Why We Need Clothes

I bought some clothes recently at JC Penneys. I love going into Penneys because they have a big and tall section. For a person of "ample dimensions" big and tall shops are like heaven. It is especially gratifying when you go in and discover clothes on the rack are actually too big for you.


Anyway, I bought some pants and took them home. I had to pry a bit do get them in my crowded closet. So many clothes! I must have thirty shirts, at least a dozen pairs of pants, and probably a half dozen hats, which I don't need. Over the years, I've had enough clothes to adequately dress a third world nation--if such a nation could be found that needed big and tall outfits.

This led me think about the mystery of clothes. Why do we need them? It's easy to understand why we once needed and still need clothes in cool climates. After all, human skin would freeze in Norway or Iceland or somewhere like that. But most of us don't live in Norway or Iceland. So why do we need clothes?

Some people don't think we need clothes. In fact, there are whole organizations devoted to the concept that people don't need clothes--like nudist camps and HBO. But in spite of years of concerted effort on their part, they have failed to convince the majority of what we seem to know by instinct.

Remember the old Tarzan pictures? Why is it that Johnny Weismuller always ran around the jungle in a loincloth? I'm not being flippant here. The truth is that even in the most hot and primitive parts of the world, among the mud men of Indonesia or the desert wanders of the Kalihari, there is a universal instinct to cover oneself, even when that covering serves no pragmatic purpose.

One theory is that clothes represent status. Clothes tell us who is important and who is not. Maybe the chief wears a red loincloth, while everyone else wears brown. But that doesn't make sense. Since clothes originated in Genesis 3, with Adam and Eve, who were they trying to impress? Status had nothing to do with it back then.

Another theory is that clothes are about modesty. Again, this can be shown by the bikini. People around the world seem to know instinctively that the genitalia need to be covered. This certainly helps social interaction, especially among people of the opposite sex. Clothes preserve the mystery.

But then again, we have a problem with Genesis 3. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed, so why did they suddenly need to cover themselves, or even a portion of themselves.

It is true that in the Fall, our sexual passions were distorted, as were all our other passions. What was mean to be beautiful and desirable, became enslaving and irresistable. What was meant to serve became the ruler. Sexual openness is impossible only in a society where sexual apetites are universally mastered, which is not our society. So clothes are necessary for modesty today. But not at the first. Not with Adam and Eve.

Clothes were meant to hide ourselves, but from whom. At the first, there were only three sets of eyes that could see us--Adam's, Eve's, and God's. Since Adam and Eve made their clothes together, the eyes they must have been most fearing had to be Gods. As irrational as it sound, they thought they could hide from God.

We wear clothes for one reason--because we do not want others to know who we really are. We would rather put ourselves in cloth boxes all day than to let others see our imperfections, or our perfections. Clothes are a defensive act, an opportunity to deceive even ourselves about who we really are.

"Naturally", we say. "It is a rare person who looks better naked than they do clothed." But is that really true? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Is a taught, hard body really more pleasing than a wrinkled, lumpy one. True, the latter may be more sexually desirable, but does that make it actually more beautiful? An accomplished artist or photographer, with a keen eye for beauty, is capable of seeing God's handiwork in bodies that do not seem to be the least bit desirable to us. Reubens' buxom nudes or Van Gough's paintings of an old man's face are beautiful, sometimes beyond words. Surely God, who sees all things beautiful, looks upon our physical form with appreciation and not disgust.

After their first attempts at fig leaves, God himself taught them how to make clothes from the skins of animals., not as a divine direction, but as a concession to our own fears and shame. In an imperfect world, we sometimes need to hide, because others cannot see God's beauty in us, and are likely to abuse what they cannot understand. But it is really our own shame that keeps us hiding behind threads and skins. We wear clothes because we cannot bear to look on ourselves.

We are not who we think we are. We are who God thinks we are. We deceive ourselves into an illusion of self-knowledge. Sin had made it impossible to see us as we really and truly are.

And what are we? We are the image of the living God, beautiful beyond words. We are the work of a master sculptor, perfect in all his ways, and no abuse of our body or injury to our souls can ever fully take that away. We are as God made us to be, the most beautiful creatures in the world.