Book Plunge: Christian Body – Is Grace Sufficient?

Is grace enough to overcome? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the big problems with Frost’s book is that he is so antagonistic in it. He comes in with both barrels blasting too often and when he wants to comment on what the other side thinks, he paints them as denying most everything he can about Christianity. So it is that the same happens when we come to the topic of grace.

Frost says that for many Christians, grace can help them overcome the evils of pornography and dehumanization, but it doesn’t help them joyfully appreciate the human body. Perhaps this is so for some, but not for all. I cannot say that I have ever struggled with porn by the grace of God, but I can say as a man who was married I had a deep appreciation for my wife’s body and often said that if the only evidence I had for the existing of God was her body, that would be enough to settle the case for me. I knew of no other way to explain something that beautiful.

There is a problem with how we talk about grace. Consider Sam Allberry. He is a great speaker on issues of the church and sexuality, and yet he himself wrestles with same-sex attraction. There are some people who have become Christians and lost that attraction, but not all. There are plenty of people who have become Christians while in the clutches of alcoholism and escaped that, but that doesn’t mean that they have to go out and fully appreciate the fruit of the vine by going to a bar and drinking alcohol. That could even be foolish for them.

Sometimes God delivers us fully from wrong desires. Sometimes, He doesn’t. It doesn’t make any Christian a lesser Christian or a greater Christian. All Christians regardless will have struggles in this world until the day they die or until the day Christ returns.

Some people could be delivered from porn and yet never marry and get to enjoy the real presence of a beautiful member of the opposite sex in all their glory. Some might not. Some could have no desire for porn again. Some could have a daily struggle. There is no “One size fits all.”

One reason I would not be out in the public nude is that I don’t want to risk doing anything that would cause my fellow man to stumble in any way. I have to show consideration for them. If I had no problem with alcohol, I would not drink alcohol in front of someone who struggles with it. (For those wondering, I made a lifelong vow early on that I would not drink alcohol so I would not risk doing anything to damage my reputation. I have no problem if someone can control their alcohol.)

Frankly, Frost’s book would be a lot better if he didn’t spend as much time demeaning the other side. Frost comes off as if he thinks he is the super Christian and everyone else is less than he is. His case would be better if he wrote more conversationally instead.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – The Master Deceiver

Is Satan behind it all? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There’s an argument that strikes me as strange coming from the naturist position whereby the devil is said to have been the ones to tell us to cover ourselves up. You would think then that if that was a wicked suggestion, God would not have gone along with it. Immediately after the pronouncement of exile is declared on Adam and Eve, God makes clothing for them Himself.

It would seem as if by this argument, that God and the devil both agree about how they view the human body, which is strange.

So Frost says at the start that many people cannot get past purdah because they cannot accept the incredible beauty of the human body.

That must explain why the pornography industry is so strong. People just can’t accept the beauty of the human body. That must be why guys dating women often wonder about what they look like under all those clothes. That must have been why when I was a married man it was always a joy to see my wife’s body naked.

He then says the devil jumps in and tells you it’s a sin to be enthralled by the beauty. No. Absolutely not. That’s the design of the system. Men and women were supposed to be enthralled with one another. The problem is what you do with that beauty. Are you looking at men and women that you have no right to look at? Are you treating them as just objects to satisfy your desire?

Frost then says:

An important step in overcoming the pornographic lusts of prudish modesty standards is agreeing with God that His creation is gloriously beautiful and worthy of admiration. Satan hates the creation of God and would rather feed our cultural revulsion for nakedness.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 264). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

He is absolutely right on the first part. The body is worthy of admiration, but pornography is not admiration. It is exploitation. It is treating the person on the other end of the screen as just a body. That dehumanizes them.

Naturism from what I see goes the other way. This is not saying anything about cultures where naturism is the main way of living. This is about our culture. They go and say “The body is not inherently sexual.” Both sides are living in denial. The body is sexual and in the proper context is meant to be sexually arousing. This is in our DNA.

This does not mean that different things can be arousing to different people and there are some things you shouldn’t be aroused by. If you are aroused by children, for instance, you need help. If I were to use a personal example, I am a huge fan of the series Smallville and my crush on the series was always the character of Chloe. Most guys went crazy over Lana and later Lois. Nah. Chloe all the way for me.

