Tag: nudity

Book Plunge: Christian Body: Romans 14

Is clothing a Romans 14 issue? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Many of us know about Romans 14 issues. In the ancient world, it was what kind of food you could eat and what days you could observe. We have our own. It can be what kind of entertainment do you partake in. What should you wear to church? What kind of music should be played in church?

Well, Frost wants us to consider that maybe the question of if we should wear clothes is one of those questions. He says that Paul says that earthly things are neutral. They cannot be spiritually unclean and it only matters how we use them in our hearts. He then says this applies to clothing because we have taken what God has made and said in our hearts it is unclean.

Again, Frost seems to always chase after windmills. He never tells us who is saying this.

So let’s try some other scenarios of things God created and see how well that works.

Sex is created by God. It’s a good and beautiful gift. He made it to be enjoyed by husband and wife and we should not look at it as shameful. Therefore, you think it’s okay for a husband and wife to publicly have sex in a church service. I don’t. Let’s just agree to disagree.

God created defecation. He made the body to work in this way. It’s a part of the natural order. You think it’s okay to drop your drawers in the middle of the street and poop on the sidewalk. I don’t. Let’s agree to disagree. (I do understand this is a hot debate in San Francisco right now.)

He then quotes James 1:14 saying temptation comes from within, and therefore lust is caused by that which comes from sinful desires and nothing that we see.

Yes, everyone out there. If you have ever lusted, it had nothing to do with something that you saw. Nope. It was all you. You just spontaneously started lusting for no reason.

Now I am not saying that the sight of a naked woman forces a man to lust. A man needs to control himself, but that doesn’t mean that women also don’t have responsibility. Achan needed to control his own greed, but seeing the riches in the ruins of Jericho were enough to inspire greed.

Frost also tells us that clothing causes lust. Remove the clothing and the erotic effect will disappear.

Look. I know it’s only anecdotal, but I can safely say that when I was married, seeing my wife naked never ceased to have an erotic effect for me. I contend Frost lives in a delusionary world if he thinks this will happen. He is right that if something is forbidden, it often becomes that which is most longed for, as in some societies, for instance, women’s feet are covered to avoid lust. Society still recognizes some parts of a person’s body need to be treated with special honor.

Ultimately, Frost has taken his personal issue and acted like suddenly it’s a Romans 14 issue because of disagreement. We’ll be looking at 1 Timothy 2 next time, but I find Frost’s case highly unconvincing. He would need to show me why he thinks it would be wrong for a husband and wife to have sex in church publicly. After all, God created that good thing and it’s not shameful or sinful either.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body: Leviticus 18 and 20

What does the holiness code have to say? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So we all know this passage. What most of us probably know about it is it condemns same-sex behavior. Frost in this section says that terms used in this chapter are euphemisms for having sex. With that, there is no disagreement. Sex is often spoke of in such terms.

When I was growing up, I remember a movie being advertised called Sleeping With The Enemy. Now for me, I thought this was a bizarre title, but I was an elementary schooler. How was I to know any better. Why would you sleep with an enemy like that? For me, sleeping with someone meant going to bed next to them. Now I know far better what it really meant!

Frost does tell us that people still could bathe together in public baths and be out in the nude regularly and says the documentation will come later. That will be accepted for now and I will see what he says when I get there. That being said, Frost still makes the mistake of assuming that the culture in ancient Israel was just like our culture or at least similar enough.

We are very individualistically based and we set the rule for ourselves. You obey the law not so people will think well of you so much as you want to be a good guy and not go to jail. Even if we granted that nudity was far more common in the ancient society, there would have been other controls set in by the group to make sure ogling didn’t take place. It is questionable that such is the case in a pornified society such as our own.

Frost also contends that in our society, we think looking at a naked person, at least of the opposite sex, is sinful. No. That in itself is not sinful. If I walk down the street and a woman suddenly jumps out in front of me completely nude in an attempt to flash me, I have done nothing wrong. I cannot help that. If I chase after her to at least ogle her, or perhaps even more, then yes, I have done something wrong. The looking itself is not a sin.

Frost keeps regularly going with this idea that nudity in itself is sinful when it obviously isn’t. So far, he has not dealt with a distinction between a private and a public sphere and he has not interacted with any scholarship on the topic. If you want to understand the biblical culture, you also need to understand them as an honor-shame culture and not a guilt-innocence culture. The group did what they could to censor unwanted behavior and individualism would have been frowned upon.

So again, that is another day and another post. I walk away once more convinced that Frost hasn’t really done the deep looking that needs to be done on an important topic, and I do not doubt that this is an important topic. The church needs a better understanding of the nature of the body, love, lust, sex, and marriage. So far, I am skeptical I will find it here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body: Exodus 20:26

Why did priests wear underwear? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this section, we’re going to interact with Frost and another writer as well online who engages with this verse. If God wanted the priests to wear garments in their work, it seems that God is opposed to nudity. Right?

