Sunday, March 13, 2011: Genesis 2:15-17
The serpent was right: when Eve and Adam ate the fruit, they did not die; they saw more clearly.
If you've ever changed a diaper, you know that when the baby has a diaper removed, especially a cloth one, there's usually a rush of energy, often laughter, and a convulsion of kicking and rolling and sheer exultation in the freedom of having legs set free from the bondage of damp and sometimes soiled cloth. Babies have no problem with nakedness. It's a relief.
Children go on in much the same way for several years. Although tired and truculent at the end of the day, they may be transformed once the clothes are off for bath or bedtime, and mischievous imps awash in giggles find fun in fearless frenzy.
But then there comes a point, a year or two later, when they know they are naked. A host of complications begin to crowd in. For the last couple of generations, educators, psychologists and others have insisted that our lives and our societies would be better if we could somehow eradicate negative attitudes toward our bodies, the profound self-rejection and feelings of ugliness, unworthiness and repression that set in at about this age and are hard to shift. Parents hurl themselves headlong into righting the wrongs of their own upbringings and endeavor to ensure that the dial of their children's well-being is set in advance to "well-adjusted" by affirming nakedness and physicality and natural functions. But for all the wholesome psychology, the world these well-adjusted young people enter is as complex as ever.
