I was tempted to try to create Christian pornography recently. Would you ever consider hiring a nice looking married couple to pose and make love while you or a photographer filmed them?
Would you actually buy magazines full of nudity that had articles about the Bible and sexuality in them? Sort of a Christian version of Playboy?
Would you attend a Christian Strip Club if one existed?… I have so many many hot ideas for this idea?
Is there anyone out there with the financial means of funding or producing Christian Pornography magazines or investing in a Christian Strip Club?
I am going to write a book one day called “Controversial Christianity” and explore what the Bible does and does not say about several topics that are mostly considered sinful by large portions of the church…. some of the topics we’ll find that the Bible does actually condemn… and others it doesn’t…
I think most of us have entertained the thought of being naked in public at some time or another in our lives.
In response to one of the questions asked regarding my last post, someone thankfully brought us this real life human topic.
I remember entertaining the idea much more when I was around my late teens and early twenties. What would it be like to “naked and unashamed”? Just talking from the heart for a minute, I think all of us would enjoy the thrill and rush of being naked and truly seen. I believe we feel this way, because we were created with this deep knowing that nudity and nakedness is somewhat similar to the idea of God’s Glory in the Bible…
I know this may “sound” blasphemous at first, but God created mankind in the Garden of Eden, truly naked and unashamed. It was only when sin entered the picture that God Himself killed a deer (or similar creature) and gave Adam and Eve clothes.
I know I may not sound like a traditional or evangelical Christian because of my views that I express on this blog, but I am (by traditional/evangelical I mean that I take the Bible simply as it is written and develop my fundamental worldview based exclusively on what the Bible DOES and DOES NOT say). So in general Christian theology, once sin entered the picture through our first mother and father’s original sin, this world and everything in it drastically changed. Now we are laden with a disposition to sin carried down through our bloodline from Adam. As born again Christians, God gives us a new heart, but according to passages like Romans 7, we still wrestle with a unnatural proclivity to sin.
Yet, our hearts remember Eden…
Imagine what sounds like a fantasy world, where in the beginning, God created all things Good and His original plan for our race, was to walk naked and unashamed. Each delighting in one another’s glory, and each one of us being delighted in.
Our first father’s sin, and our sin, gums up the works however. Still in our hearts we carry the weight of Glory.
Nudism is, I believe an attempt to reclaim some of our original world….However, we still have this ravenous wolf inside us called sin or iniquity…
What are your thoughts?
We all know that sometimes there are “ideals” that are unattainable in this life…but sometimes because of that we go the other direction and try to kill our hearts in the cradle.
From what I can gather and understand from the Bible, nudity is not a sin, nor enjoying nudity. It’s part of our original design. Our sexuality, our masculinity…our femininity is precious. Each of us know somewhere in our hearts that that which we conceal is sacred and beautiful.
I’ve never visited a nudist colony or beach and I don’t know if I ever will, but just being naked with other people in and of itself is not a sin as far as I can see in the Bible. God commanded the prophet Isaiah to go around buck naked for around 2-3 years. God does not command us to commit sin and He doesn’t even tempt us to sin
James 1:13
“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:”
I don’t want to take the time to explain this next statement, but I do believe, that sexual sin is when we touch someone’s else’s vagina or penis, and that lust is imagining someone touching our genitals or us touching someone else with our genitals, and vice versa. Maybe the natural pubic hairline is a pretty good indicator of the official genital area.
So if nudism involves any sort of touching of genitalia, whether purposely or accidentally through an act like hugging, it is sinful. If everyone keeps their “private parts” private and sacred, I do believe that there is nothing technically wrong with nudism among adults.
No one went around touching Isaiah’s penis/scrotum. I do believe in “look but don’t touch”. God didn’t command him to touch his penis to anyone or to let anyone touch him there. It is sacred and reserved for your own enjoyment and the enjoyment of your spouse.
“Why I don’t frequent nudist camps”
Personally, once I realize where the “line” is; where purity ends and impurity begins…I believe in using wisdom, especially with such powerful currents as sexuality. If you know where sin “begins”, I advice, and I believe God commends using wisdom. I’ve discovered the hard way, that not using wisdom can quickly lead into plain old sin.
If you have a draw a “perforated” line, even one step outside where you actually cross the solid line into sin, I believe that is using wisdom.
Here’s one of my successes, then I’ll share with you one of my sins that I’m not proud of.
Once I got married, I realized that I didn’t know what to do with the opposite sex exactly. Things changed. I had women who were friends, but now I was married. I know adultery is a sin, and if possible, I’d really like to be faithful in this area. My dad was a serial philanderer and I saw the pain in my Mother’s eyes for decades. One of my greatest heroes, King David, made one of his worst mistakes due to the sin of adultery with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheeba.
So I set a few steps between me and adultery. One step I placed is not spending time alone with another woman who is not family. If you don’t spend time alone…it’s kind of hard to have the opportunities to commit adultery. I’m probably not going to rip of the clothes of some man’s wife in a moment of wreckless passion, if her husband or her friend is there.
I have talked to women on the phone, and enjoy varying levels of friendship with other women. I enjoy other’s women’s company in the presence of other people.
