Ascetics and mystics have looked at this passage and reasoned that, since they covered their nakedness, there was something innately evil about the human body, and especially those parts of it that we call “private.”

No. God had already pronounced His blessings on the creation (1:31). It was all very good. There is nothing wrong with our bodies. What has changed is our minds, and our hearts. There was suddenly a “knowledge of good and evil.”

Wicked thoughts entered that had not entered before. Desires became twisted and warped. There in the hearts of this couple was not only every skin color and every personality trait, but also every sin that would ever be committed. The disease had been introduced, and all would be infected by it.

That is not to say that Adam himself experienced all sin. He was not a murderer. But his first son was. Sin had been passed on, and has been ever since, even in the seemingly “best” of the human race.

With sin comes shame. The desire to cover. To hide. Thus the fig leaves, and later the skins.

God agreed with their efforts. With sin in the world, and all that that sin implies, covering would be necessary. Shame would be the order of the day. Modesty would be a requirement.

When evil has progressed even further, the shame of the first years is cast off. Nakedness re-emerges. Now there is not only sin, but pride about that sin. Gay pride. Adulterous pride. Pride of drunkenness and debauchery. The pendulum swings, shame is cast off altogether, and a civilization must be destroyed before it poisons all.

No, nothing wrong with the human body. Nothing wrong with acts of intimacy. “Marriage is honorable in all things, and the bed undefiled,” says Paul.

But that bed is the marriage bed. And it is occupied by holy people wanting a holy offspring, or it is a part of the curse that is ongoing. All bodies, all acts of intimacy, are seriously regulated by God in every generation. Those who ignore God’s boundaries only heap to themselves more and more shame.