Who Told You That You Were Naked

When Eve rocked the Garden of Eden in the image of God do you think she ever worried about the way she looked? Did she fix her hair, check her complexion, or try to hide her tummy? Was self-concern even a thought?

Could it be that confidence was once natural to the image of God in woman, because self-absorption was not?

Wasn't the lure of the original sin in Genesis 3 to consider self? All the enemy had to do was make the woman contemplate herself and feel inadequate. “…you will be like God…” Genesis 3:4b. Don’t you think she wondered, “You mean, I’m not? What am I like then?” Eve doubted her created image, and in her doubt she reached for worth apart from God, and in so doing fell.

I’m glad there are no visuals for what the first woman looked like. In spite of her sin legacy, she would have become an idol of the flawless woman. However, while Eve cannot be imitated, idols of external beauty reign. Don’t they? 

We are obsessed with the outward appearance. God-like is always reaching for the external. Our hair, skin, nails, clothes, careers, our children, and our homes: these are the things that matter most when we estimate a woman in our neighborhood or in the mirror.

We are no less guilty than Eve. We have bought into the lie that we are inadequate, and because we believe The Liar, we reach for the stuff of this world to make us feel complete. Nothing that we reach for apart from God will ever complete the image of God in woman, because God’s image in us is Spirit.

I will never forget my idol of beauty. I never knew her name or her life, I only knew her image, and to me it was perfection. The longer I stared at her the more I hated myself. While I lamented to my husband, “Why didn’t God make me like her,” I knew it was to God I had to go with my broken heart. So when I was alone I cried to my Creator, “God, why did you let me see that I am ugly?” And over my sobs and through the ancient garden blew a tender whisper meant just for me, “Who told you that you were naked?”

I was silenced. Consider the source of doubt. 

Doubt in my created image is always because of my sin, and there could be nothing uglier or more pathetic. Strength in my created image only grows as I discipline myself to look away from what I doubt in me to simply love someone else. Is that hard to do? Absolutely. Forgetting about my own insecurities requires the power of God in me to turn my head toward the one He has placed before me. Changing my mind about what I’m not and who He is in me demands strong intention. And opening my eyes to see the heart that is in front of me, without comparing her to myself, requires the healing touch that comes through the Word of God. Again, and again I pray, “God help me see her and not me.” And you know what? He does.

Our self-perception, like Eve’s, has been broken. We see inadequacy and perfection through a distorted lens. Only by looking at ourselves and others through His grace will true beauty be evident.

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3:1-4

We long for the image of God on the earth. If it truly is beauty that we long for, will not find it – past lipstick and shoes - to the soul of a woman created by God to be His image on the earth? 

“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when he appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.” I John 3:2

We are children of God. Tell me something. Where is the flaw in that?