What drew me to her at the start? It wasn’t that she was a supermodel, but her character on the show was really smart, and I like girls with a good head on her shoulders. It was through that that the rest of her got more beautiful to me over time. The same happened when I was married. My wife became the standard of female beauty for me over time.

Yet with the second part of the above quote, does he think we have a cultural revulsion for nakedness? The porn industry is betting that we don’t, and so far they’re winning that bet. From when I was married, behind closed doors, I would have no objections to nudity in a private setting. Frost seems to have a fundamentalist mindset in mind that would be an extreme minority position.

I regularly wonder who Frost is responding to in this book and he seems to only think in extremes. It’s quite problematic going through. Unfortunately, nothing I saw in the book ever got better.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body – The Source of Desire

Where does desire come from? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost begins this section again with the statement that we find XYZ desirable because we were conditioned to. Once again, I have to ask is this really the case? Could it be the female body was designed to be desirable by men by God and vice-versa? We might like different things at different times, but desire is always there.

Even in the West, while the sexual organs have been noticed quite often, there are other aspects of a woman found attractive, such as her legs, her smile, her hair, her eyes, etc. We can’t even explain often why it is that feature X on a woman is attractive. We men just know that it is. Not only that, Scripture when it speaks about the female body in places like Proverbs 5:18-19, Song of Songs 4, and Song of Songs 7 seems to say the same thing.

Let’s also be clear on something. Believe it or not, not every man struggles with lust. There are few of us to be sure, but not everyone of us is going to our computers at night and saying “God help me avoid any pornography sites today.” I remember when I worked at a retail store after my divorce, my female co-workers were stunned when they found out I didn’t watch porn. It’s a shame that that’s the case.

Frost does say rules will not bring about freedom. It only comes about from the grace of God. There is some truth here, but every society has rules for behavior and even the church has rules for behavior. Paul also spoke often about how we were to observe rules not just in our individual lives, but also in the day-to-day with other people.

If we lived in these cultures that Frost spoke about that don’t have as much clothing, it wouldn’t be an issue, but those cultures are not ours and those cultures are also vastly different from ours. In our culture, the Christian influence is dying out, though I do suspect a resurgence could be just around the corner, and we are much more individualistic. Not only that, but we are highly ignorant of sexual matters.

That might sound odd to think about in a culture that is all about sex constantly, but as Peter Kreeft has said, it’s when everyone’s pipes are leaking that people buy books on plumbing. When we live in a world where people don’t know what a woman is, how many sexes there are, why it is that same-sex erotic relationships are not good for society, and why it is that we think we can redefine marriage, then we see where this has gone.

That’s why naturism could be a noble dream perhaps some time off in the future when we’ve recovered from the sexual revolution and our culture has been thoroughly Christianized and reformed, but now, no. We would be causing too much stumbling for our fellow man. “But what about the privacy of our own homes?” For those, do what you want (Though you might want to make sure the windows are closed) and enjoy it. I have spoken about the private/public distinction here and it still applies.

Note my position then. It is not that nudity is sinful. It isn’t, or else we wouldn’t be here. It’s that in our culture, it should be reserved for private situations due to the overly sexualizing of our culture and the ignorance of too many.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Dealing With Lust

How do you deal with lust? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost in this section is talking about the problem of lust and lack of sexual control. Frost tells us that usually the antidote given to lust is more rules meant to contain it. I agree that this in itself is not the answer. However, it can be part of the answer. An alcoholic could need to take an alternate route home from work instead of one that goes by the neighborhood bar. An obese person might need to have someone else do the grocery shopping.

What we can all agree on is that this is a heart issue and the problem lies in the heart. This is a worldview problem. You can take steps to deal with the problem externally, but you also need to deal with the problem internally. This is why some people talking about weight loss will actually say diets don’t work. Diets are temporary. You need a whole change in view.

It could also be some struggles you will always have. Sam Allberry comes regularly and speaks at our Defend conferences here in New Orleans and as far as I know, he still struggles with same-sex attraction, but chooses a celibate lifestyle. I went to Celebrate Recovery in the past and there were several alcoholics there. They still made it a point to avoid alcohol. One glass of it after years of sobriety can ruin someone.

