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.

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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

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.

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

A Divided Christianity Limits Its Witness

Collage of Christian culture, from:
https://tinyurl.com/uzzy7nl

In my work, I try to build relationship between Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians. I often encounter resistance from all sides.

One complaint I hear is: Why bother? There are are so many other issues of division in the world today that seem much more serious. Lives are hanging in the balance. Few people today, especially in the first world, are losing their lives over Catholic and evangelical tensions.

That certainly is a fair point. Tensions between Christian denominations have definitely subsided from where they once were. After all, the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation helped lead to the 30 Year War, one of Europe's bloodiest. Prejudice still exists, but it doesn't manifest into that scale of bloodshed anymore. We've come a long way.

But in the western world, Christianity has been the dominant religion. In a sense, it has been the one constant of the western world. Christianity has provided the moral framework in no small way for the west--beginning with the Roman Empire, through the Dark Ages and Medieval world, to the Renaissance, Enlightenment, "discovery" of the New World and its impacts in terms of colonialism, world wars and a rapid increase in technology.

All of these are complex topics, of course, but the point I want to make here is:  The western world did all of these things operating out of--and challenged by--the moral and ethical framework of western Christianity.  

How successful Christianity has been at intercepting sin in the midst of this could have a lot to do with how united Christianity has been.

Christianity and the Western World

We all need a solid moral, ethical and spiritual grounding in order to resist the pervasive temptations and sins that are endemic to the human condition. Greed and its twin brother selfishness run rampant so easily. Pride easily divides and pits one group as "better" than another. In day to day life, it certainly can feel like times marches slowly, but stepping back it becomes apparent that we are in the middle of a sharp exponential growth curve in technology, population, pollution, wars, etc. Older cultures had thousands of years to adapt to changes. We have just a short time. The western world has presided over so much rapid change in so short of a time.

My grandfather still worked with horses and was the first to use mechanized tractors on the farm. In 100 years time, we went from horses to cars, airplanes and spaceships, from the telephone to smart phones and from typewriters to word processors.

But while the western world has been overwhelmingly Christian, the lived reality tells a different story: You have your church and I have mine. I have my beliefs and you have yours. I don't have to talk to you. I don't even have to acknowledge you.

We're not just divided--we're isolated from one another. We can't expect uniformity in our beliefs as an axis for unity. After all, if you were to talk to 10 people you will get 12 theological opinions. But the problem is that we haven't found a way to maintain some semblance of unity in light of all this.

We've not just divided in terms of doctrine and beliefs--we are also just as much divided in terms of race and national origin. As MLK so famously said, Sunday at 11 am "is the most segregated hour in the nation." Blacks, whites and little enclaves of tight-knit immigrant community churches dot the landscape.

It's a strange message of: Leave me alone, I'm going to practice my faith which draws all people and even the entire cosmos to Christ. It's somewhat understandable as in this finite world we often don't know how to transcend so many divisions. I sympathize with people who simply give up and keep to themselves. But we should at least recognize the need to try and admit that division is not what we are called to.

A Divided Christianity Limits its Witness

Look at how this plays out in terms of national allegiance: Do we really consider Christians in Mexico to be our brothers and sisters in the faith?  Or are they just "those people over there"? Are we suspicious of them trying to sneak in and steal from us? The vast majority of Mexicans would identify as Catholic, Pentecostal or evangelical. Since we are not united in the faith, forces that want to suppress immigration get us to hate each other. Those forces would have little sway over us if we knew each other and respected each other as members of the same Body of Christ. We would know and trust each other as members of the same Church.

This wouldn't immediately solve all immigration issues, but it would make us less likely to fall victim to dehumanizing propaganda. But because it's considered "okay" to be divided then it becomes so easy to further divide the church into ethnic and national and class-based groups--and most importantly, it becomes easier to divide the church up politically. Division itself is considered acceptable which sets the stage for further divisions of all kinds.

A study was done recently on the terrifying practice trying and killing accused witches over the past several hundred years.  Researches noted that it was perhaps Christian disunity and competition between Protestants and Catholics which fueled some of the harshest and most regrettable periods of witch persecution in Europe and America. It begs the question:  How is Christian disunity today being used to divide and conquer?  How is this disunity manipulated to pursue political goals? Conversely, how is politics manipulated to pursue religious goals?

The Power of the Church

I got into this work because I believe the faith community can be a necessary tonic to the evils of the world.  I still believe that. Churches have stood up to the evils of the world i many ways, from the way churches helped the Civil Rights movement to the movement for justice in Latin America in recent decades and so many more examples.

I don't what to join with you, fellow follower of Jesus, just because you share the same liberal or conservative views. but I do want to join with you because we are rooted in the vision of the Kingdom and we make decisions about what is right or wrong from that place. Our home is in the Kingdom that Jesus calls us to recognize. It's not because we are liberal or conservative and then go to church based on those allegiances, it is because we carry the church in our hearts and make decisions about the world from that place.

