Earlier this week Doug Wilson posted “These Vast Reservoirs of Guilt.” The climax of his argument is this.
What do you do when you are ashamed? You cover your face. Why did so many Christians instantly capitulate when they were commanded (by tyrants) to cover up their faces? They complied so readily because they were already deeply ashamed of themselves. Unforgiven men do not know how to stand up straight. They crawl.
They did this because in the churches that they attend, sin has not gone away. Sin hasn’t gone away, but the gospel has.
Show me a picture of a thousand Christians all lined up in their masks. I do not see a thousand brain surgeons about to go into surgery in order to save the life of another in an act of dedicated selflessness. No, I see a thousand cowed Christians, sheepish and ashamed of themselves, preparing themselves for what it might take for them to survive a Biden presidency. Survival at all costs! The motto of 21sts century North American martyrs!
COVID is a metaphor for sin and guilt. It is invisible and weighs on everybody, and it wrecks everything, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. And the masks are a metaphor for the uselessness of all human solutions to this pervasive sense of guilt. The only thing left for you to do is yell at maskless strangers in parking lots because you envy them their freedom. . . .
Francis Schaeffer once said that the problem with Christians is that they saw things in bits and pieces, instead of seeing things as “wholes.” And so here it is. If you are a pastor, or Christian leader, or an elder, or a husband, or a father, and you do not see all the crazy elements of this last year or so as one, monumental lie, you will not be able to do your job. All of it. The lockdowns. The masks. The riots. The scandals. The election. The controversies. The cancellations. All of these are guilt rivers emptying into the guilt reservoirs.
And there you have the only real alternatives. It is either guilt or it is grace.
Wilson’s exposé concerning the guilt and shame which prompt many to comply so readily with governing tyrants’ demands to cover their faces prompts me to offer some biblical insights concerning guilt and shame with what I trust will be obvious connections to my previous blog articles that address the correlation between heavenly realities and earthly replications
Wilson mentions Francis Shaeffer who in an address at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (1982) drew from his earlier published A Christian Manifesto (1980) when he states,
Christians, in the last 80 years or so, have only been seeing things as bits and pieces which have gradually begun to trouble them and others, instead of understanding that they are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one; things such as over-permissiveness, pornography, the problem of the public schools, the breakdown of the family, abortion, infanticide (the killing of newborn babies), increased emphasis upon the euthanasia of the old and many, many other things. . . . All of these things and many more are only the results. We may be troubled with the individual thing, but in reality we are missing the whole thing if we do not see each of these things and many more as only symptoms of the deeper problem.
I am persuaded that Schaeffer’s claim is accurate and true, but I would suggest that the problem he addresses has exponentially magnified. As then, so now, folks who fill evangelical churches tend to think in bits and pieces rather than in wholes, but now they do so from even greater ignorance of the Scriptures. Despite burgeoning accessible books by Christian scholars concerning the Bible’s storyline, many Christians persist in chopping up that storyline into standalone narratives. This, however, is understandable given the cacophony among scholars whose voices drown out one another with competing claims. For example, even while biblical scholars show how the Bible presents a cohesive and progressive drama of Christ’s unfolding redemption from Genesis to Revelation, many emphatically insist that portions of Scripture, especially Genesis 1-11, are not to be accepted as reliable history. As I have previously shown, many dogmatically assert that Scripture’s creation account is wrong, that there was no historical Adam and Eve, that there was no Garden of Eden, that there was no Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or the Tree of Life, that no singular first couple disobeyed God and plunged the whole of their descendants into sinfulness. I, however, am persuaded that what others reject as erroneous must be embraced as factual and true. Therefore, I now address the origins of human guilt and shame, that shame the Doug Wilson so ably describes as inciting such readiness not only to cover one’s own face but to demand that others cover their faces also.
Why do people wear masks other than for face protection in one’s work environment? Why do people cover their faces with their hands? Is it not because of guilt and shame? Does not a thief cover his face because he wants to avoid having his identity linked to his crime, a wicked deed? Generally, the covering of the face whether with the quick improvisation of the hand or a piece of fabric is properly associated with the need to conceal guilt or to hide the shame. Again, the covering of the face is an extension of covering the body, whether with clothing or the impromptu placement of the hands over one’s private places.
So, let’s shift from masks to clothing. Why do we wear clothing? The first response that a Minnesotan might offer, especially in November, is, “To keep our bodies from freezing.” Perhaps if asked the same question during the summer, a Minnesotan might suggest, “To protect our bodies from scrapes, from scratches, and from mosquitos.” But there is a much more basic and primal answer: “To conceal our shame. To hide our guilt.” When I speak of guilt and shame, I am not speaking of the “shame” that the world teaches us to discern concerning what is acceptable and fashionable in clothing. You know the expression, “body shaming.” I refer neither to body size and shape nor to emaciated scrawniness and morbid obesity. Lamentably, fashion-consciousness rather than morality-consciousness teaches folks to avert their eyes from an overweight body in clothing that does not adequately cover unsightly rolls of fat but permits one to ogle shapely toned bodies exposed by wearing minimal fabric, luring passersby into voyeurism and lust.
