The Seven Deadly Sins for Our World Today

When trying to put the teachings of Christianity into practice, it can be helpful to have a list or template to work from. A framework for putting thought into action can be supremely helpful. How does a Christian function in society?  A list of do's and don'ts or at least guidelines distilled from the teachings of Jesus could be super helpful. Otherwise, it can all seem overwhelming.

Scripture gives us many of these: The 10 commandments and the Beatitudes are two of the best examples.

Christian tradition gives us still more. The corporal and spiritual Works of Mercy, derived from Scripture, are a shining example.  So too are the various monastic rules which have helped in this regard for monks and non-monks alike. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching, based on documents from the Catholic hierarchy, are a modern way of helping to understand a Christian's relationship with the world. Various protestant denominations have developed tight-knit communities and have cultivated a charism--a way of life--through which to interpret and live out the Christian faith--the Anabaptist tradition figures prominently here, although all Christian denominations do this to some degree.

Each of these frameworks has benefits and limitations. Yet each is a window to the whole of Christian teaching if one were to dig deeply enough. For example, the Beatitudes say a whole lot more about peace and nonviolence than the 10 Commandments, but you can arrive at those same teachings with enough meditation and study on the 10 Commandments--it may just take a lot more work to get there as the path isn't as direct.

Christians today often try to approach society using the lens of contemporary issues: Immigration, poverty, the environment, marriage, abortion, the death penalty and so forth. These are the thought categories of the modern mind. It's how we organize our lives. However, the issues themselves are defined by the secular society.  A Christian has to then take some extra steps to work out how these are relevant to a person of faith. It can be more confusing when Christians disagree on how best to deal with these issues. It might be better if Christians were to operate out of their own center and create the framework, first.

In other words, instead of Christians simply applying a Christian opinion on issues which have been framed by the secular world, it might be more helpful if Christians had a stronger worldview of their own to work from.

The list of the seven deadly sins was incubating around the time of the fall of Rome. It may have had roots in Greek philosophy. It was written about by monks and the Desert Fathers. It was eventually codified by Pope Gregory in 590. For better or for worse, it was a prevailing system for understanding life when the last vestiges of the western Roman empire crumbled, so it remained a cornerstone as Europe plunged into a thousand years of dark ages. You can see evidence of their prominence in the Canterbury Tales and Dante's Purgatorio, for example.

They haven't completely fallen out of favor.  Even in the modern era, prominent Evangelical leader Billy Graham used to preach about them. The Catholic Church and several Protestant denominations continue to stand by the list.  But they have certainly fallen out of the common street vernacular in our culture. Our whole culture suffers as a result, in my opinion.

What Are The Seven Deadly Sins?

Pride. Greed. Lust. Wrath. Gluttony. Envy. Sloth.

These are the fundamental issues in play underneath the sins of today which the church can correctly name and ultimately help heal.

Some of the sins have been neglected by Sunday sermons altogether.  When is the last time you heard a sweat-dripping, fist-pumping sermon on the sin of greed, for example? "Greed" is not even considered a sin by many. The power of greed runs rampant through our culture and the churches are nearly silent about it. Pride (which I discussed in a previous post) is the often invisible culprit behind so many other sins.

That's exactly why we need the list.

However, it doesn't help that some of these words are not well understood in today's parlance.

The list can come across as insensitive to the modern ear, and for good reason. Before you can start unlocking the wisdom it contains, you have to first explain and justify the list at all.  It doesn't help that it usually is delivered with archaic-sounding words.

Some of the other sins, such as lust, are simply poorly understand by modern people. The church as a whole got a bad reputation for being too aggressive in policing sexual morality that when the church calls out "lust" many in our culture refuse to hear the legitimate wisdom that may be there. For many, Christianity has a credibility problem when preaching about sexuality, and throw in an archaic word like "lust" and it just rubs many folks the wrong way. Many equate "lust" with sexual desire, which is thought by many today to be natural and healthy, but the concept of lust itself goes beyond mere natural desire and more into objectification and entitlement. We dance around "gluttony" so as not to offend those who have a weight problem, even though "gluttony" refers to more than simply one's relationship with food. Trying to explain why "envy" is not just a problem but is actually a sin will be met with blank stares by most--but it could be because to envy someone else is to have little faith in your own individual dignity endowed on you by your creator.

