When I published my article “The Case For Christian Naturism”, Facebook absolutely blew up. By the end of it, there were 197 comments in all, with my fellow Christians expressing disapproval, disagreement, and at worst mockery and disdain. In the article, I make a positive biblical case for the permissibility of the practice of naturism (a philosophical form of nudism) and I responded to a few common objections. Near the end, I gave my personal testimony of why I even gave this minority sect of weird naked Christians a fair hearing. For nearly 15 years, I had struggled with an addiction to pornography. No matter how much I prayed, no matter what man-made strategy I tried, no matter how much I read what The Bible had to say on the efficacy of prayer, sexual immorality, the flesh and The Holy Spirit, etc. I couldn’t seem to find an answer. I ended up giving up all hope. I told God “I will keep doing this until the day I die unless You get off Your butt and do something, so if Your Holy Spirit is truly grieved by this, do something. The ball is in your court. Whether I keep doing this or am freed is on You.” It was very quicky after I truly surrendered that I found the article “Be Ye Transformed” on a blog called Aching For Eden. How did I end up at a nudist blog? Because I was looking for imagery to fap to. I was hoping to find some hidden camera footage or “nudists” having intercourse [1]Which are generally just actors acting out a skit which doesn’t take long to lead to intercourse. In the blog I read of how South West Will was freed from naturism. His words spoke to me;
“Since you are a Christian, you feel sure that your bible condemns nakedness in public. Your pastors, teachers, parents, etc. have always told you this so it must be true. So when you run across the term, ‘Christian Nudism,’ you scoff. ‘That’s just sinful people trying to justify their actions,’ you say to yourself. …. Then one day, you stumble across a website that talks about men, (and even women) overcoming their addiction to porn, completely and totally. Again you scoff. You know from first hand experience that no matter how hard you have tried, no matter how much you have prayed for God to take away your lusting and porn addiction, no matter how many tools the church, Christian books, other Christians told you about, nothing has worked. Instead, the church as well as our society has taught you that you are not to blame for these addictions. It is just the way men are wired. There is nothing you can do about it except keep trying and trying and trying….. And yet like a dog returns to it’s vomit, you keep returning to your addictions.” [2]South West Will, “Be Ye Transformed”, Aching For Eden, April 12th 2024 – https://achingforeden.wordpress.com/2024/04/12/be-ye-transformed/
Fair use doesn’t permit me to just copy/paste the whole thing, but I highly recommend you click on the link and read it. I was skeptical at first. How could seeing naked people and being around naked people (ESPECIALLY attractive young women) help me with my lust issue? Isn’t that the cause? But I knew I had to try it. My plan was to just keep looking at porn and asking for forgiveness until the day I died. I knew Christ’s cross could free me from sin’s penalty, but I had given up hope that I could be freed from its power. Not in this area anyway. My plan was to say on judgment day “I tried everything, God! Why didn’t you help me?” I knew that excuse wouldn’t work if there was at least one method left untested. So I did research. I realized the website owner had a book called “Surprised Into Freedom: The Effortless Obliteration Of Lust and Body Shame” and I was on a role. I literally broke down crying during parts of the book. But I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to be given hope again just to meet with another devastating failure. But there was something about this method that was different from the others; Oak was arguing that naturism causes your brain to disassosiate nudity from sex. And when you experience nudity in chaste, non-sexual settings, it doesn’t take long for your brain to learn that a naked woman is just a woman without man-made additives. It’s not “sexy time”. It’s not a trigger to get into mating mode. Oak (as well as other authors such as Aaron Frost, author of “Christian Body: Modesty and The Bible”) compared it to Pavlov’s dogs. Pavlov’s dogs heard a bell every time they were about to be given a meal. When the bell rang, they were fed. Every. single. time. Eventually, the dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of the bell whether food was given or not. The church and the porn industry have so conditioned us to treat the naked body as a sexual object, that the mere sight of a nude person of the gender we’re attracted to causes us to get hard/moist. We’re taught that the sexual reaction to an unclothed person is either how God made us (which is blasphemy and contradicts James 1:13) or it’s just the effect of the sin nature. Most of the church is deceived, unaware that this is entirely a result of psychological conditioning.
