Knowing Nudity

Genesis 3:7 — “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” 

Are animals aware of their nakedness? Or is the realization of one’s nakedness—and all of the shame that may accompany this realization—the exclusive privilege of the human being? 

One rainy morning last summer, as I was riding to campus for summer language classes, I remember watching a group of deer graze grass in a meadow. I was riding with my friend and classmate, protected from the rain by the hood of his car and separated from these unperturbed deer by a pane of glass. I was struck by what seemed like the absolute indifference of the deer to the rain that enveloped them; I was moved by the degree to which these deer appeared integrated within the wholeness of their environment. In that same moment, I experienced a profound sense of loss and alienation, as I was viscerally made aware of the way in which human beings have manicured their environments and separated themselves from the larger “body” of creation.  

Among animals, human beings are not alone in their aversion to the rain or manipulation of their environments. Rain causes body temperatures to drop, and as a result many animals seek some form of shelter from the rain. Additionally, all kinds of creatures find homes or construct dwellings out of the resources available to them: bears and bats seek cover in caves, foxes and rabbits burrow underground, birds make nests under tree canopies, and beavers build dams in a remarkably industrious manner. Nevertheless, there seems to me to be something unique about the degree to which human beings insulate themselves from nature. When we find ourselves caught outside in the rain, we speed up, we dash for cover, we scramble frantically for a jacket or an umbrella. There is something that verges on paranoia about the manner of borders which we humans erect between ourselves and our environment, and between ourselves and one another.

We have homes and buildings to protect us from predators or from the rain, and inside of those homes and buildings we have restrooms. Inside of those restrooms, we have toilets, urinals, and stalls. And in public spaces it is only within this final space—the bathroom stall—that we allow ourselves to remove the clothes we are wearing.

Our clothes are the roofs and walls and borders we carry with us everywhere, removed only in those most private of spaces: the private stall of the public restroom, or the private bedroom. 

I do not think that I ever internalized any sex-negative or body-negative messages from my parents or from my overwhelmingly white, liberal, suburban, mainline Presbyterian church. But somewhere along the way I did become aware of my nakedness, and—just as the first two humans did—I sought to conceal myself before others and before God. I have searched long and hard for the beginnings of my fear; I have tried at length to locate the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:9) in the middle of the garden (Gen. 3:3). I remember bathroom breaks in the first grade. I remember walking up to a urinal for the first time and pulling my pants all the way down to my ankles because I didn’t know what else to do. I remember the laughter of my six- and seven-year-old friends as they pointed at my uncovered, six-year-old rear. I remember the boy’s bathroom at my elementary school having one stall and four urinals, and I remember that even if I only had to pee I would wait in line for that single stall, because I could not quite figure out how my friends could pee into urinals without taking their pants all the way off, and I didn’t want to be laughed at again if I could avoid it. 

I remember the only romantic relationship I had ever been a part of before this summer, a relationship that consumed nearly three years of my life, from a month into ninth grade up until the start of senior year of high school. I remember feeling manipulated and emotionally abused for large swaths of that relationship, but more specifically I remember the particular experience of being upstairs at my high school girlfriend’s house, making out with her in my underwear. I remember being in sophomore or junior year at the time, and I remember my penis falling out of my boxers. I remember my girlfriend jumping back, running to the bathroom, closing the door behind her, and sobbing. I remember her staying in that bathroom, crying and ignoring my attempts to help for at least half an hour; I remember the week that followed, when we said almost nothing to one another. She and I had never had sex, and although we would date for at least another year and a half we never would have sex. Neither of us ever saw the other naked except for in that particular moment, when I accidentally became uncovered and her involuntary reaction was to cry.  

I never learned why it was that she cried. She may very well have been working through her own trauma around sexuality or nakedness, but ultimately she and I never talked about that incident. All I knew was that if my friends saw me naked, they would laugh at me. And now I knew that if the one person I was closest to in life saw me naked, she would break down in tears.