The thing I like about the list is that it is a deeper distillation of the Christian message than simply a stance on certain hot-button issues. There's theology here. There is a profound Christian worldview presented. It is a worldview that our modern culture is thirsty to hear. It helps us speak to and unpack some of the silent but significant dynamics in play underneath those hot-button issues.

We can still apply a framework such as the seven deadly sins to other contemporary issues.  We can hold the list up to immigration, abortion, etc. But instead of the church simply picking which of the pre-determined sides in a political debate it agrees with, the church instead can offer it's own way of looking at the situation which can critique all sides.

For example, it's one thing to say the U.S. treatment of asylum seekers at the border is wrong, but it is quite another to point out the underlying greed (for-profit detention centers), pride ("our nation/race is better than yours"), or even envy of the solid Hispanic families compared to our own fragmented society. I will go into more detail in a later post showing how to apply this Medieval idea to our contemporary issues, but that is enough for now to get the idea.

No list like this can be all-inclusive. I would never suggest that the Seven Deadly Sins is the only list of concerns for Christians. But it is an extremely useful framework to apply to our lives.

Conclusion

Christianity may often feel like it is fighting a losing battle against the wider culture. It helps if the wider culture is exposed to at least some vocabulary for understanding the Christian witness. It helps if Christians are bringing something to the conversation that is not already there.

This is why the answer to today's sin is the same as it has always been: We must repent, seek confession and forgiveness, offer penance and restitution, and ultimately hope to reconcile. We have to name sin first and then show a way to deal with it.

Because the church has in so many ways lost this language, we are abdicating what should be our primary contribution to the social narrative.

Our society is so polarized. So when the church enters the debate in the same way using the same language as the rest of the culture, it ends up confronting and edifying the same echo chambers and talking points. It encounters the same resistance. But the church can help society get to the root of it all. It can get underneath all those labels and talking points. It can get around people's defenses by talking in a new way, like Jesus did.

I think it's long overdue to recover the brilliance of the Seven Deadly Sins. Look for further installments in this series where we'll unpack how to approach modern issues using this lens.

***

This is an ongoing series on the Seven Deadly Sins.  Other installments so far:
Fasting from Division, Feasting on Inclusion
Pride: The Root of all Sin and Division

What Advent and the Christian Unity Movement have in Common

Advent could very well be the ideal season through which to understand the movement for Christian unity.

At least, that is true at this point in history.

That is because the characteristics of Advent are so similar to the current moment we find ourselves in.

Nebulous 

The movement for better relationships among Christians--and ultimately for Christian unity--can be a difficult thing to understand. That is why a paradigm to understand what we are going through can be helpful.

To put it bluntly:  The movement for unity among Christians is a pretty difficult thing to wrap your mind around if you want concrete answers and clearly defined goals. It is often described as "nebulous."

We don't really know where God is leading us. For example, how can we have any kind of unity when people on both sides of a denominational division may think their way is the only way? Either one side is wrong or else we are being led to a truth that transcends our categories. We know Christ himself prayed for the oneness of all believers (John 17:21). So we have faith that what Christ has prayed for will eventually come to pass, but we don't know what that may look like nor can we see the path to get there.

It is easy to look at 2,000 years of Christian wars, reformations and schisms, with the number of denominations counted in the tens of thousands today--not to mention all those individuals and congregations that simply consider themselves "independent"--and then when we consider human nature on top of that, it is easy to resign ourselves to the conclusion that there simply is no path of unity at all.

[Of course, right at that moment, we might be tempted to just give up on unity and accept each other as we are and then boom!  Maybe there is something of a foggy first step to be found there after all... and so the path through the fog continues.]

Going through Advent is like going to the gym. It is like a workout for your faith. It is a time of waiting. We are practicing how to fan a small spark of faith into a flame of hope. We are also deepening our patience through which to endure the lengthy exile we are in. We have to sit and wait not knowing the answers. We learn how to go through life without all the answers.

Whether we like concrete answers or not, we simply don't have them in this situation. However, that doesn't alleviate us from the duty to work towards this goal and to sit in the tension in the meantime.

