For the "Now I've seen it all" files

I ran across this news item this morning:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German Protestant youth group has put together a 2006 calendar with 12 staged photos depicting erotic scenes from the Bible, including a bare-breasted Delilah cutting Samson's hair and a nude Eve offering an apple.

"There's a whole range of biblical scriptures simply bursting with eroticism," said Stefan Wiest, the 32-year-old photographer who took the titillating pictures.

Anne Rohmer, 21, poses on a doorstep in garters and stockings as the prostitute Rahab, who is mentioned in both New and Old Testaments. "We wanted to represent the Bible in a different way and to interest young people," she told Reuters.

"Anyway, it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you are forbidden to show yourself nude."

Bernd Grasser, pastor of the church in Nuremberg where the calendar is being sold, was enthusiastic about the project.

"It's just wonderful when teenagers commit themselves with their hair and their skin to the Bible," he said.

It's hard to know what to say to such nonsense. I'll grant that no one verse states, "Thou shalt not appear nude in calendar photos." But what of Philippians 4:8: "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy--meditate on these things"? What of Psalm 101:3a: "I will set nothing wicked before my eyes"? What of 1 Timothy 2:9-10: "In like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but, which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works"? I think the Bible is clear that such behavior is not pleasing to our Lord.

Perhaps what saddens me most about this silly thing is the depiction of Rahab in the garb of her old profession--Rahab, in whose heart the sovereign Redeemer worked, so that she gave one of the most magnificent professions of faith in Scripture: "The Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath'" (Joshua 2:11). Christ died to pay for Rahab's sins, to cast them out of God' sight. Now we, the church, want to depict them.

It is interesting to see how often in the writings of the Old Testament prophets God speaks of exposing Israel's nakedness because of her harlotry. I'm not sure whether those passages ought to be taken literally or metaphorically, but now that we have the church, the Israel of God, exposing its nakedness voluntarily, I can't help wondering whether God's judgment is at work in our midst.

GtG