Embracing Nakedness

I peaked the mountain of coolness my last few years of elementary school. Climbing for three years straight, four including kindergarten, I finally reached the summit to stand proud over those who couldn’t quiet master the skills to make it up the last cliff to reign supreme over their peers. Standing there with the sun blazing behind me, forming a shadow of dominance over those struggling with everything they could muster to join me, I knew I had achieved the goal for which I was brought into this world for. To look and be awesome and have people tell me about it! Really, I just had a few essential abilities and attributes that made me cool. I was a good-looking fifth grader with hair protruding out and up like great spires from the front of my head, supported by what retailers called “Styling Glue”, an accurate name because they put super glue and honey in the waxy mix, or at least that’s my theory. With “Styling Glue” as your defender, your hair could endure even the toughest rainstorms or gym classes. I also had a closet full of clothes with Nike swishes, and I got lots of phone calls from girls huddled around phones giggling uncontrollably at the prospects of finding out who I liked or didn’t like. I also could jump rope like a mad man! For some reason, a very useful and coveted skill in elementary school. I don’t know why. On a good day, I could thrust the handle of the rope down and up and send the plastic string swooping under my feet two or three times in one jump!
Elementary school soon passed as we began to “change” as parents so awkwardly call it, and as I reached middle school and eventually my freshman and sophomore year of high school, due to numerous unfortunate and uncontrollable circumstances, I rolled down to about the middle of the social mountain. I was in that area where I knew everyone who rested at the top and could make friendly small talk with them when we ran into each other in the halls or on the football field, but being a Christian, there was no way I could possibly hang out with those people who did things like getting drunk or drugs or sleeping around, and seeing as these people were generally the ones at the summit, I couldn’t climb any higher. You can begin to see the predicament I faced through most of high school! It was a very unfortunate situation! (Eventually, I actually read my Bible and realized Jesus’ favorite people to hang out with were the very people I thought it was non-Christian to be friends with.)
Now, if you had asked me about mountain climbing and summits when I was still in high school, I wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. I was a regular attendee at my church youth group and was trying to not care about being popular. I was constantly pounded with the truth that God didn’t care how well I fit social standards and I genuinely tried to believe it and take peace and comfort from it. It was a constant battle to balance out serving and honoring God, and still trying to be cool and popular. I tried numerous different strategies. I developed a philosophy of meshing the two together, mixing God and culture into my own unique personality. I wanted to be a cool Christian. You know, one of those dudes who walks around with an inner light exuding out from their face because of all the fulfillment and peace they have inside. I could walk around singing hymns and talking only in proverbs that I had memorized, but I would say them with a smile and funny tone while giving a friendly slap on the back to whoever I was talking with. People could know I was a Christian, but they would understand, each falling to their knees repenting after our encounters. I wanted to be liked by everyone! And if everyone approved, then that meant I must be doing a good job as a Christian. I thought the best gauge of my walk with God came from others opinions toward me.
When I look back at my years in high school, and even up till now, I see how so much of my life, my thoughts, and my efforts are consumed on trying to win the approval of the people around me. All of us, Christian or non-Christian, suffer from this internal struggle. It’s as if we have a disease, a tendency inside to strive forward toward this specific goal of approval from our peers and to fit into the world around us. Out of the womb, we enter into a race to start pleasing others. We are an unsatisfied race. In the depths of our soul, among the deep places of painful honesty, where no facade or insecurity can mask over whom we think we are as ourselves, there is discontentment. If anyone disagrees, walk into Barnes and Noble, go to the self help section, and see the thousands upon thousands of books on how to make your life right!
