We’re all familiar with feet. For some, they represent a platform for now-ubiquitous sneaker culture; for others, they are the primary mechanism of athletic and transportative activity. Some view the foot as an intimate phenomenon to be politely concealed; others, a badge of naturalistic bravado.
At Covenant, I have noticed a profoundly disturbing trend to embrace the notion that one’s feet are to be constantly presented: perhaps even flaunted. This is not to say that the foot need be an object of shame—rather, I hope that we will learn to assign the foot its proper place in the order of our lives. This can only be done when our sense of the naked foot’s place in society is esteemed in the highest and demonstrated as such with discernment and wisdom. It is my fundamental argument that the movement to parade the nude foot across campus has all the designs of American hyper-consumerist excess; precisely, an inability to find peace in the holy mystery of God’s transcendent, sacred reality.
Photo from stock.adobe.com Edited by: Daniel Holdridge
I ask, dear reader, that you first consider the simple fact that the bare foot becomes immediately problematic in discussions of public health. Not only does the bearer of the uncovered foot place themselves at risk—they pose a threat to the hygenic solvency of the entire campus. In an article for Time magazine, Angela Haupt outlines physiological issues that arise from the late obsession with barefootedness. She cites Dr. Miguel Cunha, noting that serious bacterial infections can be introduced to the body through tiny cuts in the feet. Along with this, the standard biomechanics of feet are disrupted by prolonged foot-nudity. Such conditions can expedite “... the formation of bunions and hammertoes, or lead to conditions such as plantar fasciitis, shin splints and Achilles tendonitis.” Even if such conditions are palatable to you, consider that your shamelessly exposed feet will continue to spread fungal infections and planar warts across campus.
As if the physiologically odious qualities of the bared foot were not enough, the metaphysical ideology promoted by such practice is similarly vile, even pathological. Whereas our first reaction upon seeing a person experiencing the world with bare feet might be to assume their ontic innocence, perhaps their pure sense of joy in the manifest bodiliness of creation, it is precisely this aesthetic of purity that masks the repulsive stench of enlightenment rationalism’s reification. Like flowers that cover the lye-riddled corpses of a mass grave, the happy-go-lucky sensibility of the bare-footer disguises his or her schizophrenic impulse to assert pure, effulgent positivity upon the consciences of their peers.
Historically, the bare foot has been a signifier of the sacred or the set-apart, designating certain places as deserving of direct ontological recognition. This recognition was manifested in ritual practices that affected a person’s body. Consider Moses’ response to the burning bush (Exodus 2:3-5), or Christ’s washing of the disciples' feet (John 13:5). These actions articulate the uncovered foot as intimate, personal and sacred. Such trends continue into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, albeit with less appreciation for the holiness of the foot. Think ‘No shirt, no shoes, no service.’ Feet, as social signifiers in the West, have historically been understood as concrete objects whose presencing is predicated by intimacy or comfort, and thus to walk into a restaurant unshod is to command an air of indecency. For Christ to use his hands to wash the disciples feet asserts his role as the servant of all mankind (a fundamentally intimate role) and provides us with a metric for appreciating feet that goes beyond simplistic and liberal permissiveness.
It is precisely this idea of permissiveness that has pushed me to write this article with such avidly inflammatory rhetoric. As the culture of the West increasingly turns to allowance, availability and positivity, how can the church hold the ground of sacredness, of the set apart and the unavailable? Certainly not by caving to the idea that one’s feet should be seen whenever one decides. To traipse through this world, acting as if the social conventions of shoes had never been invented, as if one were a primordial faerie creature, is to fundamentally deny the specificity and particularity of God’s holiness in the world. Yes, we are reformed and ever-reforming, yes, the temple curtain has been torn, but this does not mean we are entitled to treat the entire world as our bedroom.
The beauty of place, and by extension the beauty of the human body, is found precisely in the sense with which we know it. If we encounter the body only as a febrile, positivistic fact, we are left with a fundamentally fascist thing, a political schema encoded within the aesthetics of joy and freedom. The perceived liberalism of the publicized bare foot is the same perceived liberalism promised by the Sexual Revolution and its cascading social movements. It is the same liberalism promised by social media platforms. It is the same liberalism promised by corrupt politicians. Brothers and sisters—do not be fooled by the allure of comfort and happiness that a bare-footed culture is begging you to accept.
If we hold to God’s word, and to the tenets of Reformed faith, we will preserve the intimacy of our feet for appropriate times and places, rather than thrusting their stinking, sweating presence upon all of campus. I implore you, think first of the community and the faith in which you find yourself. I do not write this sarcastically. I don’t intend to mock your peculiar obsession with the crunchy, yerba-swilling, Patagonia wearing vibe (if anything, that vibe will be intensified if you kept your hundred and sixty dollar Chacos on)!
I write, simply, to encourage a straightforward question: why are you taking your shoes off? Do you truly want to feel the grass or carpet or whatever under your toes? Did the spirit truly move you to attend classes clothed in a manner that would bar you from most other institutions and businesses? Or do you want others to see your sickeningly pale leg nubs? Do you want to experience the raw reality of God’s created order? Or do you want to be perceived by your community as some type of radical eco-dilettante, radiating peace, love and bunion fumes?
Respectfully, in Christ, with grace resplendent, and humble intercession, simply consider this the next time you even think about taking your dogs out in public. You know who you are.
Thumbnail photo from stock.adobe.com Edited by: Daniel Holdridge.