u/Affectionate_Use9936

Coming from this thread. The very classic problem of evil.

But as you know, there has never been a resolution to this problem as every attempt to define it either leads to a contradiction or to something kind of hand-wavy response like "God works in mysterious ways."

Given how foundational this problem is to Christianity, wouldn't it be easier to just say that God simply does not exist? Or that God is not good and omnipotent? And that there is no concept of evil - just biological selection.

I’ve been thinking about how preaching on lust has historically been gendered, and whether that framing still serves the sheep well in 2026. A recent video from a popular psychiatrist on YouTube nudged me toward writing this out.

The pattern I grew up under was something like this: sermons on Matthew 5:28 aimed at men, modesty exhortations aimed at women, and a tacit assumption that women’s struggles in this area were either nonexistent or qualitatively lesser. A pastor of mine once said men consume porn out of lust and women out of curiosity. Pastorally well-intentioned, but it captures the asymmetry pretty cleanly.

I think this framing has at least three problems, and I’d love pushback on any of them:

1. It sits uneasily with our anthropology. Total depravity isn’t gendered. If sin has thoroughly corrupted every faculty of every person, then it’s strange that our pastoral imagination has so often treated lust as a male-coded sin and vanity as a female-coded one. The Song of Songs gives us a bride who actively desires her beloved, and Proverbs warns sons about adulteresses who are not passive. Scripture’s picture of female desire is fuller than our preaching has tended to allow.
2. The cultural data has flipped or at least broadened. Female porn consumption has risen significantly, BookTok erotica is a massive phenomenon, and parasocial and fictional-man fixation among women is its own discipleship issue. Meanwhile men are increasingly captured by the desire to be desired: looksmaxxing, gym idolatry, thirst-trap culture, male beauty standards. The temptation to be worshipped (which I’d argue is closer to the root sin in Genesis 3 than lust per se) is now arguably as gender-neutral as the temptation to lust.
3. We lack pastoral vocabulary for the sin of wanting to be desired. We have a robust theology of lust as covetousness of another. We have less precise language for the vanity, self-idolatry, and worship-seeking involved in cultivating oneself as an object of desire. Edwards on the affections gets close, and the Puritans on vanity get close, but I rarely hear it preached as a category alongside lust in churches.

Some honest counterpoints I want to take seriously:
• Men and women are not interchangeable, and there are real average differences in how desire functions. Flattening this in the name of cultural relevance would be its own pastoral failure.
• The Bible does single out men as the typical agents of lust in many passages (the Sermon on the Mount, Job 31:1, etc.), and we shouldn’t read that away.
• “Following the culture” on gender is exactly what got mainline Protestantism into trouble, and ministers should be cautious about reframing sin categories to match shifting cultural patterns.

Still, I think there’s a difference between changing our doctrine of sin and expanding the pastoral application of it to address sheep that the older framing under-served. Women who struggle with porn and erotica often report feeling invisible in the church’s hamartiology. Men who are caught in vanity and self-display often don’t even recognize it as sin because it doesn’t look like the lust their pastor warns about.
Questions for those in pastoral ministry or seminary:
1. Is anyone teaching or hearing sermons that name the desire to be desired as a distinct sin alongside lust?
2. How are you handling modesty teaching in a context where men are increasingly the ones cultivating physical display?
3. Is this a both/and (keep old emphases, add new ones) or is there something in the older framing that needs to be repented of?
Want to hear from teaching elders, seminarians, and anyone who has thought through this carefully.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I watched a video recently from a popular psychiatrist on YouTube that got me thinking about how the dynamics around lust, desire, and objectification have shifted in the last decade or so.

Historically, the church (rightly) targeted lust in sermons and implicitly enforced this through gendered frames. Men were the ones struggling with porn and lust, women were taught modesty so as not to be objects of that lust. I had a pastor years ago who said something like “men watch porn out of lust, women out of curiosity,” meant well, but it captures the old assumption pretty cleanly.

What I’m noticing now is something close to a reversal, or at least a major broadening:
• Men increasingly want to be objects of desire. Looksmaxxing, gym culture, thirst traps, male beauty standards exploding, validation-seeking through physical appearance.
• Women are increasingly the ones developing “addictive” patterns. Rising rates of porn consumption, but also BookTok erotica, romance and fanfiction obsession, parasocial attachment to idols and fictional men.

The old framing doesn’t really account for either of these. It treats men as one-directional desirers and women as either targets or curiosities, when in reality both sexes can lust, both can crave being lusted after, and the “be desired” temptation is arguably as spiritually serious as the “desire” one (vanity, idolatry of self, seeking worship that belongs to God).

A few things I’m wrestling with:
1. Should ministries broaden how they preach on lust, addressing women as full agents in this, not just as people who need to dress modestly?
2. Should modesty teaching extend to men in a serious way (gym content, shirtless posting, etc.)?
3. Is there enough pastoral language for the sin of wanting to be desired, the vanity and idolatry side, not just the lusting side?
4. Or should the church hold the old framing because the underlying averages still hold (men more visual, women more relational), and the new patterns are just variations on the same old sins?

Curious what others think, especially anyone in youth or college ministry seeing this up close.

I've been phd for 3 years now. i keep seeing everyone say stuff like r1 r2 but i never understood it. is this like phd version of saying t20 or hypsm uni?

does the r1 r2 thing matter?

I don't know how to describe it. But I've always been a high achiever and all that. There's always a lot of challenges but I think a certain level of neuroticism has been instrumental in helping me get to where I wanted. Basically you can imagine the typical stanford to startup founder life. But because of this, I wasn't really connected or close with church really - I was always a church-goer.

I've been wanting to be more intentional with God and the church I'm in. And I have and I feel God has opened a lot of doorways to serve. However, I feel like I have started falling behind in terms of things like career and goals in life just because I'm starting to have a work-life balance. Like for example I stopped working on the weekends, and past 6pm, and I've been meeting friends and brothers from church during the week instead of working too. And I feel I've missed a few personal deadlines because of this too.

But I don't feel stressed about this at all. It's just more like a conscious thought about my unconscious thought trying to convince me to become more neurotic so I can get things done. But then I just tell myself not to worry since God has a plan for me. Like I'm getting complacent and just using my trust in God to not work 24/7.

I'm really not sure what to make of all this.

I haven't played piano for around 15 years. I can sight read though okay because I've been playing other instruments during this time.

I've chose to start with these two songs with a piano teacher since I really like them. I'm not sure if these are okay as starting pieces especially given how out of shape my hands are. I've also been practicing Handel and Czerny on the side.

Not too interesting, but I just ate an abnormally hot spicy buffalo sauce. I can still feel it. It's like a bit spicier than tabasco sauce.