The Naked Truth

When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they discovered that they were naked and exposed and vulnerable. This happens to all of us whenever we obtain a bit of knowledge. The more that we know, the more that we discover how much we don’t know. Knowledge increases our nakedness and our vulnerability. Adam and Eve’s solution to their nakedness was to weave together fig leaves. As clothing material, fig leaves are far from ideal, and Adam and Eve likely hadn’t taken enough bites of the fruit to gain expert knowledge of tailoring skills. They were afraid of being exposed and they grabbed what they could to cover up their weaknesses as best they could. Isn’t it much the same with us? Don’t we grab for the nearest comforting truth, the best coping mechanisms we can come up with, whatever vices we can find to feel the great aching hole in our hearts that comes with the knowledge that the world is a dangerous place and we are so very exposed? But these temporary measures to keep the world from crushing us in our vulnerabilities, like fig leaves, shrivel and fray under the constant assault of a world too big for us to bear. But our story, like Adam and Eve’s, does not end with the fig leaves. Before the Lord required Adam and Eve to leave the garden, He gave each of them a new set of clothes that He had made Himself, and they were warm, and strong, and had no gaps in their coverage. God knows that the nakedness that comes from a knowledge of good and evil is too much for us to handle on our own. He never intended to send us out into the world without protection. As we come unto Christ and are encircled in the arms of His love, we are clothed with righteousness, clothed with warmth and light and protection. Christ Himself is bruised and broken, stands between our nakedness and the world that seeks to destroy our fragile, vulnerable, exposed and naked souls. When we are clothed in righteousness, we no longer need the fig leaves of polite fictions and empty platitudes. We don’t have to fashion ill-fitting and short-lived scraps to cover our nakedness when we can be covered by the radiant warmth of Christ’s Atonement.