Seven deadly sins

As nothing much, newswise, seems to happen on weekends, especially during football season, my mind often turns to things that puzzle me, although they are more often than not, not very important things (depending, I guess, upon your perspective). For example, today my thoughts have turned to the seven deadly sins (don’t ask me why). In case you may have forgotten the seven deadly sins are said to be: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth. There is much for idle minds to think about here. Why, for example, are they described as deadly? I suppose it is theoretically possible to die from any one of these, but it does seem unlikely. I should think murder would be much more deadly but for some reason murder is not listed. I think they may have been attempts to include murder under wrath but this seems to me unsatisfactory. I guess you could just consider murder, along with arson and rape, to be crimes rather than deadly sins. But I should think they really are sinful. Apparently way back when, there were eight of these sins. Fornication was among them. I don’t think it is surprising that fornication as a sin didn’t catch on. I guess with real effort you might include murder under wrath, rape under lust, and arson probably also under wrath. This seems to me too much of a stretch. Someone once wanted to include deceit and fear as deadly sins, but this didn’t catch on. It’s kind of hard to think of fear as a sin, but I should think deceit would be a candidate. As I guess I have some personal familiarity with all of these sins, I feel they should be re-examined and quite possibly expanded and elaborate on. Early in 2008 Bishop Gianfranco Girotti listed what he called seven modern social sins: environmental pollution, genetic manipulations, obscene wealth, the infliction of poverty, drug trafficking, morally debatable experiments, and violation of the fundamental rights of human nature. I believe these were published in a Vatican newspaper. They don’t seem to have made much of a splash. Probably, I think, because they have become so commonplace they aren’t considered sins. They are, of course, somewhat problematical. For instance I should think genetic manipulation would clearly fall into the morally debatable experiments category. The infliction of poverty might be clear-cut in some cases but seems to me too complicated if pursued in detail. And as we don’t know what the fundamental rights of human nature are, I should think that a difficult category as well.

I confess I would think deceit (lying) should be considered a sin (I don’t know about deadly). It doesn’t seem to fit under any of the original categories. Of course if lying were considered a sin, and if people were really punished for their sins, everyone would be in big trouble. Perhaps that is why deceit never caught on. Another thing that should probably be included under deadly sins, is jealously. In fact, jealously is probably more likely to be deadly than most of the other so-called deadly sins. I think some may have considered jealousy under the category envy. I do not think this is quite right. Envy, as I understand it, is the powerful desire to have and possess something you don’t have. Jealously is qualitatively different, being the profound fear that you will lose something you do have (love, affection, etc.) to someone else, a rival. I suspect it is easier to control your feelings of envy than it is to control jealousy. If we were to include deceit and jealousy we would have nine (not very deadly) sins. This makes sense to me. But then, I am not very comfortable just considering murder and arson under wrath and rape under lust. What about torture? We would have to put torture under wrath also. That seems to me asking wrath to cover way too much in the way of sinning. But what the hell, as no one nowadays seems to pay any attention to sin, why bother? The idle mind, like idle hands, is the devil’s workshop. I need to stop thinking, like Sarah, and just accept what I am told. Do you believe that Sarah and Calamity John worry about sin?

LKBIQ:
“As nearly all great fortunes in America are made on land stolen while the public’s back is turned---and by people who want money and don’t want to work for it…”
Jimmy Breslin