White Noise by The Famous Brett Watson, 28-Jun-2001.
To the extent that most people think about the Seven Deadly Sins at all, which I imagine isn't much, they probably think of them as a set of offences which are serious enough to get you thrown into hell if you commit them. A moment's serious thought on the matter should cast this idea into grave doubt. Consider, for example, the relationship (or lack thereof) between the Seven Deadly Sins and the Ten Commandments: lust is a deadly sin, but the commandment is against adultery; covetousness is a sin, and there is a commandment against it, and also against theft (which could be motivated by covetousness); gluttony doesn't seem to have a parallel in the commandments at all; envy only has parallels in the commandments to the extent that it's similar to covetousness; several of the commandments relate to God and the Sabbath, but there's no corresponding sin of impiety — a similar situation occurs for lying.
Much of my rambling on this subject will be based on The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues website, which is fairly tongue-in-cheek. Even so, it has some useful quotations from certain sources on the matter, and at the same time demonstrates some of the misapprehension I mentioned above (such as in the anecdote about anger). So first, let me clear up this misconception: standard Christian teaching is that we are all sinners destined for Hell, and consequently in need of salvation. The Seven Deadly Sins aren't a list of things that will get you damned: damnation is simply the consequence of not accepting salvation.
If that last statement made you feel particularly offended, then you're taking it the wrong way. I'm not trying to tell anyone that they're damned or a sinner or anything of that sort in this particular discussion. You can take or leave Christian theology: I'm just describing part of its usual formulation.
So what are the Seven Deadlies? What is their significance? I think they are deadly because they each represent a kind of state from which it is hard to escape. Like the alcoholic who fails to recognise his condition, those who have fallen into one or more of the deadly sins will often not realise that they have a problem. Recognising that you have a problem is always the first step in solving it, and the Seven Deadlies are deadly enough if they trap you into thinking that you don't have a problem and don't need salvation. On top of that, they are indeed representative of behaviour which is directly contrary to some Godly principle.
The actual names given to the Seven Deadlies varies. They're biblical, more or less, but they don't occur in a single well-defined place. Each one is a theme that recurs throughout the text of the Bible, some more than others. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll adopt the same names as used by the Seven Deadly Sins website: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Covetousness, Sloth. I'll analyse each of these in turn, and then compare and contrast them as appropriate.
Pride. Ha! Often considered the root of all other sins, and usually considered the sin that caused Lucifer to be cast out of heaven. Pride is particularly insidious: one can easily become proud of one's humility! Pride is a defect of perspective: the proud person measures all other things by putting them in relation to self, where self has taken the place of God. This self-centered perspective makes the proud oblivious to their own faults: where they can see deficiencies in the self at all, they think themselves rather clever for being so self-aware. Most of the sins are selfish, but for complete self-centeredness, pride is hard to beat. Sometimes called vanity, although I consider that to be a less subtle (and less insidious) preoccupation with one's public image. Real pride is much more deadly than mere vanity: it can result in hubris, and often sets one up for a good humiliating.
Envy. Ooooh! Enviousness is more than just wanting other people's property: if your neighbour gets himself a flash new car, and you happen to like that sort of thing and wish you had one too, that's not necessarily envy in and of itself. Envy is more poisonous than that: the envious person wishes ill of others because of their posessions, status, attributes, and so on. If your neighbour gets a new car, and you resent his being able to afford such luxury, harbouring a secret wish that he wrap it around a telegraph pole soon, then you are envious. Envy is contrary to God's will that we love one another. Sometimes called jealousy, but "jealousy" is often different in that it is a desire to keep one's own rightful posessions, and that's not necessarily a sin in and of itself. Envy has no such redeeming qualities: it leads to hate, resentment, and pettiness.
Gluttony. Buuuurp! Excuse me! More than just overeating, gluttony is about the perversion of carnal desires. Eating is a good and necessary thing, but in excess it becomes harmful. Gluttony occurs where any good thing is made deplorable by wanton excess. The gourmand who stuffs himself far and beyond the needs of his body is the obvious example, but it applies to sex as well. The person who engages in sexual activity compulsively and habitually, no longer motivated by any particular hunger, has become a sexual glutton. It is natural to hunger for certain things, but perverse to gorge oneself on those things far and beyond the natural desire. It is a form of idolatory, where the object of desire becomes an obsession. And it's really gross. The gourmand, requiring ever more and more to be satisfied, stuffs himself on increasingly rich and exotic foods; the sexual glutton, likewise requiring ever more and more, engages in increasingly bizarre behaviour. There are other kinds of gluttony too: adrenaline addicts, perhaps, who seek ever more extreme ways to get their rush. See if you can think of others.