Both nature itself and the Bible’s initial story of humanity instruct us that nakedness apart from innocence entails shame. After the Creator formed the woman from the rib portion removed from the man, God put them together in the Garden as husband and wife. And Scripture says, “The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25). Yet, all too quickly their nakedness without shame vanished because instantly after they disobeyed their Creator by eating fruit from the forbidden tree, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked. . . . So they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. . . . And they hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:7, 8). There is divinely authorized humor in this account. Adam and Eve thought that they could hide from their Maker. God, who knows everything, not by observation but because he is God, inquires, “Where are you?” His question is not to seek information as if he lacked any. Rather, God’s question is the kind that observant mothers are keen to ask. It is to provoke Adam to acknowledge his naked sinfulness before God and his pathetic attempt to conceal his sinfulness by hiding behind shrubs while wearing flimsy leaves sewn together. Adam responds, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” Again, the Lord God inquires, not to acquire unknown information but to instruct and to incite Adam to recognize his Creator-endowed conscience, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
That the Lord God did not leave Adam and Eve naked is vital to observe. The account obliquely implies that the slaying of an animal from which the Lord stitched clothing for the husband and wife entails a sacrifice that is as temporary to cover sin’s shame as the skins are to conceal their naked bodies. This clothing of their nakedness is the source of the prophets’ and the apostles’ imagery when they admonish us to remove the clothes of sinfulness and to clothe ourselves with righteousness, even with Christ himself (cf. Job 29:14; Isaiah 59:17; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:12, 14-15; Romans 13:14; 1 Corinthians 15:53-54).
We must never diminish the significance and power of the Bible’s numerous and large narrative portions. Approximately 43 percent of the Bible entails story form. Thus, the instructional impact of Genesis 2 and 3 concerning the primal innocence of Adam and Eve though naked and the subsequent guilt and shamefulness of their nakedness must not escape us. By way of story, God’s Word instructs us that the Creator infused into his creational design a correlation between two inseparable realms, the heavenly original and their earthly copy. Their nakedness without shame signifies their utter guiltless openness before the Lord, their Maker. Hence, the account of their nakedness together, as husband and wife, sanctifies guiltless and innocent nakedness in the marital relationship. However, when they disobeyed God, their consciousness was immensely altered. Now their consciences screamed with guilt. No longer are they naked and unashamed. Now their nakedness signifies their immense shame not only in the presence of one another but far more significantly, in the presence of God.
Likewise, our Creator indelibly imbues each of us with an indisputable consciousness that the nakedness of our bodies entails much more than the shame of exposed flesh. We inherently know, as Adam and Eve discovered after disobeying the Lord, that our nakedness is first and foremost an indelible representation of our destitute spiritual exposure and liability in the presence of God who is our holy and righteous judge. Nakedness before God without shame, as Adam and Even experienced at first, is desirable because it represents a right standing before God, but by their disobedience, they surrendered that holy status for themselves and for all of us, their descendants. Yet, God provides a covering for our nakedness, a guiltless standing before him, if we will receive it in the Second Man, the Last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.
From early childhood, nature and our parents, both given by the Creator for our instruction, have taught us that our physical nakedness requires covering except in the marital union where nakedness is not shameful but is integral to the earthly shadow of the Edenic harmony between the creature and the Creator restored in Christ Jesus. Hence, the Apostle Paul writes,
In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church since we are members of His body.
For this reason, a man will leave
his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two will become one flesh.This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:28-32).
Immodesty, even exhibitionism, accompanies refusals to heed the Creator’s implicit mandate, embedded in creation itself, to cover our nakedness. Public flaunting of nakedness is a deliberate and unrighteous attempt to suppress the truth intuitively ours by nature and reinforced by parents. Indecency excites others to lust and not to turn the eyes away but to disregard the sanctity of the human body and to gawk as voyeurs. It is increasingly difficult to avert one’s eyes in our society because increasing forms of undress are flaunted everywhere. Is there any wonder, then, that the singular relationship where nakedness is shameless, namely marriage, is so widely, grievously, frequently compromised, and ruined? The covering needed is not just clothing but the true garment to which our material attire points us.
As we prepare for each day, we rehearse the drama of Genesis 3 as we remove our nightwear and cover our nakedness with attire suitable for our day’s activities. Do we engage this ritual thoughtfully or unthinkingly? When we begin a new day by repeating this routine ritual we ought to confess mindfully, “As I now cover my nakedness this morning with clothing, so may I clothe myself throughout this day with Christ Jesus to cover my sinful nakedness that I may live confidently and without shame in the presence of both God and my fellow humans.” Whenever I urge my hearers to observe this sacred ritual I am surprised by two things: (1) how few have heard such biblical teaching, and (2) how readily they are to acknowledge the truthfulness of these instructional observations. This is so because it becomes undeniable once shown that from beginning to end the Bible wraps into its storyline this theme concerning nakedness-unclothedness accompanied by shame and dishonor displaced by clothedness-coveredness restoring dignity and honor.
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:
“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”
Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”I answered, “Sir, you know.”
And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:9-14).