To begin with, let’s see what it would mean to say God is opposed to nudity. Most of us are not, provided it is in the proper context. Taking a shower at home or having sex with your spouse? Go ahead and get naked. Want to go swimming in your own private pool or lake away from watching eyes in the buff? Go ahead. Again, this is the private and public sphere distinction.

Frost points to an idea of purdah. You can go to the link for more on that, but it seems like Frost is speaking in extremes. It’s either you hold to a doctrine that everything must be covered entirely, or you go completely naked. Frost tells us that if God wanted a purdah doctrine, he had thousands of years and pages in to tell us.

Because apparently Frost needs a strict command that says “Hey guys, can you wear clothes? That would be kind of cool!”

A more thorough look at this comes from someone online named Mud Walker who I was pointed to by the person who got me started on this. His page is called Renude Life. You can find a link to his argument here.

He states at the start that biblical scholars agree that garments in those days were loose and easily blown aside. Maybe that is so. The problem is he doesn’t tell us any biblical scholars who say this.

He says that nudity and sexual intercourse was common in pagan services. None of this is given with any citations, though I would not be surprised, especially with sexual intercourse. He also tells us that since the priests used these garments, we may assume that they were naked the rest of the time.

In other words, if you have some work clothes that you wear just when you go to work, it’s safe to assume the rest of the time you’re naked.

Mud Walker tells us that simple nudity was common in the ancient world. One illustration of this is a fresco of Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses while bathing. Well, Pharaoh’s daughter is naked, which tells us that people in ancient times were naked when they bathed. That’s not much of a stretch.

A link from that part takes you to this page. In this, you find that the term to expose someone’s nakedness was a euphemism for sexual intercourse. At times, yes. Definitely in Leviticus 18 and 20. The only link there takes you to recommended resources, which means Mud Walker has presented us with no hard data on this.

Not only that, but we have Scripture that says otherwise.

Consider Deuteronomy 29:5

Yet the LORD says, “During the forty years that I led you through the wilderness, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.

I looked it up. The word for clothing means, get this, clothing. The same word is used when the Gibeonites approach Joshua in Joshua 9 and talk about how their clothes are damaged from their long travels, which they faked entirely. Nothing from Joshua saying “Guys. We’re in the wilderness. Just go nude like we are.”

“But Nick, you haven’t cited any biblical scholars!”

Fair enough. So let’s see what Pilch and Malina have to say about this:

Analogously, great concern was shown for the dress of the priest who offered sacrifice, first that he not have to ascend stairs less his nude loins be revealed in sacred space (Exod 20:26), and then that he wear breeches to forestall accidental exposure (Exod 28:42). Thus nudity was linked with issues of purity and pollution in myth and practice. As Genesis and Exodus indicate, if we would understand the cultural perspective of the ancient Israelites and Judahites toward nudity, we must see the issue through the eyes of two complementary models, namely, honor/shame and purity/pollution.

Pilch, John J.. Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition (Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 10) (pp. 118-119). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Unfortunately, the authors we are interacting with do not show any interaction with honor/shame material or purity/pollution material. Frost comes at this with a Western mindset that says it has to be spelled out explicitly. Scripture doesn’t work that way. It is a modern approach that is quite good at creating fundamentalist atheists, but not so much serious studies in Scripture.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body — Genesis 9

What does the story of Noah and the vineyard have to tell us about nudity in the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost doesn’t say much about the story in Genesis 9 which is understandable. The story involves Noah drinking a vineyard and getting drunk and lying down naked. Ham sees him and tells his brothers who walk in backwards and cover up Noah so they won’t see their father’s nakedness.

I do agree with Frost that this is not talking about moral behavior entirely. Very few of us would think it is an important exhortation in the Bible that if you ever learn your father is sleeping drunk and naked you should walk in backward with your brother and cover him up. Let’s hope that this wasn’t a common problem in ancient Israel, or anywhere else for that matter.

Yet when we read the story and read that when Noah woke up we can be confused. He lays a curse on the descendants of Ham? Why? He saw his Dad naked. Perhaps embarrassing, but didn’t he do what he should have done by telling his brothers and having them take responsibility?

A Western reader might think so, but here I agree with Frost again in that something more than voyeurism is going on here. Gagnon suggests that this is a case of male-on-male incest. Not only is this incest, it is incest involving one’s own father. You can read his article covering this and other issues for free here.

Thus, the story is stressing that this is where the problems with the Canaanites began. With Moses being the author, he would have known about these people and he is stating this is their history. It goes all the way back to their ancestor Ham.

So that’s a wrap then. Right?

Not yet.

I have stated that there is a difference between the private and public sphere of life. Noah wasn’t just asleep and naked. He had done so in a way that was disgraceful to him and to see his nakedness would be to take advantage of him. It would be to bring shame upon any who did so. Hence, Shem and Japheth properly honor their father. They don’t just walk in and throw a blanket on him. They come in backwards so they can make sure that they don’t even see their father naked.

Were they just prudes who didn’t appreciate the beauty of the human body? No. They were sons who honored their father and knew his nakedness was not meant to be put on display for them.

