Modesty, Nakedness and Spiritual Warfare

Have you ever wondered why our spiritual life and our protection against evil is couched in language about "putting on clothing"?

The Bible implores us over and over to prepare for spiritual warfare by 'clothing ourselves"... 

• Romans 13:14: "Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh".
• Ephesians 4:24: "and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness".
• Galatians 3:27: "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ".
• Isaiah 61:10: "He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness".
• Ephesians 6: "...be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God".

It’s worth remembering that when we choose our outfits for the day, we are making not only moral choices but choices that impinge on our role in conducting spiritual warfare. 

Soon to be saint, Archbishop Fulton Sheen noticed something interesting about spiritual warfare. He said that there are three ways to recognize the demonic at work in the world: loss of identity, violence and love of public nudity. He said, "One of the hallmarks of the demon was an inordinate love of nudity – that is, to flaunt what should not be flaunted, and a disregard... for modesty, to veil what should be veiled."

In the Gospels we can see the demonic desire for nudity at work in the final hours of Jesus's earthly life. Nearing the height of spiritual warfare, Jesus was stripped of his garments…After mocking Jesus and putting a scarlet robe on him, the soldiers stripped him again of his own clothes before leading him to Golgotha. They divided his outer garments into four shares, one for each soldier, and cast lots for his seamless tunic (John 19:23-24). This act directly fulfilled Psalm 22:18: "They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots". 

Those who knowingly oppose Christ have a disregard for modesty and a desire to flaunt what should be veiled. This is because they have an aversion to holiness and as a biblical principle, we veil that which is holy. In their pornographic mentality, they love to strip us of our garments. 

In the Bible it says that our bodies become living, breathing walking temples where God dwells within. If you’re familiar with the temple in the Bible, then you know that the veil covered over the holy of holies is the actual room where God dwelt. The veil separated the profane from the precincts of the sacred. This was primarily for the protection of the people who were not prepared to see God face to face. 

In the Gospel of Luke (8:27), the man possessed by a "Legion" of demons is described as having "worn no clothes" for a long time. Once healed by Jesus, he is found "clothed and in his right mind". Why would the devil tempt someone to remove their clothing? Did he strip them of their garments to shame them? To provoke others to sexual desire? To invert the loving action of God who provided Adam and Eve (after the Fall and after they experienced shame) with "garments of skins." The answer is ‘all the above’. 

After they sinned against God Adam and Eve realized their nakedness because something inside of them died-their innocence. They began to look at each other with a disordered desire and their relationship became a power struggle. Their nakedness went from something ordered to good to now a self-imposed curse. The devil always seeks to reverse good and turn it into evil. Then God reverses evil and turns it into good. This is a seemingly unending ‘cat and mouse’ figure eight loop of inversion in the spiritual warfare that takes place supernaturally and sometimes we see it play out in the natural world as well. For humans it sometimes revolves around whether we are clothed or unclothed. 

In the third century, Saint Perpetua was martyred infront of a crowd by wild animals. When she was thrown into the air by a wild bull in the arena at Carthage, her first action upon falling violently to the dirt was to rearrange her torn dress to cover her thigh, caring more for modesty than for her intense pain. In her keen sense of right and wrong , good and evil, she acted to reverse the devil’s plan to not only kill her but to undress her and shame her in the process.

In a similar example we have Saint Eulalia of Mérida, a 4th-century martyr who refused to make sacrifices to Roman gods, after she was stripped and executed by Roman authorities, God sent a blanket of snow to cover her dead body and to protect her purity as it laid in the road. This supernatural burial shroud was a reminder to all that our redemption from evil and the influence that evil has in our lives will be reversed by the One who paid the ransom for our souls in his own blood.

In every case we see that God's intention is to cover us because he sees us as sacred. Saint Paul did too, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" (1 Cor 3:16). Each time it is those who are under the influence of the devil that attempt to uncover us and  shame us.

God is afirming our divine likeness (imago dei) and the devil is trying to strip it away reducing us to animality. Don't get me wrong. This is not a puiritanical judgment against nakedness. Obviously, in the context of the God-centered covenantal marital embrace, nakedness is beautiful and holy because it is ordered to conjugal love and the unitive and procreative fruit of that love.  

Just last century, in 1917, Our Lady of Fatima revealed that whether we are modestly clothed or not is very important to God. Mary expressed to Saint Jacinta Marta that certain fashions would be introduced that would gravely offend her Divine Son, Jesus. This message was part of a broader call from modesty in the warning against moral decline associated with immodest dress and behavior.

In the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic church it says, “Modesty protects the intimate center of the person… Modesty protects the mystery of persons and their love. It encourages patience and moderation in loving relationships… Modesty is decency… There is a modesty of feelings as well as of the body…Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies.” (CCC #2521-2523).

In his Theology of the Body, St. John Paul II taught that modesty is not about hiding something "shameful," but about protecting the inherent goodness and mystery of the person. 

In conclusion, our clothing or lack thereof, speaks to our own understanding of our worth and our inner dignity. In stripping us of our garments, the devil seeks to strip us of our dignity.

Pope John Paul II said it best, “The problem with pornography (and immodest dress) is not that it shows too much of the person, but that it shows far too little.”