The Baptist's Shame
The laughter of girls? It came to him on the wisp of a breeze. It was faint but if he listened carefully, Yes! There it is again! As certain as someone calling him, beckoning him, he followed the sound. Light spirited, pleasant laughter has its own appeal. It lifts the heart. It raises anticipation -- especially feminine laughter. Especially to a virile young man of thirty who had spent most of his life in the wilderness alone. As he stepped along the grass, around the rocks, through the trees, the laughter grew louder, happy girlish voices. He could hear the splash of water. The ground beneath him littered and soiled with familiar black spots -- olives, fallen from their source of nourishment. It was then that he realized he was standing in an olive grove. The earth fell away into a downward slope. He knew it led to the river. He spent so much of his time near the river. It was his source of nourishment. He often fished its waters. More often, he bathed there. Now as he stood among the olives, he saw four lovely maidens standing in the waist-deep current. They were naked as the day they were born.
When first he saw them, he averted his eyes and turned in retreat. Leave them! Leave them their privacy, leave them their innocence, but he could not. It was as if an unseen force turned his head and caused his eyes to gaze upon their stunning nudity. How is it, thought he, that God so fashioned the feminine form to be the most elegant and exquisite expression of natural beauty? In creating her, he must have exhausted his creative resources. Why might he have done that? If sexual feelings are so wicked, so evil, how is it that the Creator himself formed their compulsion? How is it that the masterpiece of God’s creative genius is the central, the essential core and essence of sexual provocation? He knew that there is no satisfactory answer to this question. Apart from his devotion to God itself, never had he felt such compulsion. But now, his feet refused to move. He felt as though he were invading something private and precious. Guilt and a sense of twisted shame disturbed him, but he could not move. He could no longer avert his eyes and as he watched, he felt blood surge in his loins. When this happened, the shame was palpable, unbearable. But he stood transfixed to the scene before him, unable to arrest shameful feelings, unable to stop his despicable behavior.
John sat on the flat rock in front of the cave that had become his home, legs folded beneath him. His hair still wet from another of the frequent washings he gave it, dripped water on the stone around him. Grasping a handful of the red-brown strands, he combed vigorously, freeing it of persistent tangles. Nazirite! Hah!, he exclaimed in silent frustration. As soon as it dried, he would oil it and once again, his waist-length hair would be the talk of all the women in Judea. But he hated it. He hated his lonely life. He hated this cave. He hated the rock on which he sat. Visions of what his eyes had seen persistently haunted his thoughts. Intruding into his dreams, he now often awoke to find that he had soiled himself in the night. Why? What was happening to him? Why would God allow it? His whole existence seemed unnatural and artificial.
His parents had gone to their reward many years ago. He had taken the vow when he was twelve years old, as other Jewish boys were going to the Temple in Jerusalem; John took a vow to be separated to the Lord. He had never had wine, not so much as a cool, fresh grape. He had never touched or been near a dead body. John had no one. No friends. He had spent most of his life in this wilderness and he was sick of it.
Conversely, John was not a man who enjoyed people. He was a man whose judgment of society was usually scornful. He saw others as spending their lives in consumptive living, self-serving and secular. Hence, he became a recluse. He made his way into the wilderness, where he lived in caves and learned how to survive an inhospitable environment. He held himself aloof from others and enjoyed being alone – at first. He was eccentric. He abstained from just about everything. He was, after all, a Nazarite, dedicated and set apart to God. Although he had blinding desires he had never, like Sampson, another Nazirite whose sexual escapades were well known, allowed himself any sexual latitude. That is why his encounter at the river had upset him so deeply. It was a weakness in his character, he felt; a burden he did not understand. Can you understand why a character flaw would distress such a man as John? It was unacceptable, not to be tolerated in others, and ten thousand times more -- not in himself!
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Copyright: Paul D. Morris, 2006