Applied Amateur Theology: Do Women Sin?
A reader named Nate Winchester sent me this link to the following article (http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/Do.Women.sin.htm)
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:
- Internet Porn
- Pride
- Lust
- Anger
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:
- Lack of self esteem
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 considerable 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!”
Nate Winchester comments: Seems like the church (all of us) needs to start teaching original sin some more.
My comment: lack of self-esteem, sometimes called humility, is a feature and not a bug. Let a woman esteem herself for her virtue and chastity in her youth, for her maternal love and self-sacrifice after marriage, for her wisdom in her old age, but let her not esteem herself for the sake of self esteem, lest it swell into pride, which is a sin.
G.K. Chesterton’s comment (which is wiser and wittier than either of ours):
Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin–a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.
But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt.
Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.
The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do.
The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.
My comment again: Here we have seen a triumph of what Mr Chesterton called the new theologians. The ladies being asked above to list their sins cannot do it.
The wisdom of having parishioners go to weekly confession and the sacrament of penance gains additional weight from this example. When done correctly, one is supposed to examine one’s conscience in the light of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, in what one as done and what one has failed to do in thought and word and deed.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