The other deterrent or extra line or step that I’ve used to protect myself and my marriage, is that if anyone does make a move on me or my wife, that person is no longer welcome in our lives. We’ve both had a couple people make a move on both of us…and oddly we both had one same sex friend each who tried to come on to us. Those people are no longer welcome in our lives. I want people around me who want to protect me and my heart and most importantly my relationship with Christ and my marriage.
You see, I’ve crossed both those “perforated” lines in my life. Recently, I spent time alone with a woman that I’ve known since childhood. Honestly, it felt really good… But I felt convicted and apologized to her, for not only not protecting my heart and marriage, but also for not protecting her heart and marriage. In my flesh, I’d still like to hang out with other women, especially because my marriage has been very painful, but I’m trying to keep myself on the right sight of these steps of wisdom.
When I hung out with this woman, we didn’t sin, but it exponentially increased the possibility to sinning against God and against His Word. But having that perforated line a step or two away from the actual sin, gives me a warning in my heart that I’m getting close to blowing it sexually.
The same with the extra step back towards the people who have made a move on me. I’m a sinful man. It’s only my God’s grace and love that He saved me and and I want to honor Him more than anyone or anything. Continuing friendships with people who have crossed the line and made actual advances towards me, are like leaving bridges in my life to bad places that some part of me wants to visit. By tearing down those bridges of relationship, I’m putting a step between me and sin. In my weakest moments or in the moments when my marriage isn’t fulfilling, it would be easy to be drawn towards people who have showed sexual or romantic attraction towards me. I can find all kinds of ways to justify it. I can easily lay blame, because my wife has a sinful side just like I do.
So…so far…having these two steps away from the actual sin of adultery, has really helped me stay true to God and true to my wife (even when she is not acting Godly towards me). Plus it’s nice knowing that if I do cross those lines of wisdom that I’ve drawn several steps away from the actual sin of adultery, that I have not yet sinned! It’s sort of a relief when I have crossed those lines of safety and wisdom, knowing that although I’ve crossed a line that I set up to protect my walk with God and my marriage and my heart as well, that even though I crossed those lines, they aren’t the actual lines (the solid line) where I actually enter into sin. It gives me a wake up call, without fully blowing it. It makes me feel more solid and safe inside knowing where the actual line is, and then have a few lines that aren’t actual sin (but sound an alarm to let me know that I”m getting close).
I say all that to say that personally, even though I don’t see the sin in nudism among adults (no touching genitals), I guess not visiting nudism camps is another line for me personally in my life. Hanging around with a bunch of other naked people, sounds really tempting to me personally. I feel like sin would be “at the door” as God spoke to Cain, “and it desires to have you”.
That being said, although I highly recommend to setting some perforated lines several steps away from something that would be actual sin (the solid line), I don’t judge others for having different lines than I do. One of my friends and her husband used to frequent a local nudist camp.
Does that make sense to you?
Lastly, just because I already mentioned a time that I blew it and sinned, when I was dating…I was right in the middle of researching all the things that this blog entails and discusses. I was questioning most all my beliefs and trying to see what the Bible actually says and doesn’t say. I was questioning, where does sex begin? Is it just penetration? Do hand jobs and blow jobs count, etc. My guard was a little down because I was actively trying to understand where the line is…however, my sins are my own, and my choice.
I was raised up in church and had been heavily indoctrinated (in the good sense of the word, because it basically just means “taught” or “instructed”) to save sex for marriage. I barely dated. There was a movement in the late nineties to return to something called courtship instead of dating (spending excessing time alone with someone of the opposite sex). I had restrained myself from dating and focused on God, until my early twenties.
Long story short, I met my wife and because I didn’t believe that nudity was a sin, I allowed us to make out quite heavily in her home or in my care, ect. We spent a very great deal of time alone and with a clothing optional policy, we spend time naked around one another. It took about a week to completely blow it and all the years that I had spent restricting dating. Even though I believe seeing each other naked was not a sin, doing so without using any wisdom, precautions or accountability, proved to be the epitome of foolishness. It’s one of my regrets to this day. Despite the culture, I still know first because the Bible commands it, but also from my heart, that our story would have been much richer and much more beautiful to have enjoyed a pure wedding and a pure honeymoon night. Instead, I sinned against my Savior, my own heart, and at the time my future spouse. After serving God for about 11 years then, I sinned just like King David. I had thrown all wisdom to the wind and armed only with my belief that nudity was not a sin, entered a situation doomed to failure and remorse.
For me, not visiting a nudist camp or beach is based on a personal conviction that it would be far too easy , even accidentally, to have various people’s private parts way too close to my own with not a shred of wisdom to protect my relationship with my Jesus and my wife.
If any of you have experiences at nudist camps, I’d be interested to know. Since our friend who visited them was a woman, I didn’t feel quite comfortable asking her some of these kinds of details. I do know that if anyone’s genitals are touching other or being touched that that is a solid line of sin.
Feel free to let me hear back from you. I’d love to know your personal convictions and personal experiences and your relationship with Jesus.
Thanks so much to everyone who asked question and brought up great ideas for topics!
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