Even with all of our theological and denominational divisions, Christianity provides a unifying framework. Even if we disagree on the application of certain issues, Christianity still gives us common language to confront sin. It gives us readings and practices. It gives us a unifying vision for membership in Christ's body and of the Kingdom of God. It gives us something in common with which to engage the rest of the culture. Even with that, it still takes everything we've got to resist the temptations of sin. But our denominational divisions prevent us from speaking that voice clearly.

With Christianity divided, the secular world eats us alive. The world of power and money can pick Christianity apart, co-opt certain groups for this or that benefit. They use Christians for their gains. Nowadays, it's no secret that there are denominations and sects of Christianity aligned with the political right and with the political left. Christians think they have chosen their allegiances but the more sinister truth is that perhaps those interests have chosen Christians to bolster them. They have coaxed Christians to ignore certain thing or to soften some edges and dampen their message in the name of compromise and collaboration.

Could a more united Christianity do a better job of maintained its center and not be so easily swayed by political, financial or military interests in the larger culture?

Maybe there are far too many folks who like Christianity so fractured because it is just easier to manipulate?  And then to pit one side against the other?

A more united Christianity may not stave off all the world's problems. After all, the relatively united church of the Middle Ages did help in some of this but it was still all too often a pawn for political powers. It's complex. Nevertheless, I will argue here that a divided Christianity limits its witness to the world. People don't have to take it seriously because Christians can't even agree on what it's about.  Disunity limits its witness to justice and peace. It limits the ability of the Christian message to be a healing and prophetic tonic for a very fractured world. Indeed: the fractures of Christianity resemble more this world than the Kingdom we are called to.

Fasting From Division, Feasting on Inclusion

Is this not the fast that I have chosen:

To loose the bonds of wickedness,

To undo the heavy burdens,

To let the oppressed go free,

And that you break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

That you bring the poor and homeless into your house;

When you see the naked, that you cover them,

And not hide yourself from your own flesh?

 -- Isaiah 58:6-7

Super challenging passage from Isaiah. 

Can we fast from injustices?

Can we fast from the pleasures that come at someone else's expense? Some of those things may be enjoyable or simply things we think we need to do for our own protection.

Such as:

Our pride which maintains divisions, hatred...? "My church is better than your church."

Our hurt and anger left unaddressed which lead to walls between people and ultimately to wars? "I only take care of those inside my walls."

Our consumerism and greed which scorches the earth...? Our consumer engine which produces abundance but yet leaves far too many with nothing.

Our fears which compel us to justify anything and everything, no matter how sinister, in the name of revenge or self-preservation....? After all, so much evil (if not all of it) is done by people thinking they are defending themselves. Someone else is considered a threat that must be controlled or neutralized, so we tell ourselves that gives us license to jettison all our ethics and morals in order to neutralize this perceived threat. "Be not afraid."

So let's fast from pride, from hurt, from greed, from fear.... let's stop constantly gorging ourselves on the buffet of these negative conditions, emotions, thoughts and orientations... THIS is the fast that God calls for here in this beautiful passage! Let's fast from these things which are not of God so that we can feast on the goodness, mercy, and love that IS of God! It takes true bravery to do that after being cloaked in fear, anger and all the trappings of this world all our lives.

Let's fast from lust which distorts true beauty and desire. It obscures our ability to see the full dignity of each other by reducing people to objects to be consumed.

Let's fast from apathy, sloth and sadness... justifiable feelings, no doubt, but they can be a trap leading us into inaction.

Let's fast from the gluttony which compels our rabid consumption, always seeking a high and never being satisfied.

Ultimately let's seek out, heal and fast from whatever is behind all of these feelings... whatever pain, trauma, fear, self-doubt is driving all of these unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Saying we ought to fast from these things is one of the most profound passages in Scripture. It is clearly articulating that we are tied in to systems of power, privilege and injustice. We are tied into these systems every day and bear responsibility even when we are not directly or consciously perpetuating injustice. It is part of the fallen condition of the world that we are stewing in this sin.

It also means by consequence we are inherently connected to everyone and everything--we are all part of the same human family, the same biological family of plants and animals, and the same cosmos. It is our "same flesh" after all, as the passage states. There is a oneness to all. That's why the things which promote division are sinful--division is not of God. It is imaginary but consequential. It causes us to miss seeing the Kingdom of justice, mercy and wholeness which is right here, right now... to miss seeing God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, who are always right with us, permeating everyone and everything.

I've heard of churches talk about the "sacrifice of praise" or the "sacrifice of worship." I'm not suggesting those are in any way bad. Others fast from food or various vices from time to time. But at least in this passage, God is clearly saying that's not the sacrifice wanted by God. The message is pretty clear and doesn't give us much wiggle room to try to make it say something else.

This passage urges us to increase our inner circle to include more. Destroy that which separate and limits and increase that which welcomes and invites. Let's challenge ourselves to consider whatever limits or separates us from others and reflect on that in light of this passage.

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This is the first part in a series on the seven deadly sins.