public brings many questions to ponder for viewers.  What were his intentions?  Was it in protest?  Was he high?  Was he overly proud?  What’s the big deal, a person is either male or female: so what!  Etc.  But there is a seldom asked question.  Why is it considered indecent exposure to be comfortable in your own skin?  Nudity is subliminally accepted as a religious prohibition, and yet scripture is not exactly clear on the motivation for hiding what you are.

One of the more peculiar perceptions in religious posturing is the assertion that the human physical body is, for some reason, offensive to the power that is credited with having designed and engineered the human physical form.  That assertion of god’s displeasure seems to be a contradiction to the opening of scriptural myth, for there it is fully accepted in Genesis that the power called god saw nothing wrong or indecent with Adam and Eve meandering naked around the Garden of Eden.  Chapter two, verse 25 clearly reports, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

Adam, with Eve’s help, is said to have acquired knowingness, which caused Adam to decide that it might be wise to cover up, so “…they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” (Genesis 3:7)   The Lord, when he saw their sorry attire, was not exactly pleased and said, “Who told thee that thou was naked?” (3:11)  Being naked obviously was not deemed as shameful by the Lord.  If anything, the act of donning superfluous attributes was what disturbed the Lord most.   Miffed at their awkward self-awareness, the Lord then compounded their perplexity by covering the with “coats of skin” and hustling them out the exit gate. 

There is deep irony in this scriptural portrayal of blameless nakedness.  The nakedness of the Eden inhabitants represents pure innocence and complete truth, for nothing was meant to be kept hidden from view.  Apparently not even sexual inquisitiveness was held to be offensive in Paradise.  The “sin” that troubled god, therefore, rested in the attempt to deceive by concealing what is true.  It is for this reason that the naked human form has, from time out of mind, been held symbolic of absolute truth.

Western rank-and-file religions, however, have habitually regarded anyone seen when naked as being in a state of disgrace!  Noah’s son accidently seeing their father naked, for example.  Despite the fact that every life form enters life in innocent nakedness, the natural splendor of the unadorned body has been liberally painted with great dollops of false guilt.  Thus the self-proclaimed representatives of god—the preachers, priests, pastors, ministers, etc.–dress themselves in layered costumes with only their head and hands exposed in a pretense that they are the ambassadors of the Lord’s truth.  Such showy, distracting and often ostentatious paraphernalia of religious pretension would seem to be more the uniform donned for spreading aggressive deceit rather than accessories approved for the genuine messengers of god’s liberating truth.

The general understanding that there is some god-required priestly dress code is presented only in the priest-written book of Leviticus where the garments to be worn by the high priest Aaron for divine intercourse are lovingly, almost lasciviously defined.  The clue to the true meaning behind the descriptions of the god-approved dress code for his pulpit generals rest in what Aaron’s name means: the name is derived from the word harah and means to conceive.  It is from the Leviticus myth, therefore, that when filled with an arousal to perform for god, the Catholic bishops and other ecclesiastics often sport those tall, pointy, phallic-looking miters.  It’s all showmanship though.  Even so those old men do not act particularly enlightened, let alone sexy. 

• Related posts: Dressed for Sex, Bible Style, Sept. 8, 2009; Breastplate, Sexy Biblical Garb, Sept. 09, 2009.

This entry was posted on November 13, 2009 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Atheist, belief, Bible, culture, faith, life, naturalism, nature, random, sex, thoughts with tags Adam and Eve, human body, naked, symbol of truth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.