Our
Wonderful Bodies!
Our Wonderful Bodies!
ISBN
0-9655540-1-5 C. 2001
Published
by Naturist LIFE International, Inc., Troy, Vermont, USA
100
highly photographic pages, color covers, B&W inside
8.5
x 11, soft cover.
Cover
price: $10.
Description:
The purpose of this book is to celebrate the fact of our bodiliness by showing
ordinary people of all ages from all over the world doing ordinary things,
clothed as God intended. The fact is that most cultures are so meticulously
clothes-compulsive that opportunities to encounter the unveiled body in a
positive context are rare or non-existent, with the few exceptions
"proving the rule." Nakedness has taken on a negative connotation in
most cultures today. Rather than accept the definition of the body of the One
who created it--who ought to know--society, even including Christians, blindly
accept Playboy's false definition of
the body, viz. that it is intrinsically erotic. Pope John Paul II's argument
against pornography was not that it showed too much of the body, but that it
did not show enough. By presenting the body only in an erotic way, pornography
distorts truth, and is thus a lie. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, most
cultures have very successfully brainwashed people to regard simple nakedness
as an erotic, psychological stimulus. Accordingly, men are trained to howl like
wolves as soon as they encounter nakedness. This is even considered
"normal," and society sanctions this negative perspective of the body
by even promoting such institutions and "entertainments" as strip
clubs and topless doughnut shops, etc, not to mention the deluge of printed
pornography and movies. Think about it: You can list on the fingers of one hand
the number of movies you have watched that have depicted nudity in any context
other than a sexual, erotic one, and even some of those few, such as
"Schindler's List," depict nudity negatively, showing bodies being
bulldozed into a pit or something similar. There are exceptions, but they only
serve to "prove the rule."
Presenting
the body only in these negative contexts is a distortion of truth, and is thus
a lie. God did not create our wonderful bodies to be objects of erotic
entertainment or the ultimate sign of total depersonalization. Such negative
notions are nowhere to be found in Sacred Scripture. In Genesis 3:8-11 Adam
tried to explain his motive for trying to hide from God by saying that he was
naked, as though there were something wrong about that, when, in fact, that was
how God himself had created him. God's response to this fabricated excuse was,
"Who told you that you were 'naked'?" In other words, "Where on
this Edenic world did you ever come up with the cockamamie notion that there is
anything wrong with the way I created you?" Of course, the notion's source
was the sole element of evil present in the Garden--the lying, trickster, the
serpent (i.e. Satan). Accordingly, nakedness as negative was not a truth
revealed by God, but a lie revealed by Satan. Yet the anomaly is that even
Christians who consider themselves pious religiously prefer to believe the
"Father of Lies" and "Master of Deceit" (John 8:44), rather
than the God of Truth, thus calling good evil and evil good, as Isaiah had
revealed (cf. Isaiah 5:20).
I
see people who claim to follow the Gospel truth as having a responsibility to
correct such distortions by both example and right teaching. The lie is so
overwhelmingly prevailing in our society that to right the wrongs is like
little David opposing Goliath. Nevertheless, we should do what little we can.
By publishing this book I tried to do what little I could by showing the body
in the positive, wholesome light God intended. It is not an antidote to the lie
that alone, is sufficient to defeat Goliath, but it is at least a step in the
right direction. True modesty is not a matter of quantity of body covering, but
purity of heart, learning to see as God sees. God never saw nakedness as
anything evil; that whacked out idea came from Satan and from sinful Adam, who
chose not to see as God sees, but to see through the distorted lens of the
"Father of Lies."
The
body is God's highest material creation. We gawk in wondrous awe at every
natural beauty from sunsets to a bird's plumes, but exempt the most beautiful
creation from that list of natural beauty. No one lusts when beholding a
spectacular sunset in admiration of God's own reflected beauty. It should be
considered just as ridiculous to lust while beholding his most beautiful
material creation, the very "temple of the Holy Spirit" (cf. I Corinthians
6:19).
