Do Women sin?
It’s happened to me three
times now so I need to ask you about it.
All three times were so similar it’s eerie.
In a spiritual formation
class we work on how Christians can get victory over sin as a part of their
spiritual growth. To start the unit I ask students to list the sins Christians face most today. They list four sins immediately:
Then they pause…they run out
of sins. These four got listed quickly each
time. In fact I’ve come to call them the “foul four” sins. Then they run out of gas and just sit there
thinking.
At the pause I usually ask,
“OK, for each sin on our list let’s decide as a class if men or women are more
inclined to this sin. In all three
classes they have agreed that while women are sometimes tempted in these areas
men are more inclined to these four
sins.
So I say, “Only women
participate now—decide among yourselves what four sins you’d add to the list to
that you think women are more
inclined toward. Silence. Furrowed brows.
Thinking… [long pause]
Really! Each time the women who (along with the men)
had quickly offered the “foul four” are at a loss to quickly add “besetting
sins” that women seem more inclined toward.
And now for the part that got me to write on this subject.
The last two times I did this
activity the women unanimously agreed on what they considered the chief besetting sin of women:
I’m serious. So were they.
The last two times I did this when a women
offered “Self esteem” the entire group of women audibly responded, “Yeah—that’s
it!”
You see where I’m
headed? Lack of self esteem? To the men in the class these co-eds were
saying, “While you men struggle with
pornography, lust, pride and anger we women struggle with not thinking highly
enough of ourselves.” (Several men
in the class always visibly roll their eyes.)
To be fair, the women (after
considerably time) usually add three other sins: resentment, bitterness, and lack
of trust. But even their expanded
list appeared to the guys in the class that men struggle with really bad sins
while women fight minor sins. This male
response was actually summed up the last time I did this. One male student
exclaimed, “Gee, if I just struggled with those sins I’d be a saint!” To him “women’s temptations” were
misdemeanors while his own besetting sins were obviously capital crimes.
So, it got thinking. Are men more really inclined to
sin than women—are they somehow in the grip of original sin more than
women? Can this be true? In much of the ancient world women were
considered weaker moral creatures with a greater inclination to sin them
males—has this been reversed in the modern world?
Or, have we labeled “male
sins” crimes while mislabeling the temptations of women as less severe?
Or, are female college students (at least in my college) more unaware
of sin than males?
Or what other explanation is there for this repeated phenomenon I’ve
seen?
Now, I know that dealing with
sin and gender differences is touchy territory—all generalizations have
exceptions and are not always true
(or they would not be generalizations).
But I keep sensing that my students are uncovering something
interesting. What is it? What are they discovering about themselves, the church
culture or theology?
What do you think? How would you explain this?
è Click here
to respond the first seven days after the date posted Keith Drury March 11, 2005
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