Eventually, I got tired of debating over which clothes I should wear, or how to dry off my hair so that it looked like I didn’t care what it looked like, or how to say “what’s up dude” with a cool tone in my voice that let people know I was experienced in saying “what’s up” since I had to say it so often to all of my friends. So I turned to my Bible to see what it had to say about God and me and why so many of us care so much about what others think. Not knowing where to start, I started at the beginning, Genesis, where God created the heavens and the earth, and then decided to create Adam. Eden was the place God made for Adam to live. A garden the Bible calls it. “Trees that were pleasing to the eye” were watered from underneath the ground. Rivers flowed through the land “where there is gold,” and as if this wasn’t enough, God created women out of the flesh of Adam, and “the man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”
Now imagine for just a second this scene in the history of God’s people before sin entered our world. Adam and his wife sleeping on grass green, the wind guided by the very hands of the almighty, giving the lovers a gentle nights sleep. The sun’s rays arise to kiss the bodies of the unashamed couple, awakening them to a new day of worship to the God who perhaps wakes them by name. Perfect peace with the creator. They walk through the Garden with God, talking to him as man does face to face with his brother. Naked, having no cares of what they will wear or eat for the day because God provides, he is all they ever need. As David later says of God, “whom have I in Heaven but you, and besides you, I desire nothing here on earth.” So it was true of Adam and his wife. No worries or troubles to tire them during the night, no sorrow or disappointments. Only God. For He is all they ever needed. Their souls burning together for their God, dreaming of having one more chance to be near to the great “I am” as the dawn brings forth another day; one more chance to bask in the love of their creator who adores them.
What a beautiful picture of intimacy with God that was majestic for a moment and then came crashing down with the entrance of sin into the world. Before their sin, they had no reason to ever question what others thought of them because they were God’s, and all that mattered was that God loved them. They were deceived by the serpent into breaking the oneness and perfect fulfillment they had with God. It is really quite sad and even tragic when you consider what Adam and Eve traded intimacy with God for.
Then as God walks through the once perfect world of union between creator and creation, he calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” And with what must have been a voice as faint as a mouse, shameful and aware of brokenness for the first time, the man says, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
This moment when our relationship from God was severed was the beginning of us feeling naked, feeling that there was something wrong with ourselves, feeling that we had to find approval to cover up the feelings of brokenness inside us all. Where we once looked to God for our identity and worth, we find ourselves “naked,” and instead of asking God to cover us with His love, we turn to our peers, to the media, and every opinion about what’s “right” or “wrong.” Every opinion except the only one that matters. And this search for validation, for someone to tell us we are beautiful and loved and valued, has left us jumping through hoops like a dolphin or doing a puzzle like a chimp, all for a morsel of approval that satisfies for a second, leaving us hungrier than before. We are unsatisfied creatures, and if we are honest with ourselves, many of us are caught in the race to gain the love of others.
This past summer, I went to the Solomon Islands on a mission trip with two of my friends from college. For two months, we traveled around four different islands doing various things you do on a mission trip with two other guys in a third world tropical country, like building things, spear fishing, chopping things with machetes, and other masculine activities. I also got addicted to coffee. For some unexplained reason, everyone there drinks coffee like it was as necessary as breathing air. I really want to know why but it’s too much of a mystery and I’m not Sherlock Homes. The weather’s always burning hot and humid, it’s expensive to buy, and it doesn’t taste good, and yet everyone drinks it. If anyone has the answer, please tell me!
But along with sharp things and coffee, God also used us to reach out to the lost and show them their Creator and in those two months I learned more about God and His love for His people than I ever had before. Since I’ve been back, many images from the islands come back into my head, and while writing this, one in particular comes back that I think is an amazing and somewhat sad picture of our condition as humans after the fall trying to cover up our “nakedness.”
We were on a remote island, church had ended, and spurred along by a horde of persistent youth, we decided to brave the long journey to a “waterfall” that was presumably only a short walk from the village. I have to confess, the three of us had our doubts on just how much of a waterfall could be at the end of this rocky path since the stream was little more than ten yards wide and a couple inches deep. But being on a manly mission trip, as I talked about earlier, our testosterone took over and we headed off with twenty or so other bustling companions.
After a short while of walking through this canyon enclosed stream, canopied up above by green giants and vines, we came around a bend, and sure enough, there was a peaceful green pool that was gracefully stirred by water cascading over a ledge, emptying a good distance below into what looked like a field of rippled and strained glass. Jutting out from the precipice of the waterfall, a giant arm thrust out parallel to the pool below, the old remains of a once mighty tree. And seeing as how this trunk was suspended over the middle and deepest part of this pool, it provided the perfect bridge to jump into the sea of foam and green below.