The
way to put on right-mindedness is the same that succeeded in getting us to
think wrongly, viz. by dint of effort, repetition and bold assertion of God's
truth. Just as we have become accustomed to accept the lie, so now we need to
resolve to accustom ourselves to the truth, and this requires frequent exposure
to the truth and a determined rejection of the lie.
We
praise childlike curiosity when it comes to everything in nature with one
exception--the body. This artificial exception must necessarily lead to a very
warped mind-set, from morbid curiosity to even sexual psychopaths. The lies
that we accept in our society have gone a long way to create such monsters who
prey even on our children. If Church leaders really want to heal as Christ
healed, and dig down to the root of such phenomena as so many sex-abusers among
her clergy, they need to begin right here by asserting the truth of the body's
intrinsic goodness. As Jesus clearly explained in Matthew 15:17-20, what
defiles a man is not anything external, but the vices that come out of his
heart. Yet, just like the Pharisees of old, we directly contradict him,
stubbornly insisting that evil can also be external. And, just as the Pharisees
prided themselves on the righteousness of externals, many people who think they
are religious are white-washed sepulchres, their very vaunted false modesty
abets, if not creates, the evils they imagine they have defeated. Those
sex-abusing clergy very likely had such well-meaning mothers whose false
modesty went far to mis-educate them when they were little boys.
Thus
this book is great for the whole family, chastely satisfying natural curiosity
which our culture so religiously tries to deny us.
This
book is mostly photographs, each one saying more than a thousand words. In
order to better contextualize all the graphics, and to ensure that they are
viewed in the right way, i.e. as God sees, I framed them with three articles by
myself. The first, which serves as a kind of introduction, is inspirational and
hortatory in tone. I want to encourage everyBODY to accept the gift of their
bodies and not regard them as either ugly, sinful, indecent, dirty, obscene,
etc., but as the good, beautiful and holy temples of the Holy Spirit that they
are. By doing what it takes to acquire this true body-acceptance and
appreciation, we experience something of the joy and freedom that God intends
for his children.
My
second article addresses the scruples of "religious" people who have been
trained to regard God's greatest material creation as dirty and who have
accepted a definition of modesty that precludes any nakedness. My argument is
that Christians practice and preach all kinds of non-Scriptural notions, and I
use money an example. Jesus clearly and repeatedly praised the blessedness of
poverty, yet regardless, Christians still covet wealth and material comforts
and never hear from our pulpits the truth of what Jesus really taught about
money. Instead of proclaiming the Gospel truth that it is impossible to serve
both God and mammon (cf. Matthew 6:24), preachers directly contradict Christ,
promoting a false spirituality that claims that both God and Mammon can both be
accommodated.
I
conclude that just as people--even Christians--wrongly regard wealth, so also
they can be way off the mark when it comes to other basic things such as the
body.
My
third and final article is a refresher mini-course on traditional morality--how
to judge the rightness or wrongness of any action. I wrote this because part of
our problem is that our morality is often quite muddled and chaotic. Like
Isaiah taught, we call good evil and evil good. Knowing how to clearly judge
the rightness of an action also brings a taste of the freedom of the sons of
God (cf. Romans 8:21). As Jesus said, knowing the truth sets us free (cf. John
8:32). Thus, with a clear, unmuddled head, we can reconsider the rightness or
wrongness of nakedness and conform our behavior to the truth. The world's
morality is skewed in every imaginable way, leaving even the best of us
confused. Satan is not only a master liar, but also a master deceiver and
trickster. Simply professing to be a disciple of Christ does not except us from
Satan's wiles. Christians are often suckers no less than non-Christians. Many
readers have thought that this article on morality alone is worth the price of
the book.
How
to get the book:
For
a non-autographed copy, your best bet is to buy Our Wonderful Bodies! from naturistlife.com.
I myself sell only autographed copies at my online Cunningham's Store. Order
product #B-2 there for $12 plus a $2 handling fee.
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