A Brief Trip Into Trouble (Part II)

A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.

A man has six items in his bathroom: a toothbrush, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn.
The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify most of these items.

A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change and she does.

Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

Any married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing.

Ah, gender differences. So the context of these thoughts is this article from a couple posts ago. The post talked about students identifying pornography, lust, anger, and pride the four sins that men more strongly struggled with, while self-esteem, resentment, bitterness, and lack of trust were the four woman tended to identify. The article goes on talk about the perceived severity of these sins, and that Christians tend to view men's sins as "more severe" than women's.

So a few thoughts. First, one idea that leaps out to me is women's reactions to men's struggles with lust, especially pornography. A quote from Every Man's Battle neatly capture the essence:

Brenda, Fred's wife, also participated in the interviews. She summarized the typical female response: "I don't want to sound mean, but because women don't generally experience this problem, it seems to us that some men are uncontrolled perverts who don't think about anything but sex. It even affects my trust in men, knowing that pastors and deacons could have this problem. I don't like it that men lustfully take advantage of women in their thoughts...It's at least some comfort to know that many men have this problem. Since most men are affected, we really can't call you guys perverts."

I'm not clear that the typical female reaction of disgust/perversion to men's struggles with lust has an equivalent counter-part with men. I don't know if I've ever heard a man respond the same way to a woman's struggles with self-esteem, resentment, bitterness, or distrust. (Also, I am not implying that women's responses are inappropriate.)

Secondly, I'm reminded of something I once read about suicide (paraphrased):

We easily assume that suicide is related to a lack of self-love. But in fact, suicide is strongly driven by self-love: The current circumstance seems too painful, and therefore the most self-loving course of action is to terminate self.

I have a similar thought about low self-esteem. If we truly thought little of ourselves, we would not greatly struggle with thinking little of ourselves. But a part of us instinctively grasps that we are valuable, that we are in God's image...and we are drawn like a moth toward flame by that which communicates even a sliver of that value to us.

I definitely have a hard time buying that low self-esteem is a "major" sin (although I don't quite agree with Keith that it is an infirmity). I accept that low self-esteem is a consequence of various major sins (disbelief, idolatry come to mind).

The last thought that comes to mind is a Larry Crabb comment about two halves of our evil selves: The animal self and the diabolical self. We often fight (and win) against the animal self (e.g. lust) only to get completely blindsided by the diabolical self (e.g. pride).

I'll try and post some thoughts on gender sins next time.