Consider This

By LC Van Savage

Let’s talk about sin, OK? It’s not such a bad thing for some, it’s not such a good thing for others. And, they say (you know, the “they” somewhere in the sky) they say there are only seven sins, and the adjective they put before the word “sins” is always “deadly.”

I didn’t know one could actually die from those sins. Well, maybe the gluttony one. But when you come right down to it, is there any other kind of life’s ending other than “deadly”? None that I’ve ever heard of. Anyway, I guess it means if one partakes of these seven sins, one will suffer an untimely deadly, a too-early deadly or worst of all a lingering, nasty deadly. Bad business, that.

But this is confusing to me. We’re all going to die anyway, so how are we to know if we died because of giving in to those seven sin things, or if it just sort of happened, you know, naturally. Oh well. Life is all about mystery.

As most of us know, the seven deadlies are --let’s see if I can remember them without having to look them up -- OK, sloth, gluttony,…well that’s about the only two I can remember. I can’t remember the others but those two are my favorites, perhaps because I’m really very good at them. I’ll go look up the other five. Oh, I remember another one; GREED. I can pretty well work that one into my daily life, but I struggle to not let people catch me at it.

Now then, the rest of the deadlies: PRIDE: That’s the excessive belief in one’s own abilities. Frankly I’d always thought that was being self-confident, making things happen when all the world says, “Fuggedabowdit. You can’t possibly do that!” and then you do it.

Next comes ENVY: That’s the desire for other people’s stuff. There’s something wrong with that? It’s a sin to feel envy? That’s like saying feeling jealousy is a sin. I mean how does one control those natural, normal feelings? I don’t see any sin stuff there. It’s all in how you deal with it. It’s not so sinful to envy a neighbor’s spankin’ new Mercedes sports car for example, but it is definitely sinful if you sneak over at night and in a fit of serious envy, you key it.

Next? GLUTTONY; that’s not cool, overstuffing, but easy to do, right? It means one crams down far more than is needed. I agree, although milk chocolate is always exempt.

Then comes LUST; if you don’t know about lust, then you are either under 7 or over 107. In a nutshell, it’s craving bodily activities, usually with other people’s bodies. Next we have GREED, or avarice. It means we want too much. That’s a tough one too. I’ll wager that even cave folk wanted more yak and bison entrails than they already had. So maybe we should forgive ourselves for the occasional stab of greed that comes over us every now and again.

Then there’s ANGER. Wrath. Hard to define. Anger can be a real indulgence and probably should be lumped in with pride or gluttony or even lust when you think about it. It’s something that people occasionally practice because they’d prefer to be pissed than to be loving. Yeah, there’s a lot more to the anger thing, but like it or not, it’s nonetheless a sin.

Lastly there’s SLOTH; pretty obvious, and my all-time favorite. After gluttony, of course. Basically it means the avoidance of work. That’s a sin?? You’re kidding. Say it ain’t so. I’d always thought cleverly avoiding work was a sort of gift.

But don’t worry. If you’re doomed to the deadlies, help is out there. There are actually seven heavenly virtues so if you work on them, you might be able to cancel out any of the seven deadlies in which you’ve indulged. The virtues are HUMILITY, KINDNESS, ABSTINENCE, CHASTITY, (they’re kidding) PATIENCE (I lose) LIBERALITY (isn’t that a political party?) and DILIGENCE (too hard.) `Humility cancels out pride, right? And kindness takes the air out of envy’s tires or so they say, although personally I’ve known a lot of very kind envious people. Abstinence ruins a really great gluttonous Sunday afternoon barbeque. Chastity really drains absolutely all the fun out of lust, patience all but wrecks the joy of throwing a good, healthy angry temper tantrum, liberality they say, erases greed but that one I just don’t get at all, and lastly, diligence truly destroys a lovely lazy weekend of doing a lot of slothful nothings.

I’m not so sure which of those two competing seven-fold groups of indulgences I lean toward because frankly many of them make a great deal of sense on both sides of the moral dividing line. I guess I’ll just ignore the lot of them.