After reading many books, articles, blog posts, watching videos, hearing the biblical case for naturism and against naturism, I decided I would give it a shot. I started doing ordinary things in my room naked. I read books, I blogged, I looked at memes, I prayed, et. al. completely naked in the confines of my bedroom. This was a big first step as my own naked body had become highly sexualized in my eyes. Outside of the shower, I only got naked to masturbate to porn, to “highten the sexual atmosphere” as one person on Reddit put it, who did the same. But then I had to experience the non-sexual nakedness of others. How was I to do that? Well, I was lead to a series of documentaries produced by a group called The Naked Club. College aged men and women doing ordinary things like swimming, having backyard parties, hiking, dancing, et. al. The arousal I felt at seeing the attractive nude women came on as it always did, but I refused to act on it (if you know what I mean). I kept watching while verbally articulating the theological truths I had learned from authors like Phillip Oak and David Hatton. I was coaching my brain with the truth. “Look, brain. I know these are bells, but you’re not getting any food! This doesn’t even have anything to do with food!” (Bell = naked woman, food = sexual pleasure). Eventually, I got to the point where I could watch these with no sexual response at all.
In the Facebook comment section of where I posted the link to “The Case For Christian Naturism”, some made fun of this idea, saying that it was like saying that in order to overcome alcohol addiction, you need to drink more wine! Or in order to overcome a cocaine addiction, you need to snort more coke! Obviously an alcoholic will only indulge his addiction more by partaking in the substance, as will the cocaine addict. But is this really a fair analogy? It is not natural for people to have fermented vegetables coursing through their system. Alcoholic beverages are a man-made invention. Likewise, God didn’t create whatever cocaine is made from [3]I was way too scared to Google this. “*knock* knock* *knock* FBI! OPEN UP!” But I think I recall it being made from poppy seeds? so we would ruin our lives with it. However, God did create humanity naked. Genesis 2:25 says “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (ESV). God created Adam and Eve naked. Genesis 2:25 tells us they went about the garden that way, and that they were unashamed to do so. Social nudity seems to not only be morally permissible but seems to be God’s idea! Just as marriage was God’s idea as stated in the immediately preceding verse (Genesis 2:24, cf. Matthew 19:3-9). Indeed, although we’re not told how much time passed between Adam and Eve’s creation and their fall in Genesis 3, I do think it was at least a few days. When they sinned, and tried to cover themselves with fig leaves (Genesis 3:7), Adam told God that the reason he hid from him is because he was naked (Genesis 3:9-10). God responded “Who told you that you were naked” (Genesis 3:11) God doesn’t seem to agree with the concept that Adam should have covered his loins. It is not uncommon even today for us to say “Who told you that?” when someone makes a statement we disagree with.
From reading the Eden narrative, one gets the impression that were it not for sin, God would have never clothed his images (Genesis 1:26-27). And if that were so, then in an alternate timeline, we’d have a bunch of naked humans running around all over the planet fulfilling the dominion mandate (Genesis 1:28). God created us to be naked and unashamed. It’s natural to be naked. That’s why we call often call going naked, going “Au naturel”. But is it natural to have so much alcohol in your bloodstream that you can’t think straight? Is it natural to have cocaine flowing through your system? No. Humans are not bottles of wine. To compare exposing yourself to chaste nudity to de-pornify your mind to drinking more alcohol to overcome your alcohol addiction is a terrible analogy.
If you want to use a better analogy, perhaps Pavlov’s Dogs would be a better one. Or perhaps you could use the examples of people overcoming phobias of harmless things by repeatedly exposing themselves to those harmless things. For example, is my driving phobia going to go away if I never get behind the wheel? No. If anything, it might intensify it. But I’m willing to bet that once I start doing it more and more, it will not only become second nature to me, but it won’t be panic attack-inducing either. If the mere unadorned image of God is truly as harmless as we naturists say it is, then gymnophobia can likewise be overcome by repeated exposure. “Oh no! A naked woman! I’m going to get an erection and an uncontrollable urge to excuse myself to the restroom to masturbate!” will turn into “Oh, hey Tina. How are you today?”
As Jesus said in Matthew 15:19, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” (NIV) (Cf. Matthew 5:28, Matthew 23:26-28) That attractive lady doesn’t put lust in your heart via her body. All she’s doing is triggering an evil that is already inside of you. We need to abandon the false teaching that we humans are just hard wired (by God or by sin) to be voyeurs. We weren’t.
If you are a person who struggles with pornography and have tried everything, and failed, I recommend Phillip Oak’s book “Surprised Into Freedom: The Effortless Obliteration Of Lust and Body Shame”. You can also read the articles at MyChainsAreGone.org.
Peace out, God bless, and not only use the brains that God gave you, but respect the body God gave you.
