The Terrifying Joy of a Naked Soul

My meditation over the last week has been on 'the glory of a naked soul.' Now, I've said 'soul,' but I don't want to turn immediately inward; first, I want to observe our society's fascination with physical nakedness. Nakedness,in our cultural context, is not neutral. The sight of a naked body inevitably prompts one of three negative responses (sometimes these emotions converge at the same time): 1) laughter: a man streaking across a baseball diamond, a college student sprinting nude through a dorm strike us as hilarious; 2) shame: if someone has walked in on you as you're using the washroom or opened your bedroom door as you are changing, you immediately feel a nearly incomparable susceptibility, and grab whatever objects that lie near-at-hand to cover your exposed flesh; or 3) lust: craving what we do not have, we're tempted to satiate filthy passions by viewing bare portraits. By these illustrations I mean to show that something is not altogether right with bodily exposure, with being fully open to the eyes of another. This is particularly true of one who has a blemish, a birth defect, an out-of-the-ordinary feature--you can be sure that he will not parade this casually before the eyes of others. There is security in our covering--our clothes deflect the gaze of those who would ridicule our physical weaknesses. There is one positive possibility, however, for which I didn't make room previously: delight--seen penultimately in a husband-wife relationship. And we would all want to experience this terrifying joy of being disclosed (with all of our faults) and yet accepted. We laugh and blush and lust not because we don't like the idea, but because it seems impossible. And, in fact, it usually is.

Not only is this true physically, but also psychologically. We robe ourselves in intellectualism, or amiability, or silence to shield 'the actual' (who we are really) from the knowing observation of others. Perhaps, even if we would like to be open, we're not sure ourselves of who we 'actually' are. 'Am I who I am presently or who I hope to become?' We're lost in the layers of idealism. And so, life is a sick game in which we don these garments so that no one sees us and we don't see them--yet all the while dreaming of a setting in which we could experience the terrifying joy of being fully disclosed (with all of our faults) and yet accepted.

Oh how we desire this frightening delight of complete and unashamed exposure! But we loathe it as much as we long for it--for the vulnerability which nakedness (of body and soul) requires is often too frightening a proposition for us to make the leap. So, we need a situation in which we can have both then, right? A relationship in which we can be naked and vulnerable and also clothed and safe. And this is why I love the gospel so much, for it gives me both.

Hebrews 4:13 says, 'And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.' So here is the terror: there is One who see with 'eyes of blazing fire' which burn to my core; his eyes incinerate fronts and facades and veneers, past games, and past idealism. We know well what he will find: blemishes, filth. So, where's the cover? What will deflect the all-knowing, unrelenting gaze of Holiness? Nothing but Holiness itself. St. Paul writes: 'I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith' (Phil 3:8-9). Clothed in Holiness, the gaze of Holiness is justly diverted.

This is the terrifying joy of a naked soul. You are bare and yet clothed; you have cause to feel shame and yet cause to feel secure; cause to be paralyzed in fear and yet cause to be exuberantly happy. Love it, Christian.