"The woman you gave me, she...."

I just finished updating my reading journal, and I thought I'd cross over and expand on part of one of those posts. So here we go.

I recently read a book called Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. One of the most fascinating aspects of this book to me was her relation of the way women were often treated in the societies in which she grew.

One part of this broader issue was the issue of coverings for women. In Ali’s experience with Muslim writers, every lustful thought a man had was provoked by a woman, and was thus her sin, not his. Ali once asked why men don’t need to cover up, why it hadn’t been considered that a woman would likewise be driven to lustful thoughts at the sight of a man, and her listeners merely laughed at her.

I found this distressingly similar to the sort of talk I have heard in Christian circles. In one youth group I know of, there was an evening in which the group divided into girls and boys—the girls to talk about modesty and not provoking men, the boys to talk about pornography and not being provoked by women.

Granted, these are both subjects worth discussing. But they are by no means entirely gender-specific, and we do everyone a disservice by acting as though they are.

I have never, to my recollection, heard anyone say anything about male modesty—“Guys, if you think girls are attracted to your bare chests, have a little respect for them and yourselves and keep your shirts on!”—or about how women can be swayed into mental sins by the way men choose to talk about other women—Guy: “So-and-so is so hot"; Girl: "Unlike me/She's not that great/He's a jerk for only focusing on physical appearance/etc., etc., etc." (And men, before you tell me it's ridiculous that women would interpret you that incorrectly, tell me how it's not ridiculous that some men feel unduly enticed by bare shoulders. Isn't all sin inherently illogical, in the ultimate sense?) Likewise, I have never, to my recollection, heard women warned against ogling men, or of objectivizing them in the way they speak.

Are men more prone to lust than women are? Maybe, in general...but then, who decides that? When did lust become a men-only (or at least "men-mostly") sin, anyway?

Are women more prone to taking words out of context? Maybe, but in my experience men are at least as sensitive to how women talk to them as the other way around.

What if we stopped trying to classify sin, and instead shifted our focus to the object of this whole Christian life: Christ first and others second? What if we worked to keep our attitudes perpetually sacrificial towards each other, not because other people “make” us sin but because we desire to make other people strong? What if we focused on removing the log from our own eyes before going to our brothers—and sisters—in humility to address the specks in their eyes? What if we asked for help instead of bursting into self-righteous tantrums? What if we protected each other as fiercely as we protected ourselves?

I don't know about you, but that's the kind of world I want to live in...as well as the kind of world I often despair of. I know we'll never fully attain any of that here. I just want to see more people (myself included) practicing for the day when we will.