After a few moments of savoring this scene, the kids and young adults that accompanied us climbed the rock face up to the dead trunk, and lined up along the length, twenty or so in number. I pulled out my camera to capture the moment knowing that a spectacle I would not want to miss would soon ensue.
Now you have to understand what a camera can do in a third world country like this where many of the younger kids haven’t even seen their faces. Most children have seen a “photo” in action, so they know that when the rich white man takes out this small boxlike contraption, that this is their opportunity for glory! To perhaps be immortalized in the magical land of America, or maybe even to be in a Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee movie, the heroes that adorn all of their clothing. Like one of those scenes where they show kids in an exotic jungle, followed by Chuck Norris single handedly taking out the biggest drug organization ever recorded in the history of the universe! So the camera has the tendency to make kids go insane! I have yet to discover something they won’t do if it means being filmed. Insane I tell you!
The army of movie stars stood at the ready for my signal. I hit the record button on my camera and it started. The first one went head over heels into the water below, next a 360 degree turn, next a standing back flip, next a front flip with a half turn. Everyone approached the edge trying to outperform the person in front of them, one after another, trying to impress the camera. As each one plunged into the cold, they swam to a nearby rock and sat down to laugh and coax whoever was next to throw their body off in a fashion crazier then the one before. One after the other, they jumped to the cheers and laughs of their friends down below, as if each boy’s opportunity was the chance of a lifetime to impress us all. The constant stream of bodies finally came to an end as they all congregated on top of the now packed rock. But then, out of the howls of laughter, everyone noticed that there upon the end of the tree was another boy. He was older than the rest, having the facial hair and body of someone in their early twenties. From ear to ear, a smile grew on his face as everyone turned to him and began to laugh even louder and wave him on into the water. Uneasiness was about him. Hesitation showed in his face, a voice in his mind keeping his legs from thrusting upwards and out over the pool. And then, from the chatter of the kids around me, I understood why he was struggling to give in to the cries of his peers. He was deaf and “dumb.” My heart sank a little as I heard this. There standing on moss and water soaked wood, he stood, confused not knowing what to do. Everyone had jumped before him. It was his turn to enjoy what the rest of the group had already experienced.
Laughter bounced from side to side off the sheer rock cliffs enclosing the pool until they were released into the sky above. He stood unable to hear the mixture of rude jokes and uncontrollable amusement surrounding him. But his peers, all looking up into his face pointing, screamed louder than words. You could see the conflict in his mind. What was probably a lifetime of periodic teasing, to him, could be alleviated by his jumping, by one act of courage, one chance to be just like everybody else and partake in the climax of the fun filled journey to the waterfall. He knew he was different and to jump would be to achieve some sense of normality amongst his friends. From the movements of his legs closer to the edge and then back a little, you could see the war waging in his mind.
“Go against what I know is risky for me? Or gain approval from the crowd?”
And then he jumped. He jumped with all the might his legs could muster. As he fell toward the plain of the water, his eyes were locked on his friend’s faces. As if soaking in the moment and approval from their attention, he gazed with excitement until the splashing water sent soaring by his feet blocked his view. But their faces were that of panic and fright! He had jumped too far. The walls of the canyon entered into the water at a slight angle toward the jumping log, and as he entered, his body skimmed the rock. Pain shot into his side with a piercing agony as he shot through the water like a needle. With a firm push, he propelled himself toward the surface, forcing an expression of happiness over his face for those who waited in the misty air above.
He came up with a trembling smile; his body was scraped along the side that slid down the rock face. Luckily, he had no severe injuries, but the jump didn’t go as he planned and the group had soon moved along to the next event.