Now I know a couple of people who have said naturism helped them overcome their porn addiction and while I will not question the experience, I wonder how that really healed the heart. It often seems that there is a disjunction going on, and something I plan to talk with the counseling department about here at my seminary in doing research on this. I am not a psychologist after all so I cannot understand as well what is going on in the mind.

The problem with porn is that it sees the opposite sex as only sexual beings. They are there merely for your sexual pleasure. The opposite end is to deny that they are sexual beings at all. It is to deny that the body is sexual. It is. That is the reason it can perform sexually all things being equal. There are aspects of both sexes meant to be sexually appealing to the other. For us in the West, it is normally the sexual organs, at least when talking about what is seen as attractive in women.

Frost goes on to say that because our culture has put up a bunch of rules such as clothing instead of going with grace, we have become more perverted.

Sorry, but this is just an unbelievably false statement to make.

Christian cultures have had clothing for thousands of years. Did we see this going on rampantly in the Middle Ages like we do today? Did we see this going on in the early church? Did we see this going on in Puritan culture? Could it be that what really changed our culture was the sexual revolution, the rise of feminism, and a false view of sex?

This is the problem in that we don’t have a worldview that explains how sex fits in. This is why so many people look at same-sex relationships and say “I don’t see the problem here.” Many Christians don’t have a reason for being opposed other than “Well, the Bible says so.” This leads the world to think they’re crazy. It’s as if God is being arbitrary here. Sexuality has been reduced to just a form of pleasure and marriage means little.

Frost concludes this saying many cultures that were prudish (though not explaining in what way) exploded with promiscuity after Christians came bearing clothes. We are not told who these cultures are. The data is absent. I am not surprised at this.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Hypersexuality

What do we do in a sex-crazed society? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So at the start, Frost immediately begins with this:

For the many Christians who struggle with sexual control, we have hastily presumed that the first line of defense against such carnality is the strict application of increasingly restrictive coverage that treats the creation of God as if it were to blame. Disabused of our cultural narrow-mindedness, we can clearly see that the placebo of clothing only masks the symptoms but drastically intensifies the real root problems. As a result, our culture is well-known for extremes of sex-scandals, rape, molestation, and promiscuity that is far worse than the many unclothed cultures which often maintain marital fidelity and have little concept of immoral lust or pornography as we know it in our supposedly “Christian” culture.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 253). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Okay. The problem is if you’re going to say the problem is clothing, then you need to show the hard data. We can go back a few centuries and find that our country wasn’t like this. If anything changed our world, it was the sexual revolution. The idea of having sex without consequences and the destruction of the family unit caused the most damage.

Now could there be societies with very little clothing where fidelity and the body are honored? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean that those societies are one-to-one parallels with ours. You have to look at what is the same and what is different. Those societies could be highly community-focused and thus there are rules and understanding set in that keep people from stepping out of line.

Consider the world some of us heard our parents and grandparents grew up in if we live in America. If you went out away from your parents house and you were misbehaving, your parents knew it by the time you got home. The neighbors would call and let them know what you had done. Your doom awaited when you got home.

If we live in a culture that doesn’t honor marriage and family and is very individualistic and everyone just minds their own business, then no, nudism will not work here.

Meanwhile, there could be societies where there is no or little clothing and there is chaos of some kind over sexual matters. Perhaps there might be fidelity, but one person who has power will murder another to get a woman for his own. Perhaps these societies have some form of polygamy as well. Would these societies be changed by bringing them clothing? No. In both cases, this is a heart issue.

Frost will say that God’s creation cannot be to blame, but this is a problematic statement. After all, Eve fell in the garden because of the fruit and the serpent both, both of which were God’s creation, but also because of her own free-will. God’s creation is good, but evil uses good things to bring about evil. It has to. There are no things that are purely evil. That’s an impossibility. Temptation takes something good and seeks to use it in an evil way.

Can a woman also knowingly tempt a man with her body for something evil? Yes. Happens regularly. That is the good creation of God being used in a wrong way. Frost has this strange idea that if something is the creation of God, then it’s automatically exempt.It’s not. All we see is a creation of God and yet we live in a world of sin still.

