Modesty

Bit of a head-scratcher today.  After reading this article today out of what I can only justify as perverse curiosity, I was struck with a thought:

"What?"

If you can't be bothered to read the whole article, the gist of it is that wearing a bikini at the beach is the physical and basically the moral equivalent of walking around in just your underwear.  So far so good.  This is actually a very reasonable and cogent argument.  It's the kicker that gets me.  It's the "therefore we shouldn't do it" bit.

So I've been sitting here ever since with my wheels turning, trying to figure out what the logic is behind this argument.  And I don't get it.  Why would God care what we wear?

If you're interested to know, and I have no recollection if I've ever discussed this on the blog before, but I'm not really an atheist or an agnostic.  If I had to be pigeonholed I would tend to say I'm a Roman Catholic, but that's not the whole story.  It would take more than the scope of an entire blogpost to describe where I stand religiously/faith-wise/spiritually.  Without trying to sound super high on myself, I think the best way to describe it would be to say that I'm in a state of spiritual crisis.

Point being: I'm not an atheist out to just bash somebody else's beliefs, but neither am I lockstep fundie who's not going to think about things.

So here's my problem.  Didn't God make us naked?  Don't we come out naked?  At what point between being a baby and being, I don't know, thirteen or whatever, does being naked become bad?

Did God say anything about being naked?  As I recall, in the story of Eden, it was Adam and Eve that clothed themselves because they ate from the tree of knowledge.  And GOD WAS MAD AT THEM FOR DOING IT.  So, if anything, modesty should be considered a sin.

But, who am I to judge?  I have no idea.  I can't fathom how some people make the theological leaps they do.  But, I'm forced to wonder, how does someone who says that homosexuality is bad because it's "unnatural" also say that the decidedly unnatural state of being clothed is good?  I don't know.  I don't get it.