Frost says that there is no “Thus sayteh the Lord here”, but I wonder what such a “Thus sayeth the Lord” could even be about. I do agree with him that nudity is not the main point of the passage. It is about the history of the Canaanites starting with their ancestor Ham and how this started right after the flood.

Next time we look at this book, we will discuss Exodus 20:26 and how a priest was to approach God.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body Genesis 2-3

What does the Bible say about nudity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So some chaos broke out on Facebook Friday when an apologist friend of mine came out in favor of Christian Naturism. Some of you might be thinking “Love of nature. What could be wrong about that?” Nope. This is a Christian embrace of nudity. One book he mentioned as having an impact was this one. Being concerned about this decision, I decided to look into it.

So the book starts with a look at the account of what happened in the Fall of Man. The author, Aaron Frost starts off saying we all have social conditioning we are unaware of. Of this, who would disagree? He also says we must consult Bible historians and scholars to see what is going on in the text. Again, agreement.

He talks about how he served in different cultures as a missionary and they had different standards about clothing. Yes, but we care about what was ancient Israel’s standard about clothing? How did they see it?

Frost looking at it says that modesty is not in consideration in the account and shame is never mentioned. The problem is this is a Western way of reading the text. It is the idea of “The text doesn’t mention shame, therefore there is nothing shameful.”

On this, we have the firm data. For the ancient Israelites, nudity was shameful. As Pilch and Malina state about Israelite women:

Public nudity inevitably meant “shame” for them, for their chastity was compromised: their physical body was no longer exclusively the property of their husbands.

Pilch, John J.. Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition (Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 10) (p. 119). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In Israel, clothing was a signifier of social status. Consider how Tamar tears her robe after her half-brother Amnon rapes her. Why? Because that was a robe for virgins to wear. How did the Israelites know which women in the battle against the Midianites hadn’t slept with a man? Their clothing.

This didn’t just apply to women. As Pilch and Malina again say:

The Hebrew Scriptures relentlessly censure nudity, which was hardly the case in Greece (Thucydides I.vi.4–6). Although God presumably made Adam and Eve naked, they became aware of it with the shame of being discovered as sinners (Gen 2:25). God’s first act of mercy to them was to cover them with garments of skin (Gen 3:21). Thus nudity became inextricably linked with sin and “shame”.

Pilch, John J.. Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition (Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 10) (p. 118). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Nudity was unacceptable in the presence of God. Priests had to have special clothing to make sure no hint of nudity was there. This is not because the human body is ugly or horrible. It’s because of how one is positioned in the society. You approached a king wearing your best. You did the same with God.

Getting back to Frost, he asks if it was improper for Adam and Eve to see each other naked in the garden? Absolutely not. In the privacy of their own homes, it’s also not improper for husbands and wives to see each other naked. Part of the Edenic state is that there was no shame.

Frost does say that there are no thorns or predators or harsh temperatures in the Garden. Maybe not in the Garden, but what about the rest of the world? Am I to think if man had never fell that when they got to the Sahara it would be a pleasant experience, or if they went to the North Pole they could go sunbathing and skinny dipping? The text only deals with one area and if we want to talk about not taking assumptions with us, we should not assume the whole world was like the garden.

After this, Frost writes about how Eve took of the fruit and gave it to her husband to eat. He says for the first time they felt bold defiance against their creator. After that, they experience a horror they never had before. They experience feelings of guilt, shame, and fear.

Excuse me? Where is that in the text?

On p. 24 of Pilch and Malina’s book cited above, they say that our idea of feelings and emotional states of biblical characters is anachronistic. Conscience was not an inner voice saying “You’ve been a bad boy.” It was instead the voice of others condemning them. Consider David for an example. When did he know he had sinned with Bathsheba? When Nathan said those words to him of “You the man!”

Thus, all that Frost says here is anachronistic. It is being read into the text.

He then says they stitched fig leaves together to cover their reproductive organs. Well, the text doesn’t say that they covered those, but that is a fair assumption to grant and it is one that intertestamental writers shared. Consider Jubilees 3.

  1. And when she had first covered her shame with figleaves, she gave thereof to Adam and he eat, and his eyes were opened, and he saw that he was naked.
  2. And he took figleaves and sewed (them) together, and made an apron for himself, and ,covered his shame.

Now some of my fellow Protestants could say “But that’s not Scripture!” to which I say, “Irrelevant.” The point of the writing is to show how Jews saw it. The reproductive organs were to be reserved for husband and wife and not for the public. It would be treating what is sacred as it was common.

Frost tells us that modern readers think they know very well why they hid. It is an assumption that is brought, but it is not stated in the text. Unfortunately, Frost doesn’t tell us forthrightly what this assumption is. It’s like he assumes the assumption. Weird, isn’t it?

At the start, I don’t think it was from one another. For one thing, hiding doesn’t make sense. What would happen? “Eve! You turn around and count to ten and I’ll hide and then I’ll count to ten while you hide.”

That being said, something married men and men who even cohabitate with a woman know well often is many women even in marriage cover their bodies. Many men don’t understand why their wife can come out of the shower and have a towel wrapped tight around them. Many of those men have no such insecurities around their wives.

So who were they hiding from?

