On Nudity, Christianity, and the Pharisee Problem

The Pharisee problem

I’m not sure how familiar you are with biblical scripture and tradition, but one of the things Jesus is most known for is his teaching against the Pharisees. The Pharisees weren’t necessarily villains, they were essentially the religious leadership of their day. One of the things that got Jesus all riled up about them was that they distorted scripture and took away from its teachings. They didn’t do this maliciously (at least in their own minds), as they genuinely believed they were helping. They were trying to keep people from sinning. So, for example, if the scripture said “don’t jump off cliffs,” the Pharisees, to try to make sure no one sinned by jumping off a cliff taught that it was a sin to go within ten feet of a cliff and worked with the political leaders to put up fences 10 feet from all cliffs. As such, those who followed the Pharisees not only missed out on the great views the cliffs offered (that were allowable by the scriptures), but they also judged and ostracized those who went past the fences and to the cliffs and viewed them as sinners, even though they weren’t (this doesn’t touch on their pride factor of them feeling they should be acknowledged for being even better than asked to be or other issues that stemmed from the distortion on scripture or their actions and behaviors).

The result: people following the Pharisees missed out on the genuinely scripture-permitted view from the cliff’s edge, and simultaneously judged and ostracized anyone who walked past the fence to actually see it, treating them as sinners even though God and scripture never said they were.

The early Christian church was primarily made of individuals following the teachings of Christ, but after a couple hundred years it was uber-organized, had armies, banners, and leaders… some of them used misinformation and power to their own ends, but most have followed the path of the Pharisees; setting up things as sinful and impermissible because they thought they could legislate others into heaven and sinless lives. This is one of the biggest issues in politics today; you have people trying to legislate morality, rather than working with natural laws and protecting rights.

What scripture actually says about nudity

Nudity is one such area. The scriptures don’t say much of nudity in the contexts discussed here, but they do in other ways. In most all cases where the scriptures reference nudity in regards to sin it’s referring to lust; and then there are other segments that are used as analogies to God’s provision and love by referring to being nude as shameful and His clothing those who are nude as God providing for them on both a physical and emotional context. Similar to how the scriptures use the analogy of the unfaithful wife in regards to God’s love and dedication.

For many, including the Catholic church and the Catholic-Christian Coalition, they draw a distinction on images or presentations that are designed to incite lust, while also offering a caveat that any other presentations might not be for everyone because some people have their own personal lust thresholds that might contain any nudity or suggestive behavior, and as such the presenter is held responsible for their audience.

For myself, I mostly agree with the above, but I don’t agree with the last part. There are multiple uses for nudity in art and I usually use the movie 300 as an example for this. There were three main scenes that featured nudity: the first was with Leonidas and his wife before he left to fight the Persians, the second was with the oracles as he asked the rest of Greece to provide an army, and the third was in Xerxes’ court. The first use was used to show love, the second to show innocence, and the third to show depravity (ignore the actual historical context, only speaking of how the film used visuals and imagery to convey specific ideas). For me, the first bordered the line of inciting lust, but I feel this is a personal line that each must individually own and hold themselves accountable to and that a presenter is not responsible for the hearts or actions of their audience unless they are trying to incite a particular response or action (like a protester inciting violence).

Art and the fine edge

One of my favorite artists, Audrey Kawasaki, primarily deals in nudes, and she balances this fine edge of innocence and lust that makes one question what beauty even is and how it affects us and the way we process visual information and stimulation.

All that to say that a negative reaction to artistic nudity is either abiding by Pharisee-like walls that were taught as the line that shouldn’t be crossed, or a personal line drawn to keep oneself from dealing with lust. We all have our vices, maybe this is one of them for that person. Neither response is wrong exactly; what’s worth examining is whether the wall being enforced is scriptural or constructed.

The lust inversion

While on the topic of lust, one point worth making clearly: one doesn’t need nudity to incite lust. There are many images and videos designed to incite lust that feature no nudity. Most people have no problem with these because of the lack of nudity, but these images and the lust they result in, from a scriptural or sin perspective, are worse than most artistic nudes and on par with the very thing a strict Christian objection to nudes claims to be protecting against. A Carl’s Jr. or Go Daddy advertisement should, by that standard, be more offensive than an artistic nude in an appropriate context. The absence of skin is not the same thing as the absence of lust. Conflating the two is exactly the kind of Pharisee fence problem described above.

A scriptural postscript

Outside of this context, the scriptures do speak of nudity in other ways. In fact, the entire book of Song of Solomon is an ode to his lover’s body and touch, so there is certainly context within which nudity is allowable and enjoyable even from a scriptural standpoint. The fence, in this case, wasn’t built by God.