Nakedness in bathing
and swimming
WOULD you put on a bathing costume to
shower or bath? For most people the obvious answer is “No, of course not.”
It stands to reason that wearing any clothing while soaping will mean that you do not cleanse yourself adequately – rendering the entire exercise futile.
When other people are present, it is sometimes argued, it is necessary to have some covering for modesty’s sake.
And, I am told, many nuns have a special garment that they wear only (and always) in the bath. It is held in their circles that to expose the naked body even to one’s own eyes (and those of God) is sinful.
However, it is clear from my discussion of baptism and the miqweh, and from the Hebrew understanding of nakedness, that this kind of
modesty is at best misplaced, if not entirely heretical.
While good Christians of many denominations may throw their hands up in horror at the suggestion of heresy with regard to modesty – ‘Is not modesty a Christian virtue?’ they will ask – this merely shows how Christian thinking has been distorted and perverted by Gnosticism (again, see the article on baptism).
We, living in
the 20th and 21st centuries, have been conditioned to make the association that
nakedness equals sex. In movies, if a naked person appears on the screen, it is
for one of only two purposes: either that person is insane, or he or she is
about to engage in sexual behaviour of some kind.
There is even
a difference between the ways in which these two kinds of nakedness are
presented: the lunatic’s nakedness is rarely fully revealed (almost as if the
full horror of what the insane person is doing needs to be concealed), whereas
full frontal nakedness invariably signifies sexual activity – and usually
improper sex (the copulation of a man and his wedded wife in non-compromising
circumstances rarely has any appeal to the salacious movie-maker).
The one
exception to this rule that comes to mind is the nakedness of the slaves in the
movie Amistad – and in this instance they were shown naked to emphasise
their servile status as prisoners of the Portuguese ship’s crew – prisoners
whose human dignity was constantly stripped away from them, as their clothes
also had been.
Of similar
nature is the nakedness forced by nazi concentration camp guards on “inferior”
prisoners, especially Jews.
Parallel with
the miqweh in Hebrew society was a Græco-Roman practice where sex and
nakedness also did not intersect – one that we do not have in most of Western
society – the public bath.
It is well
documented that Gentile Christians in both Greek and Roman society used to
frequent the public baths. Men and women could be seen in these public
facilities, completely unclothed at appropriate moments, and in mixed company,
and the Christians did not stand out from the rest in such environments.
While Moseley[1] makes it clear that Jews avoided the public baths, clearly Gentile converts to the New Way[2] saw these facilities as being equivalent to the miqweh, and were not perturbed by their nakedness there.
In any case,
it is likely that the Jewish avoidance of the Græco-Roman baths was chiefly
motivated by the Greek opinion that a circumcised penis was an obscenity,
rather than any concerns about unseemly practices – such as the homosexuality
associated with the gymnasium and with athletic games (as discussed here).
In much of
Western society the idea of public baths is foreign. People nowadays have
private baths inside their homes, and there is no need to go down to a common
facility for common cleanliness.
They bath or
shower behind closed doors, and so reinforce the idea that it is improper for
anyone to see their wet, naked bodies.
Contrast this
with the tradition in Japan – generally acknowledged as a highly
developed society – where every village has a bath that everyone uses.
On arriving
in the facility, you are presented with a small tub of water in which you are
expected to wash with soap. Only when you are clean are you permitted to enter
the large pool-sized bath in which everyone soaks in hot water – frequently
very hot (many such facilities make use of hot water from nearby mineral
springs).
In some
public facilities there are two of the large pool-sized baths, one for men and
one for women. But traditionally there was only one, and everyone made use of
it: men and women, boys and girls, exceptions being made for neither the aged
nor infants.
Even where
there are separate pools, overcrowding in one is not a problem – those who
cannot fit in, simply go across to the other one. One Western writer has
expressed his surprise to find that the almost empty men’s bath was being
invaded by teenage girls who were not in the slightest perturbed that their
complete nakedness was exposed to a man, and a Westerner at that.
And the
nakedness of the bathers was not restricted to the bath, either. Another
Western observer recorded after spending some time in a mountain village that
after bathing, the people of the town would walk home through the snow, still
so warm from their bath – indeed, glowing with reddish skins – that they were
comfortable walking down the street still naked, with their towels draped over
their shoulders. And again, those going home in this garb included grandmothers
and grandfathers, walking with the dignity of their years.
On emigrant
ships taking Orientals to new countries in the early 20th century, the Japanese
stood out for their cleanliness . . . although their Chinese fellow passengers
did not view it that way. A Chinese emigrant who settled in South Africa
shortly before 1910 recalled that the Japanese families aboard his ship –
mother, father, sons and daughters – would gather on deck in the early morning
around a small tub, strip naked and wash themselves, oblivious to the stares of
those around them.
Clearly those
Japanese emigrants understood something about nakedness and cleanliness that
the Chinese failed to grasp.
After all,
have Christians not for centuries quoted the maxim “Cleanliness is next to
godliness”?
Sad to say,
this Japanese tradition is being eroded by the assault of Western culture on
the cities of their country. Modern hotels and blocks of flats are built with
private bathrooms, nowadays more usually en suite, rather than the older
Western practice of providing bathrooms separate from the sleeping facilities,
but still having doors with instructions that they should be locked whenever
the bath was in use.