Ask any parent who has small children. If the parent comes into the house and the vase is broken and a baseball is next to it, the children are hiding. God comes walking through. The children hide. Foolish to think you can hide from God? Yes, but all of us are foolish before God many times thinking we can’t trust Him, worrying about matters, etc.

Frost’s contention for why they did this? Satan told them to! Satan told them their nakedness was shameful! Where is that in the text? NOWHERE! Satan tempts Eve to eat the fruit and after that he is completely silent. The idea that Satan did this helps Frost with his interpretation, but it’s not rooted in the text.

Besides, if Satan did this, then one would think one of the first things God would do is correct their misconception. He never does. If anything, He enables their decision by putting together clothing for them.

Something we have to consider is the text only has two human beings in the garden. We don’t know what would have happened had children been born in the garden. Would Adam and Eve wear clothing then so that their children wouldn’t see what was meant for husband and wife alone? The text doesn’t say. Do we think Adam and Eve would be having sex together while a young Cain and Abel watched on? Hard to picture even in an Edenic society.

Frost says God gives them garments but says nothing about modesty to them. As if that needs to be explicitly stated in the text! He also never states how they are to grow food and tend gardens in a world of thorns and thistles. He never tells Eve how to raise children when she will give birth with increased pain. (I am leaving aside questions of the age of the Earth and other such matters like pain before the Fall.) A Western society thinks this needs to be spelled out. An Eastern one understands it’s a waste of time and writing to point out what everyone already knew.

Frost says the couple would need more protection than they did in the garden because the sun was hot, the nights were cold, and thorns were there and animals could have venom.

So was the sun not hot before?

Were nights not cold before?

Were there zero thorns in the world before?

Were there zero poisonous animals before?

These are all assumptions Frost brings to the text.

Frost goes on to say in approaching our issues today that:

The plain, unaltered body has been reduced to smut and outlawed from ever being honored appropriately. The human body, as it stands naturally, is now strictly reserved only for pornography and kept that way by Christian influence in government as if that must be how God wanted things to be.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 38). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Well, no.

For one thing, no one is saying nudity in itself is sinful. The Lord even in ancient Israel knew in some cases, it was a necessity, such as, oh, I don’t know, having children? People would also still have to bathe and wash their clothes. Both could involve nudity. Nudity itself isn’t the problem.

The problem is the context nudity is in.

If you go to the doctor and he says take off your clothes and you’re nude, we understand that is fine. If you go down to main street and take off your clothes and sit on a park bench, that isn’t fine. The context is what matters. If you are in the privacy of your own home and want to go nude, go ahead. In public, no.

And what is pornography? It is pictures of evil sexual sin which is made just to arouse people. Pornography demeans the human body by treating what is sacred and making it common. It also blurs the line between the public and the private spheres. That which is meant for privacy becomes public. (Never mind also that many caught in the industry are victims of sex trafficking.)

He then asks shouldn’t we speak against this perversion that the body is something shameful? Shouldn’t we speak out that the body shouldn’t be covered up? Shouldn’t we speak out against the natural body being inappropriate.

Again, all of this confuses the public and the private sphere. For an Israelite, to be naked in public was shameful. This is the case going on when God regularly says that He will expose the nakedness of His enemies or when David’s men go to speak to a foreign king and get their pants split and their beards shaved and are told to stay where they are until their beards grow back.

None of this says the body in itself is shameful, but it does say the nudity of the body is meant for the private sphere of life and not the public sphere, much like sexuality is. Sex in the Bible is a good and beautiful thing. A man having sex with his wife in the privacy of their home is good. A man having sex with his wife in the middle of a shopping mall is not.

Frost tells us that the Bible tells us temptation is caused by lust and that is the choice of the living dissatisfied with God’s way.

Again, no. As the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says:

This group denotes desire, especially for food or sex. This desire is morally neutral at first, but philosophy, holding aloof from the sensory world, regards it as reprehensible, and in Stoicism epithymía is one of the four chief passions. Epicurus distinguishes between natural and illicit desires, subdividing the former into the purely natural and those that are necessary to happiness.

Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), 339–340.

The word means desire. It can be right or wrong. 1 Tim. 3:1 speaks positively of it saying if a man desires to be an overseer, he desires a good thing. James is talking about sinful desires we do have inside of us. It is not just lust in the sense of looking at a member of the opposite sex.

Frost says the Scriptures never say clothing prevents lust or that nakedness offends God. For one thing, I don’t know anyone making this claim. If clothing prevented lust in every way, then teenage boys would not be struggling with lust when they see a cute girl at school. She’s wearing clothes after all.

Second, once again, it is a Western mindset to think this has to be spelled out.

Third, to some degree, they do. The less a woman wears, the more a guy is prone to go crazy over her.

Frost is taking a Western mindset to the text and demanding it spell out everything. We might as well say “The text never tells us to diet and exercise regularly, so we shouldn’t do that.” “The text never tells us to wash our hands before meals, so we shouldn’t do that.” Picture how that last one would go.