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Boys do crazy things like jumping off waterfalls and so do girls. Maybe not things as risky as boys, but things like mixing forbidden colors into an outfit in hopes of creating a new trend, and getting a radically different haircut! I don’t know, I’m not a girl, but if I were one, I think these would be things I would try when I was feeling risky. And just like the deaf boy, we all face life ands friends naked and desperately trying to cover ourselves. How many times during our day are we faced with decisions to do a certain thing or dwell on a certain thing that are completely focused on one goal? To feel that we have value, that there are people that approve of us. We stand on the edge, debating whether or not to jump and be approved even though it may cost us greatly. Empty inside, we gaze upon the crowd with thoughts flooding into our head telling us that to “jump” would be to satisfy all our deepest hurts that we have lived with for all our lives. A turmoil of thought comes over us and we decide to jump and see what comfort and worth wait for us. Some of us are to a point where jumping has become so common and necessary to us, that we don’t even think twice about it. And the thing is, we don’t have the ability to step back and see our addiction and how it never satisfies. It leaves us wanting every time! If it ever satisfied, ever fulfilled some deep part in our souls, then we wouldn’t have thoughts of worthlessness, insignificance, or that we don’t have anyone that really cares for us. If our pursuits ever satisfied, then we wouldn’t be trying to cover ourselves at this very point in time. We would have no need to pursue because we would be filled from the times it worked!
So what does all this mean? If we can come to a point where we can admit that we struggle with this, then we can start to find healing. We can look to see what Jesus has to say about us. But since there’s a “Homeboy” Jesus (if you don’t get it, that’s ok!), a bobble head Jesus, a politician Jesus, and lots of others, we must understand to which Jesus we are looking to. We are not looking to the Jesus who agrees with all the political views of preachers and republicans, and not the Jesus that died to support capitalism, and not the Jesus that loves Americans more than any other peoples, and not the Jesus who shakes his fist at gays, drunkards, prostitutes, and people with lots of tattoos, and not the Jesus who didn’t give money to the poor because they might spend it on boos, and not the Jesus who came to condemn the world but to save it! We are looking to the Son of God who embraced the weary broken sinner, and rebuked the religious authorities of the day. We are looking at the Jesus of the Bible!
This Jesus came to earth to solve the problem of our nakedness. When I read about Jesus’ life and His plan for healing us, I find a summon into indescribable love that if we can really understand, not just know like another fact in our heads rolling around with answers to multiplication tables, we can began to allow the hands of Jesus himself to mend our brokenness. We must realize in our souls that Jesus loves us! He has such an unquenchable passion to love His fallen children that He came to earth to die for us. Anytime I really think hard about this, it truly hurts my head! I can’t understand why a God would come and limit Himself with human limitations to save the creation He knew would go astray before they were created. If we could understand this love, then we would have reason to surrender all our cares and worries. We would have something bigger than the things of this world to worship with awe-stricken praise.
The movie Blood Diamond captures just an aspect of this love in beautiful detail. It tells of a tragic civil war instigated over the export of diamonds, which overran Sierra Leone Africa in 1999. A peaceful family’s life is shattered as the boy named Dia, no older then fourteen, is abducted by a rebel army responsible for brainwashing mere children and turning them into desensitized fighting soldiers. His father Solomon Vandy desperately seeks after him, risking his very life to reunite with the son he loves so much. It is an emotional movie that builds up to a scene where Solomon finally finds his son Dia in a rebel camp. In his excitement, Solomon prepares to make a run from the death filled camp back to him and his son’s peaceful life. But as he turns to his child, Dia pulls out a gun and points it straight at the temple of his shocked father. The scene that ensues is poignant and beautiful.
Stoic and unmoved, Dia stares blankly into the eyes of his father, as if the pain of his experience has pierced to the very inside of his soul only to snatch away all that he once knew, stealing the memory of all things pure. Solomon’s smile is replaced by shock as he looks upon his son’s face.
“Dia?” He gasps, pushing out all the air in his lungs in astonishment.
“What are you doing?” He stares into the eyes of his seemingly lost son. Dia holds the gun at eye level, but no fear enters the face of this Father.
“Look at me! Look at me! What are you doing Dia?”
