Ask Doug: Some of the history and art books in our classical curriculum have photos of ancient paintings that include nude woman. Should I be concerned, particularly for my boys? What is your perspective on nudity in art, particularly when it comes to education?
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Douglas Wilson’s Blog
2 Comments
Doug and Ben,
I appreciate you tackling this subject because it is a sensitive topic and one we need to discuss especially as regards our sons. I disagree with your premise, however, that we need to expose our children to nudity in their formative years to prepare them to handle the onslaught of immorality they will receive from the world as they enter adulthood. This kind of thinking works well for the issues surrounding alcohol where we have found that helping our children understand moderation and the enjoyment of God’s gifts guards them against the temptation to drunkenness. So we might give our children some wine during our weekly Sabbath meal.
In a similar fashion, it sounds like you are advocating exposing our children to a “little bit of nudity” (not an exact quote from you) to guard them against lust later on. This concept works well for wine, not so well for nudity and lust. We do not have a direct command against alcoholic drink and in fact have many scriptures showing the blessing of moderate use of alcohol. We do have direct commands against both adultery and nudity. It ends up sounding to me (father of 9 so this is rather important to me) like you advocate a “little bit of adultery” to steel them against a lot of adultery later on.
It is true that the text of scripture has many explicit examples that bring to mind rather vivid images. Does that then give us license to depict those images?
Concerned,
David
An art book (or artbook) may mean a conventional book on art or art history, or an artist’s book, which is a work of art in the form of a book, usually produced in a small limited edition, often not just using normal printing techniques. The term might also cover graphic novels, books of anime and other types of graphics, or books of fine art photography. It is not generally used for illuminated manuscripts, though these are both art and books.-
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