Naked in a Garden: The Liberation of Eden
It’s a funny thing if you read the books of the Bible literally. Despite all the talk of purity and not uncovering the nakedness of others and gouging out eyes to avoid sin, it seems pretty clear from the text that God’s original idea was for humans to exist in a very simple way - naked in a garden.
God creates Adam and Eve without coverings. We creates them pure of mind and absent any sort of judgement for their naked forms. In fact, as far as we can tell from Genesis, they didn’t even notice their nakedness until after eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Until that time, their nakedness was such a nothing topic that they had simply passed it by in their view of the world. It simply was, and it was, as God said, good. All the other animals, too, were created without clothing. As far as we can see, God envisioned a perfect world wherein there was nothing, not even a thin stretch of fabric, separating our bodies from the wonderful world around us. And yet, here we are now, ashamed of our bodies and heavy-laden with taboos and hang ups around nudity.
Of course, this is not the actual story of humanity’s beginning. In reality, our development was a slow, arduous process of evolution which eventually landed us in the bodies we have today. But what would match the Eden narrative is that early humans, likely for tens of thousands of years (longer if you count the other species of humans that came before us, homo sapiens), lived their lives without clothing. We were all naked as the day we had been born. There would have been no stigma at seeing your family members naked, nor at being seen naked by them. Friends would have know each other’s bodies as well as they do each other’s faces. And you can imagine there would have been much less - if any - shame around the shape, size, or appearance of our bodies. With the beautiful irregularity of human forms on display at all times, there would have been no hiding from the fact that everyone is simply different, and that that’s okay.
Despite their Eden-esque early existence, our ancestors did eventually develop clothing, likely for purposes of ornamentation as much as for protection from the elements. As we became accustomed to our bodies being covered, and only uncovered in the presence of certain people or for certain reasons (sex and bathing likely being chief among them), we began to develop taboos around our own natural forms. Now, it is commonplace to fear uncovering the nakedness of others or having your nakedness uncovered by them. We have learned shame about our bodies and developed a desire to hide them away from the eyes of others.
However, I think there is a deeply liberating concept to be found in this Biblical narrative. God’s original idea was for us to be naked in a garden, without the toils of manual labor or the pains of childbirth. No, it’s not a reflection of reality, but it does show a certain idea of the perfect world through the eyes of God. And especially now in our world of Protestant work ethics and bodily shame, I think it can be useful to take back the image of the idyllic garden - a place where we do not need to toil and where there is nothing separating us from the God who made us or the creation we inhabit.