Moving toward his child, his eyes never leave the glazed spheres of his son that were once so full of life. He speaks every word slowly and clearly.
“You are Dia Vandy, of the proud Mende tribe.” Red strain overcomes his giant eyes as tears begin to fall from his face, eyes never blinking, face stressed as a man keeping back a torrent of grief and empathy.
“You love soccer…Your mother loves you so much.” The face of the boy begins to tremor. His lips begin to shake, but he holds on to the chains formed of lies that he has been fed for so long. The gun stays lifted. Then, tears begin to well in his eyes; vulnerability begins to come out of the boy like a freed man released after being restrained by dark nights of pain.
“I know they made you do bad things, but you were not a bad boy.” A tear rest on the lip of the child and is burst into mist as a gasp of desperation comes out from his small chest. With no restrain both faces are overrun with pain, soaked from a now constant flow of tears. But the gun is still steady. Then the father, as he looks down at his lost son, says, “I am your father, who loves you. And you will come home with me, and be my son, again.”
Dia releases the gun and stands staring into the face of his father, remembering who this man is and remembering who he is. He is Dia. With his giant hand, his father pulls the head of his ruined son and into his chest and covers him with his arms, reminding him of the warm embrace of His father he has gone without for so long.
Just as Dia had been stolen from his father, done horrible things, and forgot who he was, we also have gone astray from our Father and with more passion than words can explain or capture, God has pursued us and beckons us to come to him.
The Robbie Seay Band says in their song Come Ye Sinners, “I will arise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms. And in the arms of my dear Savior, there are ten thousand charms.” Jesus’ love for us is beyond our understanding.
Vaster then we could ever imagine, there are places Christ’s love goes that are undeniably mysterious because we have not the mind to comprehend such deepness and truth. But in these places lie mercies that are so sweet to gaze on, mercies that God will reveal to the seeker, to the searcher who longs after a love that satisfies more than life. Love so unadulterated and majestically pure, our only response is falling on our knees, face buried in the ground to praise the Holy One. If we are ever going to replace the empty pursuits of this world for life, we must ask Jesus to make Himself the greatest desire in our hearts.
For most of my life, I settled for the idea of Jesus’ love that was always taught to me in church, and I found it hard to understand. Hearing sermons and watching felt board diagrams, while God always used them to speak to me, never really brought deep understanding into my soul. Instead I have found Jesus to be a delicate artist, passionately painting a picture of Himself using the colors of our experiences, beauty and pain to form the greatest masterpieces, revealing to our souls and not our minds, who He is. If we will ask Him to give us eyes to see and ears to hear, He will gladly answer.

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Recently, God has helped me understand Jesus’ love to a degree beyond cartoon felt boards and diagrams. And along with this, He has impressed something on my heart that I have never even considered before. Something I think is missing from most churches, but something that I think is the only way to true freedom n Christ. In Matthew, Jesus is talking to His disciples about the price of following Him. With men and women just like you and me all around, Jesus says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
“Heavy” is the word Christians use to describe a verse such as this. At least that’s what preachers always say after reading an absolute extreme command from Jesus with huge implications. And it’s true! This verse almost weighs down on your shoulders as you read it. Like that statue with a man holding the world on his back in a squatted position!
According to Jesus, if we love our family or friends or boyfriend or girlfriend more than Him, then we are not worthy of His love! This seems almost a harsh demand to me because as much as I say I love Jesus more than all the people and stuff in my life, do I really mean it? Why has Christ demanded such love from us, such pure, untainted love for Him alone? If you look at the teachings of Jesus, he never preached a message that straddled a line between the two extremes of reality. Everything that came out of the mouth of God’s son was extreme. And then I realized something that isn’t taught often in most churches today. Jesus was and is a man of extremes and absolutes! As many of us would like to believe, He didn’t tell the man who had everything and had obeyed the law since his birth to give a portion of his money to the poor. He said to sell everything he had and give it to those with nothing, and then come follow after him. And just as Jesus demanded the extremes from His people, He gave the extreme. He gave himself on the cross to take all the death of sin that He might redeem you and me for His glory. Thank Jesus for being a God of extremes and absolutes and not straddling the line.