References
| ↑1 | Which are generally just actors acting out a skit which doesn’t take long to lead to intercourse. |
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| ↑2 | South West Will, “Be Ye Transformed”, Aching For Eden, April 12th 2024 – https://achingforeden.wordpress.com/2024/04/12/be-ye-transformed/ |
| ↑3 | I was way too scared to Google this. “*knock* knock* *knock* FBI! OPEN UP!” But I think I recall it being made from poppy seeds? |
Joel, You’re in violation of Rule No. 1. This is your first warning. Your comment has been deleted and you have two more warnings followed by a permanent ban.
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Please familiarize yourself with the rules. — https://cerebralfaith.net/comment-section-rules/
Brianna, your’re in violation of Rule No. 1. This is your first warning. You have two more warnings followed by a permanent ban.
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Please familiarize yourself with the rules. — https://cerebralfaith.net/comment-section-rules/
Brianna. That’s still not an argument. That is strike two.
And Brianna’s IP is now officially banned. All because she had to result to cyber bullying instead of having a decent discussion on the devastating effects that the porno-prudish indoctrination has had on countless young men. You know, I’m coming to the conclusion that you people aren’t just brainless, but evil.
Okay I’m sorry if my comment came off as a personal attack. Let me restate:
I think the final paragraph where you say “if you struggle with porn, check out MCAG – they helped me and could help you, too” is the most powerful. So powerful, in fact, that if that was all you posted, it would’ve got the point across without all the nudism and drama.
But (1) That wouldn’t have made the case. It would be like me telling people to read “Reasonable Faith” or “The Case For Christ” rather than make the case myself. 2) It still would given them the same theology of the body and admonition of chaste nudity as therapy as I’ve been endorsing here. So what really would have been gained from it. So other than it being a much more lazy approach, I don’t really see your point.
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But given how you people are impossible to reason with and how much of an emotional toll this whole thing has taken on me, I do regret saying anything at all. I knew it would be bad. But I figured I was used to controversy and being attacked. But I wasn’t expecting it to get as bad as receiving death threats. I’ve been unable to even debate this with most people because they just fume at the mouth. I braced for a large explosion, sure, but I wasn’t expecting a nuke! I’ve determined that it wasn’t worth it. I have a few more articles on this that I have reverted draft. Maybe they’ll just be patron exclusive content. Idk. I had no idea the gymnophobia was this bad. So bad that it would cause otherwise thinking and compassionate Christ followers into a demonic mob of imbeciles. But given the church’s past I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me either.
What do you mean “you people”? I like MCAG.
Frankly, I think you’ve been extraordinarily weird about this whole thing. If I had read your articles back when I was a teenager fighting porn, I would’ve immediately tuned it out. I don’t think people are upset at a renewed theology of the body, they’re disturbed about you going whole hog nudist, accusing everyone who disagrees a “son of Satan”, and describing your masturbation in bizarre detail – at least, that’s what I find distasteful, idk about the death threats guy. You dropped a book’s length worth of blog posts at Nick Peters who wasn’t even interacting with you! Who does that?!
If anyone ever asks me advice on how to beat porn, I’m definitely not sending them this way. It’s a shame because there’s a lot of good substance hiding in your gigantic posts (mainly the parts you quote from MCAG). So yeah, telling people “read MCAG” and having your name in the “Your Stories” section with other young men & women would be much more powerful.
Maybe you’re not the same Joel I was thinking you were. I apologize. There was a Joel I was arguing with on Facebook several days ago. I made an assumption and I apologize.
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Anyone I’ve insulted have only been people who refused to engage me with respect as they would any other topic. Respect me and I’ll respect you back. Most of the people I’ve been interacting with have been awful. And that’s putting it nicely. But I’ve only chastised Nick Peters for sloppy scholarship at worst, and there is a guy named Richard who I have had great conversations with about this topic. Haven’t said a single unkind word about or to him. People don’t seem to understand that it isn’t THAT you disagree, it’s HOW you disagree. I expect disagreement and I enjoy a hearty debate. But what I’ve endured can only be characterized as abuse and bullying. There is hardly any debate at all. I try to make my case and others are only interested in attacking me. I should have never posted any of these articles at all. Again, I knew people would get upset, but I didn’t think they would lose their humanity and their ability to think at least somewhat rationally.
