Naked

 

I recently finished a long biographical novel about the life of the Renaissance artist Michelangelo. I first read this book many years ago as a teenager and then picked it up again when my book club chose it for our mid-winter reading. The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone seems to be very well researched, so I trust most of the basic facts. Many of the details the author would have to imagine. For this reason, I am not certain that the remark that sticks in my mind is one that was truly uttered verbatim, but I imagine that the sentiment, at least, is accurate.

By all accounts, Michelangelo was a man who respected God and, to some degree, wanted to honor him. Certainly many of his most famous works are based on biblical characters, and he is depicted as thinking deeply about the experiences of people such as Moses, David, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. According to Stone, the artist admired the great genius of God and the magnificence of the human body as the pinnacle of his creation. Good people through the ages have disagreed about the appropriateness of painting or sculpting nudes. It seems that, after Michelangelo finished painting The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, some prominent churchmen were highly offended by nude figures, but the Pope is reported to have said, “We will all stand naked before God.”

Certainly, the Pope was no paragon of holiness, despite how this office is viewed by Roman Catholics, but those words really struck a chord with me, and I kept thinking that I had read a similar remark in the Bible. A short search led me to Hebrews 4:13—“. . . there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” A closer look at the context of this passage shows that the preceding verse speaks of the power of God’s word to pierce our spirits and to “judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

It seems pretty clear that the message here is that we can have no secrets before God. There are thoughts and actions we would like to keep hidden from others, and sometimes we can do that. But we can hide nothing from God. Is this fact scary or comforting? I think it’s both. Possibly my favorite portion of scripture in recent years is Psalm 139. The big message of the first six verses of this psalm is that God knows me. He knows “when I sit down and when I rise up.” He knows what I’m thinking and what I’m going to say even before I know it myself. There is no place we can go to get away from God’s penetrating eye. And yet, read these words: “How precious also are Thy thoughts to me, O God!”(17)

 Scripture shows me that God is not only all-seeing, he is also all-loving. Even as we do not despise our own children for their faults, God does not turn away from me but turns to me and beckons me closer to his side regardless of my ugliness. I want to please him, certainly, but I am so grateful that he loves me even when he sees my naked heart and mind.

 --Sherry Poff