Advent is a time pregnant with possibilities--quite literally for mother Mary. Here was a young girl who found herself in a very precarious situation. She had a pregnancy that was very difficult to explain. She trusted in God but it was probably still unclear where that journey would take her or what changes her life would undergo. This pregnancy would eventually culminate in giving birth in the poorest, most humble of circumstances and then almost immediately fleeing as a refugee to Egypt to escape a brutal authoritarian ruler's destructive reach. But during Advent, Mary probably didn't know that. She had to simply endure the discomfort of not knowing and having to wait for the answers. Such is pregnancy.

And such is the moment were are in when it comes to the unity of all believers. We know we are called on this path. We know it is in line with what Jesus himself wants. But we don't know where it will take us. And people will tell us we're crazy because we can't offer a clear explanation of exactly what we're trying to do or what it will look like. People will be suspicious that there must be some hidden agenda. But like Noah, building an ark in the desert may seem like pure madness . . . until the floods come.

That's because when you say "yes" to God's invitation you aren't guaranteed a road map of what exactly are your next steps. If you had that, of course, it wouldn't be as much of a journey of faith, now would it?

The Kingdom: Now . . . and Not Yet

There is so much about the Kingdom Jesus alerts us to that is already realized but unseen--and other parts that are not yet fully realized. The unity of all Christians is one of those.  We have to live in the tension between the unity that Jesus prays for and calls us into and the disunity we experience. There is indeed a unity that is already present but we simply can't fully see it yet, even though it's right there. But there is also a true disunity. This disunity has real impacts on our lives and our witness--and it could dampen our hopes.

But it must be stated that Advent is not a time of passivity. There is much that can be done. I'm sure Mary had many daily labors during this time. She took each step that presented itself to her. She did the things she could do. She did today's work today and left tomorrow's work for tomorrow--she had no choice. And neither do we.

The movement for Christian unity follows likewise: We may not know what the "end game" looks like--but there is work to be done today. We can build better relationships among Christians. We can get to know each other in full respect as people of faith. We can do the things together that we are already agreed upon. We can forget about our differences and simply work together. Or perhaps through our differences we may find a stronger voice. We can't just say "there is no way to untangle this mess" and then give up. Advent is a time that speaks to living in this space and which hopefully gives us both the tools and the strength to go through it.

Pride: The Root of all Sin and Division

Prometheus, thief of God's fire.

The Medieval church understood that pride is the granddaddy of all the other sins.

How can this be?

Given all the widespread suffering in this world from wars, murder, rape, both illegal and legal theft of all kinds, a divorce and infidelity rate in the neighborhood of 50% for all marriages, how can pride be the biggest issue of them all??

I think the Medieval church was onto something. Because when you peel back the layers on all those sins, you often find the unmistakable footprint of pride underneath most of them, if not all.

Today, the church largely describes sin today using the same categories as the secular world. We debate the "culture wars" issues. We talk about immigration, climate change and racism. There is value in the church using terminology that is widely used in categories that people commonly understand. But the danger is that the church can get easily co-opted by political forces. It also diminishes what could be the church's ability to speak to the heart of these matters and provide its best witness.

What is pride?

Pride is the breaking of the 1st commandment. It is an inability to understand and accept the basic relationship between humans and God: God is God. Humans are humans. Humans are all equal in dignity to each other.

Pride is not knowing who we really are. It's not letting God be God and letting people who God created them to be. As a result, we over-compensate. We attempt to do what is not ours to do. Like Prometheus, we are on a fool's quest to steal God's fire and be in control of it—and then judge those poorly who don't measure up.

Why would we do this? A newborn baby seems content. Why would we put so much energy addressing something that babies already know does not need to be addressed? The answer: Shame. We put layers of masks and coping strategies over shame.

Shame is the message that we are not good enough. When we get the message that we are "not good enough" we start to throw our fundamental relationship with God—and our fellow humans—out of balance. That's because we can't actually do anything to earn or justify our own worth! That is a God-given dignity. But in a desperate attempt to cover up this pain, we pretend that we can actually do something to merit our own worth and feel good about ourselves.

Where do we get this message of shame? Bad parenting. Our culture. From other shame-ridden, prideful people before us. It can take a lifetime of introspection to discover all those messages buried deep within us that others gave us or that we simply picked up somehow. When someone tell us we aren't good enough, that implies the very false belief that it's our job to earn our worth and that we can actually do—or not do—something to devalue ourselves or that we don't have the dignity which our faith teaches us we all have.