“God created dirt and dirt is good and God said a man working hard and laboring is good. Man is meant to work. Why should a man remove that good dirt that God created on this Earth before he eats a meal?”

Frost tells us the solution to porn is not to cover the body but to show an example of good and godly people who are not overpowered by the sight of God’s creation and appreciate one another with dignity, honor, and respect.

First off, good luck with that.

Second, if you become so desensitized to God’s creation that you are no longer aroused by the nakedness of a member of the opposite sex, then I think you have a bigger problem. We were designed to want the bodies of the opposite sex and when we do, our bodies are also functioning properly.

Third, the real solution is to change the way we view sex and sexuality and realize that what is meant for privacy should not be public. We need to have a higher view of sex.

He finally ends saying that the fig leaves were the first decision Adam made with a corrupted mind. Unfortunately for Frost, God nowhere condemns this description and even furthers it by making clothes Himself for the couple. Also, it is worth pointing out that Frost said we should consult scholars and historians of the Bible, but I count nowhere in this section where he has done so. He has argued entirely from his perspective alone.

Next time we look at this book, we will discuss Genesis 9.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

No Shame

Is nudity shameful? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Genesis goes on to tell us that the man and woman were both naked and unashamed. Why would this need to be said? Because Moses knew about his own time, (Presuming he wrote this which is secondary to the point anyway) and he knew that there was shame in his day.

That shame has extended to our day. Why is it this way? Is the body something we ought to be ashamed of to hide before everyone else?

Genesis ends with a favorite verse that says “What you intended for evil, God intended for good.” Indeed. Unfortunately, what God intended for good, the human body, is often used for evil.

Of course, you could ask why that would be the case today. Why would people be concerned about how their bodies look? Do people still think that way?

Hey. Have you seen that show with all the hot females in skimpy clothing?

Odds are, you might have thought, “Which one?”

That’s the problem.

I want to focus on women first because most women I know tend to have this problem. When I hear news stories about concerns about people struggling with image due to Instagram or Facebook, it’s teenage girls. They look at all the other girls around them and they think they don’t measure up.

These women tend to shame themselves with their bodies. They might think there is always someone prettier out there. The truth is in some aspects, someone will always be better at you in something out there. No human today is a master of everything.

However, the #1 person to compete against is really yourself. Are you doing enough to make yourself a better person today? Not just a physically beautiful person, but an internally beautiful person. That is the most important beauty.

And ladies, if you are married, you no longer have to compete. Your husband already chose you. If he tells you he thinks you’re beautiful, believe him.

Of course, there is that one exception.

Guys. Stop watching porn, especially if you’re already married. Whether you mean it or not, you are telling your wife that she is inadequate. Yes, women. In that case, I fully understand you distrusting your husbands. Their actions and their words are not lining up.

Some women unfortunately go the other way. They go all out freely offering their bodies to most anyone who comes along. The idea of nudity is really saying how much you trust someone. The problem is people are saying “I trust you totally with my body, but I don’t trust you totally with a lifelong commitment.” It’s a way of being used.

When a man and a woman come together in matrimony and are engaged in sex, what they are saying is they alone are the ones who trust each other entirely with their bodies. Marriage is the place for that total trust and commitment. Marriage is where that promise has already been made and then the action of sex lines up with that promise. It is a way of saying that here there is no shame.

It is a recreation of Paradise. When you have covenant love fully going on, you are to have Paradise. In this way, some secular artists do have it right. Intimate love is often compared to Heaven and Paradise. They’re right in that this is a microcosm of what God has for us. They’re wrong in thinking that this is indeed Heaven and Paradise. The finger is great to point at the moon, but it is horrible to mistake the finger for the moon.

Now on to men.

Yes. Men themselves struggle with this. I have had my own difficulties. I weigh just a little under 130 and I am 5’7″. Technically, I am underweight, but I am incapable of gaining weight too much due to the steel rod on my spine being designed for a certain weight.

I well remember as a man in my 20’s working at a grocery store in the back room on break and seated with the girls and here them talk about some guy going by and one of them jumping up to pursue him because “You’re so hot.”

Yeah. I’m just some guy in the room.

Guys worry that they don’t compete with other guys as well. Maybe not as much as women do, but that is there. Men have a tendency to want to one-up one another in anything. It might be the stupidest kind of contest ever, but we want to be #1.

Years ago I remember working at the Christian Research Institute and sitting in the break room with some of the guys there and we were talking about painful physical experiences in our lives. Slowly, I noticed that after one of us told our story, another guy had to come and say “This is my story.” We weren’t just sharing stories. It was along the lines of, “You think you went through a lot? Let me tell you what I went through!” It was as if the bigger man had the bigger story.

By the way, I think I won when I brought up my back surgery.

When I was married, I remember going to the Titanic museum in Pigeon Forge with my ex-wife. There, you could stick your arm in water that was the temperature that the water was around the iceberg when it was hit by the Titanic. I thought I would roll up my sleeve and show her what a man I was by putting my arm in there as long as I could.

I think I lasted about a minute.

So yes, guys do have those insecurities, but I noticed when I was married, I had none of that around my ex-wife. In my mind, I was already accepted. Why hide? Not all guys are like that. Insecurity is real.

