From Pastor to Nudist (Part 1)

Continuing the series of new videos from Aching for Eden Productions, here’s part 1 of an amazing true story.

WARNING: This post contains nudity. If this offends you, skip the video and just read the transcript. Hopefully if you are on this site, the sight of simply nudity is ok, or you’re reconditioning your mind to see the innocence in it.

And here’s the transcript:

We were at a business meeting in a friend of ours’ home, and after the meeting was over we were sitting around just drinking coffee and visiting and having a great time. And the lady of the house, she kind of like embarrassed looking and hesitant. And she says, “I need to ask you for a favor.” And she says, “You’re a pastor, right?” “Well, yeah, of course, yes.” She says, “I really need you to help me. My sister and her husband and their family are nudists.” And she kind of she kind of whispered it like like it was a bad word, you know, nudists. “And I need you to help me talk them out of it.” And we kind of looked at each other like it was kind of funny, you know?

But I said, “Oh, absolutely, I’m in, but give me a week so I can get some ammo. We need to do a Bible study, find out what the Bible says so that we have some ammo for them.” I said, “I don’t want to just wing it.” “We’ll straighten them up!” And so we drove home that night.

We kind of joked about it on the way home, you know, because we had about an hour and a half drive home. And it was just it was one of those odd things.

We started looking up every verse on naked or nude or anything to do with that subject. We already knew ahead of time we could not use anything with Adam and Eve, so we kind of just glossed over that right away. But suddenly, everywhere we looked was positive.

You know, we’ve got King Saul was naked with the prophets, which meant that when they assumed he was a prophet because he was naked, well, then the prophets had to have been naked. So that that didn’t fit the narrative. So we kind of threw that aside.

And then it was, you know, King David and Isaiah under the command of the Lord for three years naked. And just in case you were wondering how naked, naked and barefoot!

And then there was, I mean, just over and over again throughout the Old Testament. So we were like, okay, well, that’s because that was Old Testament. So let’s look at the New Testament. And then you find, you know, Peter naked while fishing. And rather than being reprimanded by Christ or straightened up, it just mentioned it like it was just in passing.

And then we find out that Jesus, you know, it says that he took off his robe to wash the apostles’ feet at the Last Supper. And I’m thinking, “Hmm, that not doesn’t fit.” Peter doesn’t fit in.

And then you find that the Bible tells us that at the triumphal entry that they took their clothes off and laid them in the way for Jesus to ride the donkey. Everywhere, Old Testament, New Testament,
nothing fit. We couldn’t find any.

If you would pull Leviticus 18 out of context, well then you could use it. But we make a habit of not doing that. We look at the Bible from a legitimate standpoint, not make it say what we want it to.

So everything we found didn’t fit the agenda, which really threw me for a loop as a pastor, frankly, because we’d been taught our whole entire educational system as a pastor and the church growing up naked, equal sex and naked equals bad, right? Well, that’s not what the Bible said. Not at all.

So we go back. You can tell she’s wanting to bring the subject up. Right? So I said to her, I said, “You’re going to want to sit down. Because what we found was not what we expected.” And they both were like, “Really?” Boom, sit down. We’re at the kitchen table. And I had, I brought a printout of all the verses with me. So I kind of slid the printout over and I said, this is all of the verses in the Bible that specifically referred to just simple nonsexual nudity.

And she’s like, “Wow, that’s a lot of verses.” I said, “Yeah, and they’re all pro non-sexual nudity. This is not good news for you. This is bad news for you. These are all verses that are pro body acceptance.”

God made us in his image, not ashamed and called it very good. And so we went through each verse at a time and answered all the questions. And she says at the end, she says, “Well, what do we do about this?” Which was, it’s a really good question.

And Kim says, you wanna tell him what you said? In our house, we believe if God says it. No. If God is for it, we’re for it. And if God is against it, we’re against it.

And so my mouth fell open because I hadn’t, I actually hadn’t asked the question, what do we do about it? Right? I just studied it. Couldn’t help them any. And she’s like, “Well, if God is for it, we’re for it.” And I went. [speechless] Because what do you do with that? Right?

And so a couple of weeks later… (I didn’t say it wouldn’t be hard.) [laughing] But if God is for it, we believe the Bible. Right. That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? Is we believe the Bible is the word of God. And if God is for it, we’re for it.

So we’re Jim and Kim and been naturists for 20 plus years.

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Go to part 2.

Check out www.nakedandunashamed.org while you’re at it.