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Concerning my response to Peters, would you really be objecting if he had made 20 articles arguing against Theistic Personalism and I made 10 articles showing how his arguments for Classical Theism fail? No, you would not. This is a double standard. The truth is, you don’t think I ought to be talking about this subject at all, never mind in such a detailed throughly researched manner. It’s a taboo subject. And taboo subjects, if they are to be talked about at all, are to be talked about in hushed tones behind closed doors. I suspect this is one reason why many Christian teenagers have such a skewed view of sex. Moms and Dads get bashful even doing the bare minimum of telling them where babies come from. The purity culture I grew up with has done more harm than good. We are sexual beings. The sexual appetite is as normal and natural as the drive for food and sleep. We shouldn’t be so hesitant to talk about it. And the fact that we are is, I think, a reflection on the idea that whole idea of sex is “dirty”. Indeed, although I never would’ve said as much if you were to ask me point-blank, but I always saw sex, even within the confines of marriage, as being kind of dirty. It was basically just God- approved pornography. My view of sex, not unlike my view of nudity, was affected by pornography. I saw both as bad because both were associated with what I saw at the Hub. And I think this could very well be the case for a lot of people. It could be at least part of the reason why we are so hesitant to talk about it. It’s why we get grossed out when we are forced to acknowledge the fact that we exist because our moms and dads had sex. We don’t want to think of our sweet mothers being in the position of the female porn stars we watch. We don’t want to think of our dads in the position of the male porn star doing that kind of stuff to her. It’s gross. It’s icky. Yes, we have to acknowledge it as a biological reality, but let’s quickly toss that horrible thought aside. Lock it into the subconscious. We need to do better. I suspect that porno-prudery has affected our view of sex just as much as it has our view of nudity. I recently read an essay by someone describing nuptial night in poetic detail 99% drawing from Song Of Solomon’s descriptions and applying them to a modern hypothetical couple. It was beautiful and the way it was described made me question why I ever saw sex (in the proper context at least) as dirty, as God approved porn.
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“Who writes 10 articles on the reliability of the gospels?” Why not ask that? The answer is obvious; because the historicity of the gospels is a socially acceptable thing to discuss. It’s not taboo like nudity and sex.
I notice that you skipped over my actual concerns. I shall restate in numbered list:
1) Going whole hog nudist: MCAG doesn’t require nudism, but that’s not the impression I get from your articles.
2) Accusing ppl who disagree as “sons of Satan”: that’s in your comments
3) Sharing bizarre unnecessary details about your porn consumption, masturbation, and how you stare at women at your store: I won’t repeat it, but you’ve been way too detailed about your porn consumption including specific websites and categories as well as describing your penis several times in sexual contexts. Even in your comments, you get derailed and start going on tangents about the “Hub”. It’s weird.
4) Condescending and insulting to Nick Peters: you’ve admitted as much in your comments that it’s insulting but you rationalize your insults away by saying “the truth sometimes isn’t nice”.
5) Nick was just reviewing a book in his posts. He never mentioned your name so far as I can tell, and, unprompted, you released this gigantic deluge of attack articles against him that demean him.
So, no, this isn’t about the social acceptability of discussing the gospels. If you and Nick disagreed about the Gospels and this was your response, it would be equally inappropriate. Granted, it wouldn’t be as spicy as the nudity stuff, but it would still be rude.
6) You have other just bizarre things. For example, you said there’s no difference between a naked toddler and a naked 32 year old man. I presume you would agree that this holds for every age between that, too. Buddy, that’s dangerously close to pedophile talk.
Look, **I** know what you meant, because I’m MCAGpilled and understand your broader point, but I sure as heck ain’t gonna send anybody a link to a blog that makes that kind of argument. They’ll think I’m associating with pedos!
Anyway, my point in this is that yes, the arguments should dominate the discussion, but there is just so much weird, unnecessary, and disturbing stuff that you’ve included. I don’t blame people for getting upset.
1: No, not necessarily. But for many of us, including some of the authors behind MCAG, we have found the practice of nudism to be the most efficient and most effective way to combat the sexualization of the body. There is nothing like being nude around nude people doing completely innocuous activities that quickly reorients your brain to saying “Oh! Bells, but not food!” Yes, brain, bells but no food. R.B Mears is someone who has also read the articles at MCAG, became a naturist, and told the story of the powerful de-pornifying effect of naturist practice in his novel “Chain Breakers”. One of the characters in the book even mentions the website by name. And of course, as someone who has seen this as an endgame enemy, I wasn’t about to hold anything back. “You should have gone for the head”. But yes, theoretically you can go other routes; such as buying nude art books and observing the non-sexual nudity portrayed there. Nude Muse is a great website to go through for exposure to non-sexual nudity.
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Indeed, I recently had a conversation with a Facebook friend in which, after he had read the articles at MCAC and we had a brief conversation, he said that it was similar, but not identical, to a method that he used to defeat his own porn addiction in the past. He then directed me to a book called “The Freedom Model For Addiction” in which he learned of and applied this method. I am not saying if you struggle with porn, nudism is the only way to go. But I do think it’s probably the best weapon. Nothing will so cause you to see simple nudity as innocent faster than this route. But moreover, since it is the choice I have gone with, I think a robust defense of it being morally permissible is called for, would it not? Not that that has helped me any.