Superiority Covers Inferiority

Pride always masks its opposite. Noted psychologist Alfred Adler has said that feelings of superiority (i.e. pride) always masks feelings of inferiority. Always. The most egotistical, prideful person is always a scared, insecure person on the inside. It may just take a while to see it. A prideful person seems so confident, so secure, so radiant in their own self-assuredness. But they are only working so hard to project that image because they feel the opposite on the inside.

It's kind of simple when you think about it: A person is driven to those things for a reason, so what is that reason? What is that wound, that ache or that fear? There must be a reason or else someone wouldn't expend so much energy doing it.

The person with not a single hair out of place is a person who feels very much out of place on the inside. The student who cannot be satisfied with any grade below an "A" is someone who has already graded themselves poorly. Hard work, achievement and respectable appearance can be worthy efforts, of course. After all, we have work to do while on this earth. But if those things are done out of a compulsion to pretend we can earn our place over and above others, then we are out of sync with God, we are our of sync with our nature, and sin can and will result.

Pride is always a coping mechanism attempting to cover for shame, self-hatred and self-doubt. That pain is to severe so we put layers of masks on top of it, trying to hide it, trying to muddle through, trying to keep up until such a time comes when we can actually deal with it. At least that's the foolish quest we on.

By Grace Alone

Given how important this issue is, it is easy to see why Christians become embroiled in bitter theological debates over small nuances of doctrine. It's easy to see why Protestant Reformers, for example, have been so fervently committed to the "grace alone" theology expressed by Luther and so many other Reformers. I don't necessarily agree with them or their approaches, but I do agree that there is  something so important at the heart of that issue, that if you get that wrong, that is seems like everything else would be wrong by consequence.

In this blog, we often severely critique the impulse of Christians to split the Christian community over what seems like tedious theological points. People are going to have theological differences of opinion and practice. We ought to relax about that and allow people to stretch and grow in their thinking rather than let those differences result in denominational splits. But those points do matter. It is easy to understand why those points are considered so important.

We end up using our very theology to establish our own merit! My church is better than yours. My theology is better than yours. No matter how hard we try to run from this sin, we keeping getting caught up in it in increasingly slippery and sly ways. I would argue here that the root of Christian division is not differences in theology, doctrine, national origin, culture or practice—it's pride. And a divided Christianity does a poor job of witnessing against all the other sins in our world which are ultimately rooted in this same division.

Pride Establishes Hierarchies Where God Has Not

Pride is a symptom of our fallen condition. We aren't good enough. We must be in control. It's the false self, the ego. We must augment ourselves, we must market and "sell ourselves" we must be on top of the hill otherwise we'll just wither and disappear like dust in the wind.

But in doing so, we throw our fundamental anthropology out of whack. We judge some people to be better than others. Suddenly, we group people by race, by culture, by gender, by national origin, by economic class, by material possessions and by church doctrine and all the other false gods in our lives. We've got to get on top of the hill before they do! We've got to somehow be in control of the things that are really only God's to control. We start doing things that are really God's job. We create hierarchies to judge the worth of ourselves in relation to others: My yard is tidier than your yard.  My church is better than your church.  My race is better than yours. My immigration status makes me more worthy than yours. My sins are better than your sins.  

It's the same works righteousness that the Protestant Reformers fought so hard to resist. It's a perennial problem in the human condition which religious traditions have been trying to address since the beginning of time.

The Opposites of Pride are Humility and Calmness

Understanding that God is God and humans are humans leads to calmness. It leads to humility. And out of that humility our true natural dignity shines all the better. This is where true achievement is to be found! This is the paradox.

The Medieval church understood that pride is the deadliest of the deadly sins. It is the root of all division. By definition, it divides and establishes hierarchies of worth and merit. Let God be God. Know who you are in light of that and then see your brothers and sisters in that same light. There is a feeling of calmness in this. You don't have to do anything to earn your worth. That being said, there is value in human achievement, rightly understood. There is value in calling out sin in our fellow humans, rightly understood.  But our daily work must be to re-center ourselves in a proper theological anthropology so that our work can be to help unravel—rather than re-assert—pride and its very deadly consequences.

***

This is part of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins.
Other installments:
Fasting from Division, Feasting on Inclusion