Frost would need to list these cultures and show what makes them different from us and what makes them the same. We need hard data. I have not seen it yet.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Modesty Sells

Does modesty sell? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We all know it. Sex sells. I know I have purchased a product before from a display just because the girl selling it was really pretty. I am quite confident I am not the only man who has done that. We also know those commercials about the beautiful woman in a bikini chowing down on a big burger that we all know she turns away from immediately as soon as the shoot is done.

Frost makes what I think is a relevant point that nowadays, it takes more and more to sell us. We have to see more skin in order to notice. That’s because unfortunately, it has become too common. This is why ads for ED are so prevalent on radio stations. Now men in their 20’s are often getting this because they’ve seen so much porn that normal beauty doesn’t do anything for them.

If anything, I consider this to be quite problematic. Men were meant to be drawn to the woman and that was by her beauty. You can’t look at a picture of a girl and say “Yep. She’s a loyal one.” Character doesn’t come through easily in a photograph. What does come through is how someone looks.

For me specifically, I do find a girl in modest clothing to be more appealing overall. When I go through dating apps and see a girl showing off too much skin, such as bikini pics, I hit that X. Why? Because if she’s doing that to try to convince me, I suspect there isn’t much more there than that.

Meanwhile, when I was married, I used to tell my parents and in-laws that if they bought a dress for my ex-wife, that that counted double as a gift for me. I can still remember her trying one on at Wal-Mart and when she came out of the dressing room I dropped my jaw in astonishment. Is this my wife?

Won’t deny it. I miss that kind of experience.

That’s a bonus of working at a seminary. Girls do tend to dress conservatively and I really like that. We do have women who come in wearing dresses and I just think they look so stunning. What you women don’t realize when you’re talking about good men is that you don’t have to dress skimpily in order to get a good man to notice you. A good man will notice you in an outfit that you might even just consider to be plain.

So overall, there isn’t much to disagree with in this section. I still maintain that some mystery is good for people, something that is shared between the two people that no one else gets to see and experience. It is part of the covenant of trust that goes into a relationship where the degree to which you trust someone of the opposite sex is to be parallel to the degree of how much of them that you get to see. The way to see it all is to have a covenant.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Why Wear Clothing?

Why does Frost think we wear clothes? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this section, Frost is going to say why he thinks we wear clothes. At the start, he says it is a result of our inner sin nature rebelling against God’s beautiful creation. Well, that’s a lovely start. That means everyone you know who is wearing clothing regularly is apparently living in sin.

It’s statements like these that are so extreme that it’s hard to take Frost seriously.

But at any rate, let’s look at his big three.

The first one he says is a legalistic ego trip. This might be for some people, but it’s not that they wear clothes and others don’t. It’s more like they think they dress better than others do and they want to wear the latest fashion and trends just to wear them. This is not to say everyone who dresses nice is trying to do this, but no doubt, some are. We know that there can be a pecking order in some social areas that if you don’t wear the right clothes, you are out.

This is not to say there are not times one should avoid dressing their best. If you are on a date or a job interview, you will naturally want to have a good appearance. I won’t claim to know someone’s heart, but too often, it looks like Frost thinks he does.

The second reason Frost gives is to avoid responsibility. Frost does rightly say that it’s easy to blame someone else for our lusts, and this is so, but there is some truth in that some people do dress in order to tempt. That doesn’t justify what someone does with the temptation, but we should be aware of how our behavior does affect other people.

For instance, Paul warns about this with eating meat offered to idols. He wants to enjoy his freedom, but if it means he could entice his brother to sin, then he won’t eat the meat. The weaker brother is ultimately responsible, but Paul doesn’t want to be a contributing factor.

So if a guy sees a beautiful girl and goes home and watches porn as a result, he can’t blame the girl for that. It was his own choice. At the same time, all of us who are Christians should watch what we do and say around others in case we meet people who are susceptible. If I know someone has a history of being an alcoholic, I would not meet them in a bar, for instance.

The final reason is insecurity about our own bodies. Now this is true that we can all have insecurities, and while I know I have some, I also know when I was married, I never struggled with that insecurity around my ex-wife. If anything, our Instagram age has been particularly unkind to women in this area.

Frost never mentions positive reasons though. I wear clothing because for one thing, I am cold-natured and I like to stay warm. I also wear clothing because I don’t want to get arrested out in public. I often wear clothing that tends to reveal something about who I am and my interests. Many people at the seminary Post Office I work at notice my T-shirts about being sarcastic and it’s a good icebreaker when I wear my Smallville T-shirt. On Saturdays, I wear an NOBTS T-shirt in the hopes of meeting a lady who might want a seminary student for a husband.

