Naked and Unashamed: The Mark of Health

“Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” Genesis 2:25.

As we become emotionally healthy, as the Lord restores us to our original splendor and glory that we had before sin entered the picture, we become increasingly “naked and unashamed”. To read this whole chapter to get some context, click here.

This is a mark of a healthy, mature person. But what does this mean, exactly? I believe it means to be transparent, honest, real, open, authentic and vulnerable. To not wear masks (figuratively), or facades or have a persona or pretend to be what we’re not.

Love Yourself Without Shame

In a word, it means to be ourselves and not feel embarrassed or inferior or inadequate or “less than” about the real us. In essence, it means to be yourself without fear and love yourself without shame.

To be “naked” is really to be pure. When gold is purified, all the extraneous material is removed. Everything that’s not gold-dross, alloy, is skimmed off. This is what happens when we become pure too. Everything that’s not the real us is removed.

The figurative masks, the pretense, the insecurity, the unmet needs that parade around as sin, the act, it’s all removed, and we become increasingly ourselves. Not what we think we should be, or others expect us to be, or what we need to be to gain some advantage.

But we just begin to relax and be what feels and is most natural and easy for us to be. The mark of emotional health is to be naked and unashamed. But when we have sin in our lives, we feel guilty and bad about ourselves. And ashamed. This shame causes us to cover up and hide and wear our masks.

This Only Applies to Those Who Have a Conscience

We know we’re bad. Our guilty conscience constantly reminds us of this. And if anyone else ever knew the real us and how bad we really were, they would never accept or respect or love us.

And since we need this from other people, we hide our true selves. Because if other people knew how bad we really were, they would reject us.

This only applies to those who have a conscience. Those with a dead conscience are a different story. . . and blog post.

So, sin causes us to cover up and hide our real selves because of shame. The irony is the reason we sin is to get our needs met so we can be happy. But being full of guilt and shame because of sin causes us to feel bad about ourselves or to have poor self-esteem.

You Can’t Feel Bad About Yourself and Be Happy

And someone with poor self-esteem cannot be happy. You can’t feel bad about the person you are and be happy at the same time. The two are mutually exclusive. So once again, we see what a liar and thief the devil is. He tells us if we sin and get our needs met, we’ll be happy.

But the truth is while we may get our need met temporality, it won’t make us happy because we’ll feel too bad about ourselves. We won’t like or accept the person we’ve become.

Since God created humans in the likeness of God and since they were “naked and unashamed” before they sinned, it follows that to be “naked and unashamed” is to be like God.

This, then is a way to describe perfect health, maturity, wisdom and love. But sin robs us of our ability to be “naked and unashamed” and to be like God. To read another post similar to Naked and Unashamed, click here: Hope for the Brokenhearted.

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