A year after its posting, why aren’t there more comments applauding this excellent resource? It’s so crucially needed! But there’s an ongoing barrier to sex education in evangelical churches. The problem has been and remains our notorious cultural loyalty to the theologically-heretical “flight from the body” fostered by Victorianism.

For far too long this zealous but misplaced allegiance has overshadowed The Bible’s very first words describing God’s naked “image” as “male and female.” God’s plan for our sexually-differentiated embodiment was just as clearly revealed by His very first human mandate: sexual reproduction. The divinely built-in “body language” of gender-distinction shouts the loudest when that sacred “temple” is naturally unadorned …yes, I mean NAKED!… just the way I often see it as an L&D nurse, and frequently as a massage therapist and artist.

BUT NO! We’ve NOT been like little children, “naked (open) and unashamed” about their bodies, as Ellen Martin’s helpful checklist reiterates. Just as “body acceptance” was banished from us and replaced with “body shame,” so we perpetuate the process, even before little children can tell right from wrong. Yet, it’s becoming all too apparent that the responsibility for our culture’s body shame issues, gender confusion agenda, and pornographic exploitation, can largely be traced back to a porno-prudish message in the mouths of Christian leadership. Pulpits have preached the indecency of the unclad body found in Victorian prudery with almost idolatrous devotion, placing it right alongside the Gospel itself. But a shameful perception of the body is a by-product of sin, not of holiness.

God’s question to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked?” implies that body shame was not intrinsic to humanity but originated at the suggestion of a deceiver. Adopting and promoting this deceptive view of our physical embodiment “misses the mark” of God’s will for “modesty.” True modesty in Scripture has nothing to do with hiding our “fearfully and wonderfully made” anatomy, but is altogether about attitudes and behaviors that manifest godly virtues and humility. We need to stop chewing on that forbidden fruit, spit it out, regain the Creator’s holy view of His naked handiwork, and stop trusting the external legalism of fig leaves to morally protect the internal heart from lust. Truth alone can set us free, and in this case, it’s the “naked truth,” as I and millions of others have learned by experience.

Each generation gives us an opportunity to break this dysfunctional and socially destructive trend of body shame in the church. I believe God is calling His people to repentance, reformation, and restitution. It’s too long overdue, and some would call the mistake “too late to change.” I think not. Resources, like this one by sister Martin can help us make a jump-start with our children. That’s where we must begin RIGHT NOW!

For futher thoughts on this, GOOGLE “Incarnational Truth about Humanity’s Sexual Nature” which is my full doctrinal paper written as a Wesleyan minister on this area of critical importance.

–Rev. David L. Hatton, RN, CMT (pastordavidrn.com)