It would be easier to be kind to Frost’s case if he didn’t go to such extremes in his argumentation. Unfortunately, he does. I hope he has just as much passion for reaching the lost as he does for getting people to not wear clothing.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Getting Over It

Should we all embrace nudism? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost is now encouraging us to just embrace the nudist lifestyle after all the arguing for it, arguing might I add I have found highly unpersuasive, especially on the biblical front. He does say he is not so naive to think that this would solve all of our sexual problems. I am pleased to hear that, but if anything, I think they would make it worse.

Before getting to that, let’s point out that in some places, this lifestyle would be impossible to practice. For instance, here is a list of the eleven coldest cities in America I found in a web search. Kalispell, Montana is the warmest on the list with an annual temperature of just under 44 Fahrenheit.

If you live in these cities, you need to wear clothing because that would be essential for your health. I can’t speak for every city, but I am sure there are some cities that have natural resources that we need and people need to be living in those cities. On top of that, we could add in cities where it would be raining a lot and other such problems.

There is a danger of a pendulum swing where too often, people veer too far in one direction. Is it a mistake to go so far as say, Sharia Law, and think you have to veil women entirely to eliminate any notion of their sexuality? Yes. It’s just as much of one to go to the other end with nudism. Sharia tries to destroy all sexual draw to a woman by hiding her. The nudist ideology tries to do it by making it too common. (We cannot say the same about men since in Sharia, men are not to be covered.)

The solution is in the middle. In the solution, sexuality is not seen as some desire that we must give in to. It is not that if I see a glimpse of seemingly illicit flesh on a female that I must go crazy with sexual drive. It is also not that if I see a female body nude I have no sexual drive. It is that I have a drive, but I control it, while treating the sacred as sacred and not as common.

Frost goes on to say that the first nudist society was started in America by an evangelical pastor named Ilsley Boone. Frost describes him as a godly Bible-believing preacher. Perhaps he was, but I didn’t find a list of people singing his praises or anything like that in a search. Unfortunately, his literature I could come across on this topic was too expensive for me to get. Boone might have been that, but all I have is Frost’s word and I need more than that.

Frost goes on also to describe nudist worship services and Bible studies. I’m not saying that these people aren’t Christians. That’s not my call. I’m not denying any positive experiences Frost had. Who could? i am saying it takes more than someone saying that.

Why? Because I have studied the issue of same-sex relationships and the church and I have heard accounts where people go to their services and talk about the same kinds of things going on. Do I think the people in these services are having positive and powerful feelings and emotions? Yes. Do I think they reflect reality? No, because that is clearly a practice that is condemned in Scripture,

So once again, some problems I have presented with what Frost says it is not feasible in many places. Not only that, but I think he sees a bad problem we have had with an unhealthy view of seeing anything of the body, and swings too far in the other direction. I also think he consistently takes other cultures different from ours, ignores those differences, and says “But this works there.” Our culture is extremely different in America and that must be taken into account.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Immodesty and Lust

Should we keep things hidden? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost starts at this chapter with saying that Chinese men used to be captivated by the feet of women. Why was this so? Because they were kept hidden.

Question.

Many women today I know wear socks and on top of those socks they wear shoes. Since that is the case, why do we not go crazy over women’s feet as men?

Frost has at the start said that women’s feet were deemed attractive because they were kept hidden. No data has been given for this. Could it be they were kept hidden because they were deemed attractive? Without data, we can’t know either way. Frost could be right. I could be right. The problem is Frost starts off with the assumption that he is.

He then tells us the natural body should have remained neutral. Agreed. Unfortunately, this little event happened called the Fall of Man. From that point on, we have been using and abusing our fellow man. I tend to see the idea of Christian naturism as trying to get us back into the Garden without realizing that we are not in the Garden. In a way, it’s as if trying to force Utopia on Earth and well, Utopias like that never work out well in the long run.

Frost says lust is not caused by nudity in the Bible. The problem is he wants to see those exact words. I don’t think it ever says “Lust is caused by clothing” either, but Frost has no problem saying that. By the way, what was Bathsheba wearing when David started to lust after her?