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2 – Again, I am referring to the people who have abused me, and the borderline cyber bullying I’ve endured. I am not referring simply to people who take a different stance. Why is this difficult to understand?
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3 – Again, this is a reflection of the tabooness of the subject. If I had been discussing overcoming a substance addiction and went into some detail concerning my use of the cocaine in the spoon, I doubt you would protest as much as you are. Or if I were a recovering alcoholic and talked about the specific brands of drink I would buy, would you object to that? I doubt it. Our culture, especially if we were reared in church, has taught us to see this as something we don’t talk about. I have always felt that it would have been far easier for me to even ask for help if I struggled with drugs or alcohol than with porn. And I think if I were giving a testimony about how to get sober, you wouldn’t object to any details at all.
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4 – If the only problem with Nick’s articles was that he was wrong, I wouldn’t have made such remarks. But the truth is that his work was sloppy. Half the time was spent correcting ways in which Peters had attacked straw men. Yeah, sometimes the truth isn’t nice. If someone’s singing sounds like a dying cat, is it morally wrong to tell them not to try out for American Idol? If someone’s work really is objectively sloppy, is it wrong to say as such? Especially when you know this person is a sharp thinker and writer on the basis of past experience? You can dismiss it as “rationalization” all you’d like. You’re free to be wrong about that.
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5 – It is obvious to anyone that this was prompted by MY first article on this subject. Nick would undoubtedly have not even known of the book’s existence if not for my first article and conversation. In fact, in the article about priestly underwear, he anonymously references me and my direction of him to a ReNude Life article. And as I repeatedly said near the beginning of every single one of those response articles; although I am not the author of the book that he was reviewing, a good 70% of the arguments that he used or ones that I would’ve used as well. So it could be seen as a general critique of the case for naturism. It would be like if I responded to an atheist giving a bad review of William Lane Craig’s book “Reasonable Faith”. No, I’m not Dr. Craig but we do use a lot of the same arguments (Kalam, Fine-Tuning, Moral,) and it can be seen as a general critique of the case for Christianity.
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If Nick and I disagreed about the gospels and he went all Richard Carrier on me, I would still have been “rude”. Because sloppy work is sloppy work. I also chastised whoever at the Watchtower Society put together the pamphlet “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” Because it likewise was some really sloppy work. I think the portion on the early church fathers was the worst. That seem to be a deliberate distortion of facts, it was so bad. Yet no one accused me of being rude to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
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6 – If I remember the context of that statement correctly, I was referring to a single person who grows from infancy to adulthood. I was making the observation that it’s absurd to think that what is cute and innocent becomes indecent and lewd through just getting bigger and harrier. A bare bottomed pic of me as a baby would be considered cute, but a bare bottomed pic of me now would be considered porn. What happened? It is still the same body. It’s still me! I just got bigger. Unless there is some platonic force that latched itself upon me and metaphysically affected my body at some point in time, this doesn’t make any sense. But, I can agree that we need to be careful with how we word things so as not to give the wrong impression. Especially since people seemed especially prone to attacking straw men over this than over any other topic I’ve debated. I really don’t think people (and that includes Nick Peters) are reading to understand. They’re reading to respond. And when you go into any topic with that kind of mindset, you are bound to misrepresent your opponent. One apologist has a saying he likes “Before you can say I disagree, you need to be able to say I understand.” I think it originated with Arminian theologian Roger E. Olson.
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Like I said, I regret ever writing any of this. For months I had contemplated the pros and cons to going public with my findings, but the backlash was far worse than I imagined, and I expected it to be pretty bad. But only a little worse than when I went public about Theistic Evolution. I never imagined it would result in such an overwhelming emotional reaction that would tax my emotional health to its limit. But the bell has been rung and it cannot be unrung. I just have to face the Purdah Priests, answer for my “heresy” of renouncing the sacred fig leaf, and pray I am not burned at the stake. It’s honestly kind of terrifying how people are responding. As I said, I even received a thinly veiled death threat.
All right, I appreciate the honesty and since it’s draining for you, I won’t continue piling on. Thanks for your time and hope you get to a better mental/emotional state.
(sorry for double post, i meant to make this a reply)
All right, I appreciate the honesty and since it’s draining for you, I won’t continue piling on. Thanks for your time and hope you get to a better mental/emotional state.