Lust. Hubba hubba! Just as gluttony is about more things than food, lust is about more things than sex. Lust happens where any normal desire gets out of control, and the desire itself becomes an obsession. It can be about food, it can be about money ("gold lust" for example) or goods in a general sense, and it can be about power. Lust can lead to all sorts of evils: despicable behaviour driven by base desire, unchecked by conscience. The notion of people cheating, lying, stealing, and murdering over their desires is not new. The phrase, "I want", probably summarises the problem of lust best. Having wants is not bad, but putting those wants above everything else is. To the extent that lust is merely a desire, it's not bad; to the extent that it motivates wrong behaviour, it is. Note that by this formulation, the basic "naughty magazines" type of thing doesn't really count as the deadly sin of lust, although if you play with fire, so to speak, it could well burn you sooner or later. Lust is sometimes called luxury, but that's probably confusing in the contemporary context.
Anger. Grrrrr! Sometimes called wrath, but neither wrath nor anger can properly be considered sins in any absolute sense, as God is described as pouring out his wrath from time to time. It's proper to be angered at certain things, like injustice. The sin of anger happens when the motivation for anger is wrong, and this is typically for some reason relating to the self: some other person doing something which is objectionable to you, personally. Such anger leads to violence, spite, and rash behaviour; it blinds the sinner to reason. I think that rage is a more appropriate name than anger. Of all the deadly sins, this is the one that's been the biggest bugbear in my own life. I'm glad it was brought under control before I killed anyone.
Covetousness. Mine! More usually called greed or avarice, both of which I prefer over covetousness since it suggests a desire to have other people's property, particularly. The sin of greed is more than that: it's a general attitude towards property and other things which can be owned or controlled. It's a kind of selfishness that concentrates on the material, best understood by contrast with its opposites: liberality or generosity. When making a distinction between greed and avarice, I like to put it this way: it's greed if I want to eat your lunch as well as mine; it's avarice if I want to swallow my lunch, your lunch, and you, whole. Greed is a very common sin in consumerist western society: I think that most people are stuck in this sin most of the time. This is one reason I've made a conspicuous effort to be generous and liberal in my dealings with property.
Sloth. Yawn! Can I be bothered talking about this? Yes, I can, actually. Sloth isn't just about laziness in my opinion: engaging in futile or useless activity isn't really any more virtuous than being idle; the crux of the matter is not whether or not one is active. Sloth is an attitude to life and work in general which, like so many other sins, centres on the self. Much of the advertising we see in western society appeals to sloth using the message that the product will make your life more comfortable and secure. Sloth craves comfort, security, and leisure. Sloth recognises that there are other problems out there in the world that need solving (homeless to shelter, hungry to feed, and so on) and all of these will be dealt with using whatever time and money is left over after the sloth is comfortable, secure, and enjoying a round of golf every Sunday morning, so long as it's not too much effort.
That gives an overview of my interpretation of the Seven Deadly Sins, but it's really only phase one of a two phase process. Having examined each of the sins more or less in isolation, we can now refine our understanding further by comparing and contrasting them. Many sinful acts, such as cheating and lying, can have their root in one or more of the Deadly Sins, and it's helpful to be able to trace an action back to a root sin. The Seven Deadlies are like patches of bad earth out of which the weeds of sinful acts grow: let us examine this dismal plot now. Bear in mind that each Deadly Sin is a matter of degree, and that one can fall foul of more than one.
Pride and Envy. Pride sees all in perspective to self, but so does envy. Envy is inherently comparative, and it resents the fact that others may be better off than self. But whilst envy looks outwards, pride looks inwards. Pride without envy is puffed up and disdainful of others: the proud but unenvious person sees no need to concern self with the success and fortune of others. The envious but not proud person is always looking outwards and comparing his lot with that of others. Combine the two for an especially nasty effect: the haughty person who treats all "beneath" him as dirt, and although he may bow and scrape to those "above" him, he only seeks to climb, climb, climb.