After we broke up in the summer of 2012, I went seven years without any third dates and without any sexual encounters, during which time no one except for my primary care doctor ever saw me naked. If I had to shower in a locker room with others, I would invariably wrap a towel around my waist during the shower. I had never been told in church or by my parents that nudity or even sexuality was anything to be ashamed of and yet here I was—a couple of traumatic experiences later—with a twisted theology of nakedness, sexuality, and shame. 

The serpent tells Eve that if she eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she “will not die” (Gen. 3:4). Instead, it suggests that her “eyes will be opened, and [she] will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). Indeed, when Adam and Eve take the tree’s fruit, they do not instantly die. Just as the serpent had promised, upon eating the fruit “the eyes of both were opened” (Gen. 3:7), though it is not immediately clear that they become “like God,” either. Instead, we learn only that they have become conscious of their own nudity, and that as a result “they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Gen. 3:7). But what if the serpent never lied at all? What if God is aware of God’s own nakedness? And what if the thing that sets human beings apart from the deer and from all the other animals is that we are aware of our own nakedness as well, in the same way that God is? 

To be aware of one’s own nakedness is, in the final analysis, to be aware of one’s own vulnerability. The clothes we wear protect us from the rain and the cold and the sun, from bug bites and from public humiliation. I learned at a young age that to be naked in front of friends is to open oneself up to laughter, and that to be naked in front of a partner is to open oneself up to rejection, hurt, and tears.

The awareness of our fundamental vulnerability (and ultimately, our mortality)—no matter how many walls we erect, no matter how many roofs we place between ourselves and the rain—is a terrifying thing, but it also connects us to a God who is vulnerable, who moreover chooses to be vulnerable.

God has desired relationships with human beings and with the entirety of creation from the very start, and in doing so God has opened God’s self to the possibility—even inevitability—of being hurt. God has always chosen to be moved by the plight of the vulnerable and oppressed: responding to Hagar’s despair in the wilderness, hearing and attending to the cries of the slaves in Egypt, and identifying with widows, orphans, immigrants, prisoners, the poor, the sick, and the blind. In Jesus, we say that God took on human form in all of its vulnerability and frailty, and even allowed God’s own body to be broken on the cross by the forces of empire, as a sign of God’s solidarity with all vulnerable people in all times, with all who are oppressed on the basis of race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or class, or disability. 

To be vulnerable means to open oneself up to hurt, but it does not necessarily mean that pain, alienation, and separation will be the result.

This summer, I took off my clothes in front of another human being for the first time in memory.

Over the course of several dates and several conversations that stretched late into the summer nights, this person made me feel cared for and listened to. Out on the tennis courts and on the beach and over delicious vegan dinners, she made me feel special, and attractive, and enjoyable to be around.

And when she finally saw me naked, she neither laughed at me nor did she burst into tears, but she told me that I was beautiful. That both my body and my heart were beautiful.  

Vulnerability has opened me up to ridicule, rejection, and pain. For a long time, that’s all that I believed could possibly come out of being vulnerable with other people. But vulnerability and nakedness allow for something else as well: affirmation, affection, the ability to see yourself through the eyes of another, to see yourself as part of a larger whole. I feel closer to this person than I have ever felt to anyone, and not because I have rigorously upheld strict borders around my insecurities, but because I have learned (with her help and her guidance) that vulnerability does not inevitably lead to rejection and hurt.  

I know that there are people who will laugh at your nakedness, and that there are people who will run away and cry when they see you at your most vulnerable. But there are also the people who will see your vulnerability and step closer, the people who will see your nakedness and name it beautiful, and they are the people you will fall in love with. They are the people you will want to keep around. They are the ones who will make that numbing feeling of loss and alienation dissipate, the ones who will remind you of the role you play in a larger story, the indispensable role you have in the wholeness of God’s creation. They are the ones who will invite you back out into the rain and into the messy precariousness of human community.