Faith101:
Peace
I saw this online, and i’m sure most of you here would be disgusted at it as i was. However, i was told on this forum several times that modesty is something that is left to be defined by human beings.
- Does anyone actually agree with what these people are promoting
- If you disagree with what they are doing, then how would you attempt to guide them to being modest, and proving their statment false
“Anyway, it doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that you are forbidden to show yourself nude.”
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051205/od_nm/erotic_bible_dc;_ylt=AtcIp3Xw3x5C3uyq8z56mP8SH9EA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Faith,
The website which the article names -
www.bibelkalender.de - comes up as a blank page for me: it’s difficult to criticize an image (or images) which can’t be seen!
I agree that there is some eroticism in the Bible - the Song of Songs being the key example, even with the theological explanations of the bride and bridegroom representing Israel and God, etc. I recall being shocked (and tantalized) when I first read it with any understanding (at 11 or 12 years of age, I would guess). But a “whole range of biblical scriptures simply bursting with eroticism”? Not to my knowledge. Maybe the ‘juicy’ bits of Leviticus? I just don’t see it…
There is far more direction given for modesty in the Bible than ‘erotic bits’ and yet the nude Eve is certainly not a new subject for religious art (and I’ll stay on the cutting edge of technology and allow for photography as an artistic medium).
The ‘promotion’ is ostensibly to young people as one of the models says, “We wanted to represent the Bible in a different way and to interest young people.” Well… hmm. I doubt that many young people drawn to the Bible because of it’s ‘eroticism’ would linger long…
I wouldn’t really try to say that the idea that there is some eroticism in the Bible is false but I would point out that it was AFTER Adam and Eve had sinned that they were they ashamed of their nudity, and that nudity is not presented, in either the Old or New Testaments as something to be desired - Christ teaches that
clothing the naked is good deed and when there are those in a state of nudity, they are often spoken of as being poor and hungry: I doubt young people would find those states ‘interesting’.
It seems a gimmick - but it’s Germany! Even otherwise prudish Hitler allowed for nudity in film when it glorified the ‘sacredness’ of the Aryan body… many Europeans have a totally different attitude concerning nudity than we Americans. And take a look around when you’re in the Sistine Chapel! Save for some carefully draped cloth, I don’t think anyone is wearing much clothing at all that I recall.
So nudity in art is nothing new to Christianity - what’s different is the medium. To paint the likeness of someone nude is somewhat different, I suppose, than photographing a nude man or woman. One is an “artist’s rendering” while the other “is” - as in to “be” - not representation but an actual person captured on film (or digitally, these days - captured in pixels of a given bit-depth?). I do not believe that all nudity in photography is necessarily pornographic - although I cannot think of any well-known nude photograph that is not, in some manner, reproduced for reasons other than titillation - and if I Googled ‘nude art’ I’m sure I’d hit nothing but pornographic websites!
My main objection to the ‘project’ is really not nudity itself but nudity used as a tool to promote Christianity - nudity is not part of the faith and to present nude images as a tool to recruit the young, while not blasphemous, perhaps, sends a message that is not really any part of the Gospel at all. It’s a gimmick and should be dismissed as such.
A more important question for Christians (and particularly Catholics as we have churches throughout Europe with nude artwork) is whether nude
photography should be viewed differently than ‘painted’ media. Christ was likely naked when crucified - should Mel Gibson’s
Passion have gone further in depicting Him so? We’re Catholic but (most of us around here, I would think) are American as well and while we can depict Justice with a bare breast in the 18th and 19th centuries, we’ve grown a bit shy over a single bare breast, I think, simply because of the deluge of pornography that is difficult to miss. I’ve never gone fishing for pornography on the web but I do recall the days before pop-up blockers which would bring up page after page of filth - and it’s said to be a huge industry on the web. While ‘staging’ a photography shot of portions of the Sistine Chapel could be accomplished, I suppose, would it be art? Is art that which man can create out of raw material only or can an Ansel Adams landscape be called art?
An interesting little tidbit you’ve thrown out that may deserve a thread in another forum!