Shame has distorted what God meant for good.

We somehow think if our bodies are less in some way, we are less in some way.

Our values are not determined by if we have a super hourglass figure or how tall we are or if we have six-pack abs or how much we weigh on a scale. These can matter to some extent, as we should try to be healthy, but they don’t determine our value. Our value is found in being in the image of God.

Every marriage is meant to be a microcosm of the love of God and man together. This includes even a secular marriage. Just because it wasn’t done in a church doesn’t mean it’s not something from God.

We are to have no shame before God. We are to have no shame before our spouses. Treating the body like it’s just something common and anyone can see is a false view as not everyone is worthy of that covenant relationship. Marriage is a way of saying one person is.

Treat your body well. Respect it, and save it for someone who is worthy of it. You are worth that too.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Modesty and Respect

How should victims of #MeToo live? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I had my concerns when the #MeToo movement started, but I appreciate many of the women who were in it. Real sexual abuse and sexual harassment happens. The problem is that the terms are also often too vague. There are girls who can have a guy ask them out at work and consider that sexual harassment. If a man tells a woman she is beautiful in some way, that can be called sexual harassment.

Then there are evils out there like Dr. Larry Nassar. Nassar is without a doubt a sick and twisted individual who has brought much destruction to the lives of the women that he worked with. Nassar used them for his own pleasures and their sexual peace has been sacrificed at the altar of his pleasures.

Sometimes, the response can go too far. An article in The Mighty recently spoke about Aly Raisman and her nude photos for Sports Illustrated. Normally, I would link, but I know that there are guys who will struggle and a link right there could be a problem. The link doesn’t show any frontal nudity, but it is clear that Raisman is nude in it. The writer of the piece says her appearing nude does not negate #MeToo.

The article quotes something said apparently on Instagram by Raisman.

“Women do not have to be modest to be respected– Live for you! Everyone should feel comfortable expressing themselves however makes them happy. Women can be intelligent, fierce, sexy, powerful, strong, advocate for change while wearing what makes them feel best. The time where women are taught to be ashamed of their bodies is OVER. The female body is beautiful and we should all be proud of who we are, inside and out.”

Much of this is fine, but some of it makes no sense. Everyone should feel comfortable expressing themselves however makes them happy? The way Nassar expressed himself was by abusing several young women. Do we have a problem with that? We sure do. The implication here is that you should do what makes you happy, and if sex makes you happy, you should express yourself sexually however you want.

What is ignored is if there is any real purpose to sex? There are a number of purposes, but many people today only look at one purpose. Sex is there only for this one purpose and that’s it.

One such purpose of sex is the continuation of the species. Some people can’t do this because of infertility or medical reasons of some sort or financial reasons or because age has made it impossible to conceive. Another reason also is the unity of a husband and wife. Sexuality is the greatest expression of love between a husband and a wife. It is a way of saying that the two give themselves entirely to each other as they are. It’s hard to do that with your bodies if you haven’t really done it in reality yet with a marriage commitment, which is a reason why living together before marriage actually makes divorce more likely.

Of course, pleasure is on the list. Husbands and wives also do this because it’s a lot of fun. The problem is too many today treat sexuality like just a hobby. In essence, it’s treated as something common. You watch TV with your friends. You go play a sport with your friends. You have sex with some friends. Why not? It’s just another thing you do.

But what if it isn’t just another thing you do? What if it involves more than just an activity, but rather the bonding of persons? In sex, after all, oxytocin is released that bonds the man and woman together. This cannot be altered. Of course, the more you deny what comes with that bond, the more you will be going against your very own body and making it harder to bond. Sex really does change things.

Raisman also says a woman should not be modest to be respected. Okay, but that leaves us with the question of why should a woman be modest? When I go out in public, I see several women. They’re all wearing clothes. Why is that? Also, the men are wearing clothes as well. Why is that?

Are we wearing clothes because we are ashamed of our bodies? Is the only way to show love for your body and delight in your body to walk around naked all the time? If so, then we live in a society where the only people who love their bodies are the ones in nudist camps.

Or do we wear clothes for another reason? (and I don’t just mean work requirements or keeping warm) Do we wear clothes not because our bodies are something shameful, but do we wear them because they are something sacred? We don’t want to expose what is sacred to everyone else. That treats the sacred as if it was just common. We save them for the people who are really special.

The only woman who sees my body totally is my wife. The only man who sees my wife’s body totally is me. By that action alone, we each know that we are something different to each other. We are the only ones that share this unique bond. Sex takes it even further. It’s not that Allie’s body is a place of shame. In reality, it’s a place of honor, but in her life, only one person has the honor necessary to totally receive the honor she has. Likewise, there is only one person out there I consider worthy of totally giving the gift of myself to.

What happens for women who bear it all sexually? Everyone gets that, and that includes multitudes who don’t deserve that. That includes the men sitting in their basements watching porn and not going out and meeting a real woman because they just need a fake one. When they do meet real women, these real women aren’t enough for them because they’ve seen the fake ones only and expect real women to be like fake photoshopped women. There’s a reason there are men in their 20’s taking Viagra now.