So what do fallen humans do in the face of such extremity? For Jesus said His “yoke is easy” and His “burden is light.” To bind us in a trap of legalistic love is not Jesus’ desire. He invites us to love Him, holding back no vice or idol that we would put above Him in our hearts. To reign unchallenged in our affections is His desire. But still the question remains. Why are we demanded to love Him with such unhampered love?
Perhaps Jesus calls us to love Him so deeply because His love for us is so deep and overwhelming that we can not fully grasp it if we merely love with half of our hearts. If we offer anything less then everything, can we know the true love of Christ? A lock is not opened with anything less than an entire key, and neither can we gaze upon the deepness of Christ with less then absolute surrender. Like a wife can not understand or take part in the beauties of intimacy her husband offers if she spends her time frolicking over ribbons and dresses, neither can we understand a beautiful Saviors love for us if we are occupied searching for love in the broken people and things of this world. When has a ribbon ever embraced or whispered affection to its wearer?
The love Christ offers us is the only thing that can save us from our disease and he is crying out with the blood of his sacrifice to take it in its entirety because He longs for us to know the love he has for you and me; love that leaves us wanting nothing but the compassionate arms of our Savior. A love not comprehended or understood on earth, for the highest form of selfless love in your world is only an image of Christ’s love for us, the reflection of a shadow on a cloudy day. If we only knew the love of Christ, we would never put things before him. Never would we love anything more. Not cries of temptation to move toward the approval of our peers or our families, not a desire to find anything of more value, because in Jesus are all things good and perfect and in his arms are ten thousand charms, things that can not be understood on earth.
Echoing the words of the infamous and altogether wise group of kids dedicated to doing extreme sports while taking back their stolen cereal from a hungry rabbit, “Silly rabbit, Tricks are for kids.” Sometimes I imagine God sitting in Heaven looking down at me, completely dedicated to new clothes, friends, diets and other things to gain other’s approval, and saying to me in the utmost seriousness, “Silly Reece, your pursuits are for those who are dead!” So many of our hearts are set on pursuing things that will never cover our nakedness, things that those who are dead and don’t know Christ pursue. But for us who have put our faith in Christ to forgive, why should we pursue the things that brought us death in the first place?

The bitter sweet aroma of lattes is passing under my nose as I sit in Starbucks writing, and it is lunch time and my stomach is alerting me that it needs something to fill it up; maybe a pastry and some organic chocolate milk if I’m feeling healthy. So I think I will wrap up with this quick thought. If we want to cover up our nakedness and emptiness inside, only Jesus can help. If we want to continue to pursue the approval of others, then when we have eventually reached the top, we will see that it doesn’t actually matter or bring us any more joy then we started with. Jesus offers us all the fulfillment we could ever need, and to enjoy it, we must surrender everything to Him. All our affections must be refocused off of all the things that hold our attention and brought to intently look upon Jesus, to pursue Him and ask Him to make Himself mighty on our hearts and the only thing we live for and gain our identity from. We must jump into the arms of our Savior with absolutely no regard for the things that we are jumping away from. We must through our ambitions and worries as far as the east is from the west. Then we will begin to hear the gentle voice of God; a voice that we have long forgotten, like something from ages ago that once spoke us into existence, inviting us into peace unimaginable. Our desire for approval and worth, someone to tell us we are valuable will melt away in the arms of Him who satisfies all.
Maybe in moments when the sun slowly lowers its head behind the mountains, painting the canvas of our sky a mixture of red and purple, and a cool breeze flows around us, or maybe in a moment when we fall in love with someone that changes the way we view love every time they come to mind, or maybe in a time of silence when the world stops and only the peace of something deeper then stillness overcomes us, or maybe when the interactions of melody and words form our favorite song sends chills through our skin, maybe in moments such as these we can gain a picture of the love and peace that God desires to embrace us with in this life if we will only allow Him. But may we never settle for the picture. Let us run after the reality of Jesus, the author of love, beauty, and nakedness.