Who Told Adam he was Naked!

In Become a Better You, Joel Osteen’s interpretation of “Who told Adam he was naked?” is significant in revealing the heart of Joel’s message. Joel says this is the “first” example of Satan as the “accuser,” that Satan caused man to look at his own inadequacy, resulting in man’s low self-esteem.

But Satan did not tell Adam he was naked. After Adam sinned, the Bible says his “eyes were opened” and he saw that he was naked. Adam and Eve’s nakedness is a symbolic, though real, picture of their “nothingness” apart from God. Without God, Adam had nothing. That’s what nakedness represents: deficit, inadequacy and nothingness. At the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, Jesus says to the church at Laodicea, “you think you are rich…and have need of nothing, and you do not know that you are…naked.”

Adam and Eve’s low self-esteem was not because they believed a lie by Satan that they were naked, i.e., deficit. No! They lost their good esteem because they lost God’s image. They really were naked! They were deficit! And realizing that, they became, for the first time, painfully self-conscious: self-centeredness was born. All they had left was their own goodness, but that only “separated” them from God. As self-centered persons, they became, in today’s psychological jargon, issue-centered. They began looking at their issues trying to fix them (too bad they couldn't have found a good 'psycho'-therapist!). And when unable to fix their issues, they tried to cover them up. And when that didn’t work, they tried to hide them.

If Joel is not careful, he will lead people to believe, like the Laodiceans that they are OK when they are not. Satan is not the reason for poorly esteeming ourselves. Sin is. Self is. Is Joel's teaching producing a Laodicean church? You be the judge.