Created Naked

“I'm fairly convinced that our current culture's clothing compulsion and obsession is counter to God's design (call it "sin" or "perversion" if you like). I'm not saying everyone should be a nudist, and we should all be naked everywhere. But there is a troubling spirit around the way nudity is treated in modern America - and the Church is probably the worst offender. “ —Name Withheld, ( Naturist-Christians.org )

“Naturism is freedom and body positivity carried out to its natural conclusion…The respect and dignity with which it approaches everybody is healthy, wholesome, and even godly.” Phillip Oak, Surprised into Freedom ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C7T7WVGL?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share )

“Sometimes I like to run naked in the moonlight and the wind, on a little trail behind our house, when the honeysuckle blooms. It’s a feeling of freedom, so close to God and nature.” Dolly Parton

“Nakedness means freedom, and although dancing on a sun-kissed hillside with shorts on seems pretty similar to dancing with shorts off, there is all the difference in the world. It is as if your clothes take on the weight of your worries and concerns – they come to embody your defences against the world, and if you can feel confident enough and safe enough, then taking them off evokes a powerful sense of liberation, of joy and freedom; and more than that – of innocence and of openness to the world.” Philip Carr-Gomm, ‘The Druid Way’

iding the body is symptomatic of the soul’s need to hide from God.” -Wayne Olson (no known relation).

“Christians have been partly responsible for this in their attempts to control people's sexual expression and thereby actually increasing the sexualization of the human body. Clothing actually does nothing to suppress lust and often accentuates it.” -Bob Horrocks, Uncovering the Image

“Oddly enough, when you realize that you actually do have permission before God to see a naked body, it rather loses its mystique and emotional power in your life” —Matthew Neal, The Biblical Naturist http://thebiblicalnaturist.blogspot.com

“Don’t let those who have body negative values define what is and what is not acceptable. Seize your freedom and restore your dignity!” – BodyFreedom.org

“The path to body acceptance is quickly accomplished —and is fun. Since nudity is our natural state, so is body acceptance our natural state. We are born with it and are returning to it; and since we have already been there, there is nothing new to learn. It is simply a remembering of something we’ve already experienced and is accomplished with great joy and freedom— and a sense of returning home.” —Daniel Ziegler

In honor of International Skinny Dip Day

I simply can’t understand Why swimsuits are in such demand They’re soggy and damp, Bind like a clamp, And hold about three pounds of sand! -D.R. Benson

“O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along the shore, To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore. —Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I like it here. When I go to the other swimming pools they all look at my legs. When I come here they look at me.” – 12 year old girl with Cerebral Palsy concerning a naturist swim

This unclad human body is either morally neutral, or it is not. Naturists are moral reformers, whether they think of themselves in those terms or not. Naturism calls upon people to regard their own bodies and those of others as acceptable, not something to be feared or reviled. —Gregg Gatewood (https://nakedtruthjournal.blogspot.com/2010/10/transparency-in-facebook-age.html?m=1#comment-form)

“Discovering naturism has given me the freedom to be myself, free from judgement & expectation, teaching me to love & embrace my body. Society gives us an unrealistic idea of what a beautiful body is. Naturism breaks us free of that. Everyone’s body is unique & beautiful!”—Name Withheld

“The convention mis-called “modesty” has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature an reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anybody’s whim— anybody’s diseased caprice.” —Mark Twain

“Man is the sole animal whose nudity offends his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.” – Michael Montaigne, 1533-1592

“Furthermore, because God created it, “The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendor and its beauty.” –Pope John Paul II

“Man has a deep-seated impulse to be naked. Most of us do not recognize this impulse because of our training and traditions. It is suppressed from early childhood and if we feel it, we consider it as evil. We all know the delight of children at being undressed, a perfectly natural delight.—Hartman, Fithian, & Johnson 1970, 1991

“The enemy sought to split the body from the integrated whole of our being. As such, he could then use it through his lies (about nudity being sinful) to tear down the image of God to satisfy and elevate himself. “ —J.Ewing

“Be glad, my merry friends, and let the warm sunlight heat now heart and limb! Cast off these cold rags! Run naked on the grass, while Tom goes a-hunting!” Tom Bombadil in J.R.R.Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’

“If nakedness is so wicked, why do we place it prominently in our art?” —Unknown to Me

“We see ourselves positioned between Puritanism on the right and pornography on the left—the will to exploit the human body on one side, and the anxious need to suppress the human body on the other”—Lee Baxandall

“It makes no more sense to compulsively cover body parts because someone might look and lust, than it does to compulsively cover bakery showcases lest patrons look and indulge gluttonous thoughts. God’s way is always truth, and never deceit.” Jim Cunningham

“It is the undressing, not the being nude, that is sexually arousing, because it leads the viewer to the association of a sexually intimate experience.” —Marilyn Horn

“If you are used to seeing people naked, you don’t give much thought about appearances.” —Sylva Sternkopf

“Something anti-climatic happens when socially nude. Since nothing is left to the imagination, the body loses its power of seduction and the novelty of seeing nudity fizzles out rather quickly.” — Excuse My Nudeness: But happiness isn't always found where you're led to believe, by Vongani Nkuna