One’s view of women says what one’s view of men is; one’s view of men says what one’s view of women is. If you think of women as the temptress, you think of men as seduced. Carolyn Custis James has a great post about this, and I’d like to carry her post to this site:

“. . . you are the devil’s gateway. . . you are she who persuaded him, whom the devil did not dare attack. . . . Do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on your sex, lives on in this age; the guilt, necessarily, lives on too.”

Tertullian

The view of woman as “temptress” has early roots and is alive and well today both in the wider culture (see links below) and sadly also in Christian circles.

I was a speaker at a gathering of pastors who were interested in doing a better job of utilizing women’s gifts. The first question asked during the open forum afterwards stunned me, “If we work with women, won’t we be tempted?”

What followed was not a candid discussion about the heart and where is the real problem when there is a moral failure (as in as what goes on behind closed doors when a man is alone with his computer), but a laundry list of precautions to safeguard oneself from moral hazards when working or dealing with women.

Women find this kind of thinking offensive, and rightly so. This low view of women conflicts with the Bible’s high redemptive view of us. What strikes me as I think about this, however, is that this negative view of women also reflects badly on men as testosterone driven, morally weak, and unable to control themselves. This is not to say that our sex-saturated culture doesn’t create serious problems for everyone. But it is one thing to think wisely about modesty and conduct and quite another to view women as seductresses.

So here are my questions:

First, are men also outraged by the temptress view of women because of what it implies about them? And second, is it possible to hold a low view of women without degrading men?

Your thoughts?