As I have said, Frost often reads the Bible from his own culture and he reads it like a fundamentalist would. “I need chapter and verse to make this explicit!” As I said also, he makes exceptions when it comes to what he wants the Bible to say.

Now does keeping something hidden lead to lust? Perhaps it does, but at the same time, if things are done proper, it will cause a man to work harder. This is a great article with a hilarious title on the topic and a follow-up can be found here.

To say that if we put everything out in the open, then the problem will disappear, would be like saying that if we put money out in public and not behind safes, then greed would disappear. We would still have problems because people are evil and until the return of Christ, we will always have that evil within us. Christian Naturists are right on one thing certainly. Lust is a problem that is within us that we have to control. The problem is I disagree with their solution and in some places, it would be impossible to do. If you’re a Christian who lives in a cold climate, do you have to struggle with lust because people have to wear clothes constantly in public to stay warm?

Consider also the book of Judges. At the start, Caleb will give his daughter in marriage to someone who will conquer the enemy and Othniel does it. Othniel is willing to go and fight to win a woman. In the end of the book, women are being kidnapped so people can have wives. You can measure the morality of a society by how the women are treated.

Easy sex has made women to not be prizes to win. They are more objects to conquer. For a man like myself, a woman is a treasure and her beauty is a gift from God and one only gets to see that beauty if they are deemed worthy by the woman. That beauty is only shared with someone she covenants with. I avoid seeing nude women now not because they are icky, but because I am not worthy of seeing one who I have not covenanted with.

In closing, I think the movement is right on a problem. However, I don’t think the solution is right. It might have short-term benefits, but I think in the long term, it would be problematic.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body — Icky

Is the body icky? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost devotes this chapter to what he calls the “ick” factor. Right at the start, he says that it is clothing that causes lust. Keep in mind in the previous chapter, he said nothing that we see can cause lust. Apparently, that rule changes when it comes to clothing. Seeing a woman with clothes on will cause lust, but I guess somehow seeing her naked won’t?

Frost seems to think we have an intense hatred of nudity in our religiosity. If so, then why were great masters of art who were Christians doing paintings of nude figures and sculptures of nude figures? They also wanted to show the body as something to honor, but that doesn’t mean they were practicing nudists. You can say you want to honor the body, but that doesn’t mean put it all on open display any more than saying honoring the marriage bed means put your marriage bed out in public so everyone can see it.

Frost says when he was in Africa, he and his friends would ditch their clothing and go swimming. If he did that here in America, that would not be accepted. Frost immediately jumps to the idea of insecurity. Is that the reason? Does he know the hearts and minds of the people he’s writing about?

Could it be for some? Sure. Could it not just as much be that that’s just not something that you do here because it’s out of sync with the culture? If I went to another culture, I would need to learn the ins and outs of that culture and not just assume that it was like mine. It would not be appropriate to say “The reason you’re not like the culture that I have grown up with is because of X negative trait about yourself.”

A parallel I can think of is a dead body. For many of us, a dead body is a horrifying sight to see. For many in the ancient world, it would have been an every day sight. We recoil in horror often when we see a dead body and don’t even want to touch a “stiff.” Now to be fair, at a certain point, there is disease to think about, but it could also be a respect thing.

I have heard someone who argues with atheists who asks why we don’t eat our dead relatives? Wouldn’t that be a source of food and from an atheistic perspective, wouldn’t that be beneficial? There is nothing to the body any more after all. It’s an interesting point. The main reason we don’t I suspect is we have a great respect for that body.

Frost then makes an argument I find just bizarre where he says that if we look at animals and see them naked and don’t think a thing about it, why are we hesitant with our fellow man. Well for one thing, I don’t think many of us turn over the bodies of our pets to look at their genitalia. Sometimes, we can’t even tell entirely due to how small their bodies are or how furry. Second, our bodies are much more noticeable with all that they have. Third, we are more prone to misuse what we see in fellow humans than in animals. No one thinks odd of you if you are aroused at the sight of a human, but if you were at the sight of an animal, you need some help. (But give it a few years and some “Progressives” will be normalizing that more and more.)

No. The human body is not icky. If anything, it is something that should be honored. That’s why I don’t encourage putting it on open display.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)