Theological snippet

A few weeks ago I read a news article about how the Vatican had conducted a confession booth survey and determined that men and women sin differently. It seems, based on people's confessions, that the number one sin for men is (shocker) lust, while the number one sin for women is pride. I dismissed the survey as blaringly flawed. What it showed us, I thought, is not that men and women sin differently, but that we've been culturally and religiously conditioned to think differently about what our own sins are.

I'm familiar with the common criticism from feminist and liberation theology of the idea that pride is the fundamental sin. Dorothee Soelle, among others, suggests that while for men pride may indeed be the fundamental sin, for women it is not pride but self-denial. I don't quite buy this, both because I think it's kind of presumptuous to name one blanket "fundamental sin," and because I personally know both men and women who need a reality check out of both of those places. But I have to admit the Vatican study made me reconsider. Why is it that women are more likely to view themselves as prideful? Because we're told to think and expect less of ourselves?

This came to mind because of a snippet of my preaching reading for tomorrow that caught my attention. It was an article on Hispanic preaching by Justo Gonzalez, and writing from a community on the periphery of American society, he too has an issue with this hangup on pride. He goes back to Genesis. People always say that Adam and Eve ate the apple to try to be like God--but as we know from the beginning of the story, Adam and Eve were already like God! Their sin, Gonzalez says, is that they forgot.

As much as we can name one fundamental sin, I think this is eloquently stated. After all, forgetting we are like God can manifest itself in so many ways. It can be self-denial, thinking we're not good enough without that bite of the apple. Or it can look prideful, as if we define ourselves, forgetting that there is someone's image who we have been created in. And I think it can look like both at the same time, in men and women and people from everywhere around the world. So...there's someone else's theological nugget of wisdom to think about for the day! :)