Not all
Western societies have this closed-minded attitude to nakedness in the bath. In
Scandinavia – and particularly Finland – there is the tradition of the sauna,
where naked men and women sit together in a steamy hut and sweat themselves
clean, afterward going outdoors to plunge into an icy-cold pool or lake, still
naked.
This idea has
caught on in Germany, where more and more local authorities have
built public baths, incorporating both swimming pools and saunas. In the
saunas, and often also the pools, men and women share the facilities unclad.
An American
woman living in Germany while her husband was on a military assignment has
commented on the excessive politeness of especially the German men, who would
enter the sauna where she was sitting, loudly call out “Guten Tag!” and bow
slightly. They would then sit there in silence for a while, everyone naked, and
when they felt they had had enough steam, they would stand up and again call
loudly “Guten Tag!” bow and depart.
Ironically,
these same nude sauna bathers often insist on the use of bathing costumes in
the swimming pool at the same facility. Clearly the Finnish usage has not
carried across to Germany without inhibitions creeping in.
There are
those in the West who might agree that public bathing facilities are desirable
– perhaps as a means of reducing the excessive usage of water in private baths
and showers – but then insist that such facilities be segregated.
The usual
argument is that separating men and women is desirable because otherwise people
will misbehave sexually. But in fact, sexual misbehaviour is equally possible
in segregated facilities, if not in fact more so. The Turkish-style baths of Hungary (to name just one of many places where this
happens) are notorious as trysting-places for homosexuals.
Our
concealment of the naked body is motivated by false theology, and has created
far more problems than those it is intended to solve.
This is not
to say that people are incapable of misbehaviour in unsegregated (naked)
bathing facilities.
But this
applies equally to public swimming pools where swimming costumes are compulsory
– indeed, it is probably far more likely in such circumstances. The bikini worn
by so many females, appropriately or otherwise, lays so much emphasis on the
parts it conceals that it is a highly sexual mode of dress. The same can be
said of the tight bathing trunks favoured by some men.
And the
wearing of bikinis by little girls is highly objectionable. They don’t even
have developed breasts or long legs, but already they are being taught to
parade themselves sexually. It is far better to allow small children to swim
naked, even in facilities where adults do wear costumes – indeed, it seems
preferable to ban the wearing of costumes altogether for children under about
nine.
There is
always a need for a watchful eye to be kept on people’s behaviour in mixed
company. At naturist beaches in the United States, older women are employed as (naked) “beach
grannies” to patrol the young folk and teach them that “nude is not lewd”.
But it seems
that misbehaviour is more likely to occur where wearing costumes is compulsory,
especially where the girls compete among each other to see who can wear the
least.
I have
emphasised the point (in the article on baptism)
that both Jesus Christ and John the Baptist were naked when our Lord was
baptised in the River Jordan.
The practice
of baptism was a cleansing ritual, done in the altogether.
Can we
reintroduce this aspect of ancient Christian practice in the 21st century?
In the
current climate of attitudes negative to nudity, it would seem not.
But bear in
mind that the ritual was performed in the presence of a limited group, not the
entire congregation.
It is not a
question of telling the First Baptist Church of whatever town that their next
mass baptism will be carried out with the candidates naked, so that all the young
men will ogle the nude girls, and all the young women will do likewise to the
naked boys (if they don’t instead close their eyes in horror and shriek).
We
nonetheless need to reclaim the naked human body from the realm of Satan.
The Gnostic
teaching that the body is evil has nurtured evil.
We ought to
be familiar with the nakedness of our parents, our siblings and our maturing
children – but instead, we associate nakedness with sin.
In so many
cases we have never seen any of these individuals naked – or if we have, only
when we were little – and they would be horrified if we did.
That
association needs to be broken in order to release Satan’s hold over our
nakedness.
Bear in mind
the distinction in Hebrew thought (outlined here)
between mere nakedness and obscenity.
If we are
going to claim our nakedness back from Satan, how do we deal with that
situation? To a large extent it is up to the individual believer.
It is not
necessary that entire congregations go off and form naturist societies – while
it might be a very helpful exercise if this did happen, any attempt on the part
of a minister to encourage it is likely to cause dissension and perhaps schism.
And when
Christians do gather at naturist resorts and hold worship services, they
frequently dress for such occasions. Some are free enough to worship God while
naked and not feel it inappropriate, but even naturists may find themselves
uncomfortable with that approach.
We can open
our bathroom doors to ensure that our families can see us while bathing. We can
dress or undress with our bedroom doors open.
We can, if we
wish, spend time at home naked – indoors and, where it is private enough, also
in the garden – especially in very hot weather when wearing clothes is
uncomfortable.
People who
have swimming pools that are not open to the prying eyes of neighbours and
passers-by can encourage their families to use those pools without bathing
costumes. In due course, their friends could be invited to share in this
activity.
Discipline is
needed in such situations.
Skinny-dipping
as a free-for-all activity in which anyone can take part has its risks. If a
school-going youngster wants to take part in this at someone else’s home, he
needs to have the permission – or, better yet, the presence – of his parents.
And the
parents in the home where the pool is, need to exercise control over the use of
their pool, as much for safety in the water as for decorous behaviour.
But in ways
like this we can establish a Christian way of naked behaviour that will allow
familiarity without lustful thoughts.
And so we
will have reclaimed our nakedness from Satan’s thrall.
–
Strandloper
