Find Religion

With the recent Vanessa Hudgens fiasco, I got to thinking…should we be ashamed of being naked? A lot of High School Musical fans are speaking out against Vanessa or publicly “forgiving” her on their blogs and websites. She’s come out with a statement saying that she wishes she had never taken the pictures and that she’s embarrassed and sorry that they’ve leaked to the web.

I wonder what God thinks about all of this.

Now, admittedly, I don’t think God likes the idea of throwing out naked pictures for the world to see. And I’m not too crazy about the thought of someone who is barely legal thinking that she loves her boyfriend so much that she wants him to see her naked. However, the concept in and of itself, it a bit deeper than “don’t take naked pictures of yourself.” Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with celebrating the human body. Given, it can be done in classy ways (and pornographic pictures are not it), but when we’re talking just about nakedness, I think too many Christians have their panties in a wad.

After all, the naked human body is the closest thing we have to an image of God, right?

In other cultures, sexuality is embraced. You’ll see fertility artwork created in almost every ancient culture, and in some religions, it is still celebrated quite deeply. The Karma Sutra is a religious text at its core, for example.

I’m not saying that people should have premarital sex or jump into a physical relationship at a young age…but instead of telling Vanessa that we “forgive” her (when really, has she wronged anyone? If you monitor your children’s activities, they shouldn’t have ever seen the pictures), perhaps we should congratulate her for feeling confident and happy in her own skin and for wanting to celebrate that.

Bottom line? There’s some gray area here. Stop making everything black or white, wrong or right. God has given us beautiful gray areas with every issue, so enjoy it.