A woman does not dress modestly because she is ashamed of how she looks. She does it because she honors how she looks. She wants everyone to know that she is not to be treated as common. Her body is something sacred and is not to be put out on display. Getting to see her body and all her beauty and glory is not a right that a man has. It is a privilege. A woman determines who is worthy of that privilege. If she wants to say everyone in the world is, then she has lowered herself. Everyone in the world includes some despicable people.

The response article tells us that clothing is just clothing and our bodies are just bodies and your body, your choice. Yes. You do choose what you do with your body, but notice how the writer says our bodies are “just bodies.” It’s like saying, “No big deal. This is just the human body being shared.” It is a big deal. Every human being is a big deal. If you believe every woman should be honored, then you should also not believe that they are to be treated as common.

That’s the great danger also with young women especially doing the whole sexting thing now. By doing that, you are letting a guy know that if he wants to see your body, all he has to do is have a Y chromosome. Nothing extraordinary is required. A guy is far less likely to pursue you and if he does, well he only wants to hit it and quit it. He’ll move on to the next fix after that.

Now some do say that it is always the fault of the perpetrator in sexual abuse. It is, but at the same time, if someone overeats on a diet, it is their fault, but it’s not wise for friends and family to come by and dangle unhealthy foods that the person likes right in their face. Women and men should seek to dress in a way that honors those around them. Even if those other people are not worthy of being honored, like Nassar, you deserve to be honored around them.

Does this go against #MeToo some? I think it does. So many women have rightfully complained about being treated as objects, but then act in a way that makes it more likely that they will be treated that way. Again, it’s never right to do that and that can happen sadly even in marriage. (Sorry guys, but your wife is there for more than just you having someone to have sex with and you need to treat her with honor as a person in the image of God and sacrifice for her.)

Women should feel empowered and confident as they are and not be ashamed of their bodies, but that doesn’t mean you treat them like they’re common. Go with the Christian idea of treating them like sacred vessels. Save them for a man who truly deserves that honor, say, I don’t know, by making a public lifetime commitment to you till death do you part?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What Stolen Photos Say About Us Today

Is the greater concern in America that photos are stolen or what we do about it? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Okay. I really don’t pay much attention to celebrity news. I don’t really care about who is dating who and what number marriage X is on with Y and how many guys a certain female has had children with or anything like that. I have zero interest whatsoever in the tabloid section of the supermarket. I’m too busy living my own life to care about the love lives of people I’ll never meet and have no real impact whatsoever on me.

I do care about moral issues.

I don’t care for celebrities as celebrities, but they are still people, and I do care about moral issues so why not write about something like that today?

It was on Facebook that I first heard the news about Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photos being put on the internet. The term used often is leaked. They weren’t leaked. They were stolen. Her account was hacked into by some sleaze who really needs to get a life and then distributed to other sleazes who repeated his crime.

Yep. No intention of holding back on this one.

And honestly, I couldn’t even tell you who Jennifer Lawrence is. When I first saw a headline of an internet article about how the writer didn’t want to see Jennifer Lawrence naked I thought “Who’s that?” Yeah. I really do pay that little attention. It wasn’t until I read the article that I realized that she was an actress who’d had nude photos of her stolen without permission and then plastered all over the internet.

Too many people are blaming Jennifer for this. Jennifer did not do anything immoral in the affair. Perhaps when she took the pictures of herself she might have done something immoral with them, but there is nothing immoral about taking a naked picture of one’s self. Now you might say storing it on your computer could be foolish. That’s one thing. Foolish does not equal immoral. If you lock your keys in your car, that is foolish. It is not a sin you need to repent of.

Let’s suppose I was away from my own wife on a long trip and she knew I was lonely and missing her and to give me a sudden burst of cheer, she sent me some “pictures” that she took of herself. Now my wife wouldn’t do this due to that fear, but we cannot say that that was something immoral. She’s my wife and I am allowed to see her as she is. She has done nothing immoral in doing that.

You want to know someone who did something immoral?

It was the boy who hacked Jennifer Lawrence’s photos.

Yes. I know some could say it was a man, but someone who treats a woman like this is quite simply a boy. You know who else did something immoral?

Anyone else who went to look at them.

I don’t care if you distributed them or not. If you looked at photos that were got through illegal means, you are guilty of a sin against that person. Right now, there is someone who has had one of the most intimate aspects of her being displayed all over the world and she will never experience the world in the same way, especially since she will never know when she’s walking down the street which guys she comes across might have seen those photos.

And to those guys, Jennifer Lawrence is just a very attractive piece of meat.

I don’t care about celebrities as celebrities, but even then they are people, and they are not just objects. Someone doesn’t cease to be a person just because they become a celebrity.

Now on the one hand, I do understand our obsession in our country.

Most of us have come to a conclusion across all times and cultures that has stood the test of time and been practically a universal. That conclusion is that sex is just awesome.

What’s another conclusion we have come to? The female body is a beautiful work of art.

