A Fact About Circumcision

There is a fact about Biblical circumcision that I have thus far not elaborated upon.  It is so obvious, in one sense, that it is perhaps very easy to overlook: for circumcision to count as an outward sign of personal commitment to Yahweh, the penises of circumcised men must be seen by others.  For circumcision to be a sign to a broad audience, the male body must be displayed publicly.

The first reference to circumcision in the Bible is in Genesis 17, with God manifesting himself to Abram, changing his name from Abram to Abraham, promising to bring nations into existence from him, and establishing a covenant with him.  During this appearance Yahweh instructs Abraham and his male descendants (as well as foreign males who would live with the Israelites) to undergo circumcision as a formal "sign of the covenant" (Genesis 17:11).  As I already stated, this could not qualify as an effective sign unless it was seen by others.

There is no way that a circumcised penis can serve as a general sign of anything unless it is visible.  For a man’s circumcision to signify anything to another person at all, the man’s body, or at least the pubic region, must be exposed to public onlookers!  In a society suffocated by prudery, the only people who would likely ever see a circumcised penis once a man is no longer a child would be the circumcised man himself or his wife, should he have one.  But this is in dramatic conflict with the Biblical objective of Jewish circumcision.  The entire point was that it showed to external onlookers that a man belonged to Yahweh.

Even many Christians who do not hold that circumcision remains a moral obligation for followers of Yahweh undergo circumcision.  Does every circumcised Christian man need to walk around naked?  Not at all!  Just as the Bible does not condemn nudity because it is not sinful (Deuteronomy 4:2, Romans 7:7, 1 John 3:4), it never prescribes nudity as a morally mandatory thing.  Human nudity is objectively good on the Christian worldview (Genesis 2:25, 1:31), and Genesis indirectly but strongly implies that God does prefer for humans to be naked since that is the state he created them to be in, but there is no obligation for any human to not wear clothing.

Not every man or woman is comfortable with being naked before others, even in front of friends, and not everyone has a desire to expose their body in public--whether because of personal preference, dissatisfaction with his or her body, a culturally ingrained sense of embarrassment, or a fear of experiencing physiological genital arousal.  God never demanded that men be forced to expose their bodies to the public against their wills.  It is immoral to force a person to be naked, even as a punishment for a Biblical crime.  Any circumcised man who voluntarily wishes to be naked does not sin, however.

There is nothing shameful or immoral about men and women seeing and admiring human genitalia (which is entirely nonsexual on its own), or any other part of the human body, especially when that admiration or observation is theologically-charged.  Conservative Christians who pretend like nudity is an affront to God can't maintain their charade by appealing to the book they claim to derive their values from, because the Bible actually says the opposite of what they mistake for the truth.