Nakedness

ok so for theology i have ot keep a bit of a journal of my theological thoughts so i decided to post them here to keep track of them, heres the first one:

Theological anthropology

In class the idea was presented that one can not know themselves fully with out another. I both fully agree and fully despise that statement. In terms of people I am the first to say that people need people, at times in my life I have had some hermit like characteristics and I know that individual isolation does no good for the individual. My problem with that statement comes with the type of relationship it was referring to. The lecture was on the importance of nudity; about how nudity is an absolute openness, and that men and women were made for each other; that together we are one and therefore one is incomplete on their own. I think one can know themselves fully without a lover. Theres a hole in the logic of believing that a man must be with a woman in order to know himself fully. According to this logic we must diregard the writings of every monk who has ever sworn celibacy, the apostle Paul and even Jesus… I mean all of them were single and therefore didn’t fully know themselves, and how can one that doesn’t fully understand what it means to be human write anything of value in regards to the meaning of being human?
So I don’t believe that one needs a spouse to know themselves but I think we do need people. So much of what we know about ourselves comes from being in contact with other people. The Bible is full of communities and in the new testament the idea of being united in a body of Christ is presented. I think we can create close relationships that aren’t of a romantic nature that will help us better understand ourselves. Being part of a community helps complete us.
Physical nakedness may be symbolically powerful as to our openness to one another but I believe one can be just as exposed emotionally. James 5:16 tells us to confess our sins to each other. I believe that by sharing our shortcomings with one another we essentially are exposing one of the deepest parts of our existence to each other. I think the view point that there needs to be a physical nakedness to accompany an emotional openness is very egocentric of those who do have that act of physical symbolism available to them and that this view point could be potentially harmful to older single people in a church community.