You’re not going to get any disagreement from me on any of these. 

I am a married man. I love to see my Mrs. I cannot think of a more beautiful sight to me in all the world than when I get to see my Mrs. I love sex also. There is not an experience I can think of that can compare to it. I often think of my single friends and want to say “Oh I just can’t wait until you get married and get to experience this.” (Note. Some don’t want to marry and if they don’t, that’s fine, but if they want to, I look forward to them getting to have this experience.)

And you know what? To be a man and to desire to see a woman naked and to have sex with her is no sin. It is natural. Now if you turn her into an object, that is the problem. That is lust, but I know when I was dating my Allie, I was definitely having those desires. Naturally, I contained them until we got to our wedding night.

Sex really is a transcendent experience and dare I say it, a great evidence that God exists. If there was one aspect of Intelligent Design I could go with, it’d be sex. It didn’t just happen. It wasn’t a random accident. Everything about it and the way the two systems work together fits so well and to add in, as Chesterton points out, it’s fun. We have to eat to live. It doesn’t mean food had to taste good. We could live in a world of black and white. We live in one of color. We also could have reproduced without it being fun, but the blessedness is that it is fun.

Someone I know once said the problem in our society is that we think about sex too much. Many of you might look at this scandal and think that that is true. The reality is, it isn’t. It’s a total mistake. The problem in our society is we don’t think about sex enough.

Oh we have plenty of sex! We do that constantly! We fantasize about sex all the time! We dream about it! We watch it! We talk about it! We do just about everything that can be done with sex!

Except think about it.

Do we really think about what we’re getting ourselves into with this experience, or do we just see ourselves as animals getting together in wild passion? Sex is an ultimate and complete surrender to another person. It is not just a woman making herself vulnerable to a man. A man is just as much making himself vulnerable to a woman. 

It is truly a transcendent experience. Why do we seek it so much? Because next to God, it is quite likely the greatest joy we could ever experience on this Earth. It’s why Chesterton said that the man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.

Unfortunately, when someone engages in the behavior of looking at someone naked without their okay, then they are in fact lowering that person and in fact, reducing any future joy for that person without some good counseling. 

So a man violates a woman for a moment of pleasure and leaves her with a lifetime of pain.

Is it worth it?

When sex is put at the top of the list as the highest good, they could very well think that that is the case. When people see each other as just animals, then that will also more likely be the case. Say there is no Heaven to gain or Hell to shun and there is no ultimate judge and if you can get away with the pleasure, well why not?

Note in all of this I am not telling us to love sex less. May it never be. I’m just telling us to love God more and to love our fellow man more. Our fellow human being is not just an object for our sexual pleasure. Our fellow human being is someone created in the image of God. They are not just an object of pleasure, and true sexual expression between a man and a woman does not focus on the pleasure of the man or the pleasure of the woman.

It focuses on both.

It has the man being focused largely on the pleasure of the woman and the woman on the pleasure of the men. (And yes women, those of us who are married can assure you of this from our perspective. The greatest pleasure that we get out of sex is in fact knowing that we have brought great pleasure to our women.) Now of course, each person has to know enough to know what they like, but then they count on the other person to fulfill that. 

The acts done at the expense of Jennifer Lawrence or anyone else like her are entirely self-serving acts and each time, the person who is the true victim will be suffering something that could take years for her to heal while the victimizer takes a moment of pleasure. That is a very very costly moment.

The sad thing is people like Jennifer Lawrence suffer the abuse of her victimizers and then they suffer the abuse from everyone else who says “You shouldn’t have done such a thing!” Okay. Maybe she shouldn’t have and maybe it was foolish, but she does not deserve the suffering that she gets from it. Had she distributed the pictures herself, she would be guilty of victimizing herself. She did not. Someone might as well have been hiding outside her house taking pictures of her changing clothes.

Sex is a great good. It is a good we can seek if we do so choose. Let’s not do so at the expense of our fellow human beings. If you treat a fellow human being as an object, you not only wrong them, but you also wrong yourself. If they are just an object, so are you.

While I’m at it, let’s point out this is a mistake the church often makes. We are way too negative about sex. That is why so many people identify us as prudes. I hope it’s noteworthy i have said nothing negative about sex in this post. That would be foolish. We too often in teaching our youth give them only a negative message about sex and when they discover all the positives, they think not only were we wrong about the negatives, but geez, what else could we be wrong about?

This is a mistake. In our teaching about sex, we must teach that it is something good, but like all good things, it must be treated in a sacred way. Sex is sacred indeed. I consider sex like nuclear energy. If you use it right and channel it properly, the results are wonderful. If you use it wrongly and treat it haphazardly, the results are disastrous. 

Please remember sex is sacred and don’t take it lightly. Treasure the spouse you have in your life and if you are not married, then note that you are to willfully give up sexual pleasures with a member of the opposite sex. If that is something you can live with, more power to you. If not, then go out and pay the price to get to see and treasure a member of the opposite sex. Marry them in a lifelong commitment.

People are people. They are not just objects for your pleasure. 

In Christ,

Nick Peters