Gluttony and Lust. These are the two sides of a coin called "Sins of Desire". It's important to remember that the desires themselves are not sinful: being hungry or thirsty, feeling sexually attracted to someone, wanting to be prosperous — none of these things are bad in and of themselves. The problem arises when the desire is perverted such that the object of desire becomes an end in itself, which is gluttony, or elevated to the level that you do evil in satisfying it, which is lust. In my opinion we have more sexual gluttony than lust in our society: the motto of gluttony is "ingulge, indulge, indulge". In Australia, at least, I'd argue that we tend to gluttony with alcohol and sex, but to lust with money by rampant gambling. Why that distinction? If you drink lots of beer, you'll get drunk, and that's gluttonous indulgence; if you buy lots of instant lottery tickets, you'll probably lose money, so lust for money has driven you to act unwisely. That's not to suggest that gluttony and lust are mutually exclusive: far from it! The lustful glutton stops at nothing in the indulgence of his desire and actively seeks ways to increase the desire. The less said about the excesses that can engender, the better.
Lust and Covetousness Given that lust can be about material gain, like money, then there must be some overlap with covetousness or greed, right? Sure! Indeed, it's an interesting question whether any particular instance of excessive desire for material gain is rooted in lust or in greed. Sometimes the distinction can be quite subtle, and it's not a strict either/or question in any case. The distinction, if you wish to make it, is a little bit like the distinction between pride and envy: lust is concerned only with the satisfaction of its own desires, but covetousness is also concerned with the self relative to others. The truly greedy individual will seek ways to keep others down (or at least subordinate), materially speaking, just as much as seek to accumulate more to self. Those who lust after material things are concerned only with the accumulation of wealth; the greedy see a bigger picture in which there is a heirarchy of wealth and power, and they want to be at the top of it. The truly greedy may be so insatiable in their accumulation of wealth and power that they seem gluttonous. This is where greed becomes avarice, in my estimation.
Covetousness and Sloth. These two aren't really all that closely related, but I believe that a lot of people mistake sloth for covetousness. This mistake (mistake in my estimation, that is) happens because both covetousness and sloth can result in uncharitable behaviour. Indeed, sometimes sloth is less charitable than covetousness. An immensely avaricious billionaire may well give large sums of money (well, large by the measure of non-billionaires) to various charities, whilst a modestly well-to-do sloth feels that he can't afford to give anything. Both covetousness and sloth are pervasive in western society: covetousness in that we are awfully preoccupied with our property rights, and sloth in that we are awfully preoccupied with comfort, ease, and security. On the whole, though, I think more people are selfish because they are trying to pamper themselves than because they are greedy, strictly speaking. Sloth is closer to lust than covetousness in that sense, because sloth is not concerned about keeping others down: it fails to be charitable simply because it directs all its charitable efforts towards the self.
The final common thread I'd like to draw between all the Deadly Sins is the element of selfishness. I've mentioned selfishness as a factor in passing here and there, but it's interesting to see how selfishness is embodied in each of the Deadly Sins. Pride has a completely self-centered perspective: everything else that happens in the world happens in relation to Self. Envy is forever comparing the Self to Others, and is embittered by Others having it better than Self in some way. Gluttony fixates on that which the Self desires, and Lust elevates the satisfaction of Self's desires above all other considerations. Anger is enraged by things which conflict with the Self, causing it to lash out at the Other in some way. Covetousness desires that the Self be in a material position superior to the Other, and Sloth desires that the Self be pampered without regard to the needs of the Other.
It would be interesting to do a similar analysis of virtues, and see how they restore a more balanced treatment to the self and the other, but I'm not going to do so here.
In closing, I'd just like to share a link that I found whilst doing a little bit of searching for stuff related to the Deadly Sins. It's a commentary on the Narnia stories by C. S. Lewis (an author for whom I have immense respect), demonstrating how each of the seven stories has a strong correspondence with one of the Deadly Sins. Neat! The essay is called Narnia and the Seven Deadly Sins. If you find this essay (or my commentary) on the Deadly Sins at all interesting, then I recommend the works of C. S. Lewis to you: he has some interesting insights into the human condition, and his writing is of a quality to which I can only aspire.
Author: The Famous Brett Watson