A critical look at the 7 deadly sins

Da Paolo Tessione - September 15, 2019

In the Christian tradition, the sins that have the greatest impact on spiritual development have been classified as "deadly sins". What sins qualify for this category are different, and Christian theologians have developed several lists of the gravest sins that people could commit. Gregory the Great created what is now considered the definitive list of seven: pride, envy, anger, killing, greed, gluttony and lust.

Although each of them can inspire worrying behavior, it is not always the case. Anger, for example, can be justified as a response to injustice and as a motivation to achieve justice. Furthermore, this list does not address behaviors that actually harm others and instead focuses on motivations: torturing and killing someone is not a "mortal sin" if one is motivated by love rather than anger. The "seven deadly sins" are therefore not only profoundly imperfect, but have encouraged profound defects in Christian morality and theology.

Pride - or vanity - is the excessive belief in one's abilities, such as not to give credit to God. Pride is also the inability to give credit to others due to them - if someone's pride disturbs you, then you are also guilty of pride. Thomas Aquinas argued that all other sins stem from pride, making this one of the most important sins to focus on:

"Excessive self-love is the cause of all sin ... the root of pride lies in the fact that man is not, in some way, subject to God and his dominion."
Dismantle the sin of pride
Christian teaching against pride encourages people to be submissive to religious authorities to submit to God, thereby increasing the power of the church. There is nothing necessarily wrong with pride because pride in what you do often can be justified. There is certainly no need to credit any god for the skills and experience one has to spend a lifetime developing and perfecting; The contrary Christian arguments simply serve the purpose of denigrating human life and human abilities.

It is certainly true that people can be too confident of their abilities and that this can lead to tragedy, but it is also true that too little trust can prevent a person from reaching his full potential. If people don't recognize that their results are their own, they won't recognize that it is up to them to continue to persevere and achieve in the future.

Punishment
Proud people - those guilty of committing the mortal sin of pride - are said to be punished in hell for being "broken on the wheel". It is unclear what this particular punishment has to do with the attack of pride. Perhaps during the Middle Ages breaking the wheel was a particularly humiliating punishment to endure. Otherwise, why not be punished by making people laugh and mock your skills for eternity?

Envy is the desire to possess what others have, be they material objects, such as cars or character traits, or something more emotional like a positive vision or patience. According to the Christian tradition, envying others leads to not being happy for them. Aquino wrote that envy:

"... is contrary to charity, from which the soul derives its spiritual life ... Charity rejoices in the good of others, while envy is grieved for it."
Dismantle the sin of envy
Non-Christian philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato argued that envy led to the desire to destroy those who are envied, so as to prevent them from possessing anything. Envy is therefore treated as a form of resentment.

Making envy a sin has the drawback of encouraging Christians to be satisfied with what they have rather than opposing the unjust power of others or trying to get what others have. It is possible that at least some states of envy are due to the way in which some possess or miss things unfairly. Envy could therefore become the basis for fighting injustice. Although there are legitimate reasons for concern about resentment, there is probably a more unjust inequality than unjust resentment in the world.

Focusing on feelings of envy and condemning them rather than the injustice that causes these feelings allows injustice to continue unchallenged. Why should we rejoice that someone gets power or goods they shouldn't have? Why shouldn't we grieve for someone who benefits from injustice? For some reason, injustice itself is not considered a mortal sin. Although resentment was probably as serious as unjust inequality, it says a lot about Christianity that once became a sin, while the other did not.

Punishment
Envious people, guilty of having committed the mortal sin of envy, will be punished in hell immersed in freezing water for all eternity. It is not clear what kind of connection exists between punishing envy and resisting the freezing of water. Should the cold teach them why it is wrong to desire what others have? Should it cool their desires?

Gluttony is normally associated with overeating, but has a broader connotation that includes trying to consume more than everything you actually need, including food. Thomas Aquinas wrote that Gluttony is about:

"... not any desire to eat and drink, but an excessive desire ... to leave the order of reason, in which the good of moral virtue consists."
So the phrase "glutton for punishment" is not as metaphorical as one might imagine.

In addition to committing the deadly sin of gluttony by eating too much, one can do it by consuming too many overall resources (water, food, energy), spending excessively to have particularly rich foods, spending excessively to have too much of something (cars, games, houses, music, etc.) and so on. Gluttony could be interpreted as the sin of excessive materialism and, in principle, focusing on this sin could encourage a more just and equitable society. Why didn't this really happen, though?

Dismantle the sin of gluttony
Although the theory may be tempting, practically teaching Christians that gluttony is a sin was a good way to encourage those who have very little to not want more and be content with how little they are able to consume, as more would be sinful . At the same time, however, those who already consume excessively have not been encouraged to do less, so that the poor and hungry can have enough.

Excessive and "conspicuous" consumption has long served Western leaders as a means of signaling a high social, political and financial status. Even the religious leaders themselves have probably been guilty of gluttony, but this has been justified as glorification of the church. When was the last time you even heard a great Christian leader pronounce a condemnation?

Punishment
The gluttonous - the guilty of the sin of gluttony - will be punished in hell with forced feeding.

Lust is the desire to experience physical and sensual pleasures (not just those that are sexual). The desire for physical pleasures is considered sinful because it makes us ignore more important spiritual needs or commandments. Sexual desire is also sinful according to traditional Christianity because it leads to using sex for something more than procreation.

Condemning lust and physical pleasure is part of Christianity's general effort to promote the afterlife on this life and what it has to offer. It helps to block people in the idea that sex and sexuality exist only for procreation, not for love or even just for the pleasure of the acts themselves. Christian denigration of physical pleasures and sexuality in particular have been among the most serious problems with Christianity throughout its history.

The popularity of lust as a sin can be attested by the fact that more is written to condemn it than for almost all other sins. It is also one of only seven deadly sins that people continue to consider sinful.

In some places, the whole spectrum of moral behavior appears to have been reduced to various aspects of sexual morality and the concern to maintain sexual purity. This is especially true when it comes to the Christian right - it is not without good reason that almost everything they say about "values" and "family values" involves sex or sexuality in some form.

Punishment
Lustful people - those guilty of having committed the mortal sin of lust - will be punished in hell for being suffocated in fire and sulfur. There does not seem to be much connection between this and sin itself, unless it is assumed that the lustful people spend their time being "suffocated" with physical pleasure and now have to endure being suffocated by physical torment.

Anger - or anger - is the sin of rejecting the Love and Patience that we should feel for others and instead opt for violent or hateful interactions. Many Christian acts over the centuries (such as the Inquisition or the Crusades) may have been motivated by anger, not love, but have been excused by saying that the reason for them was love of God or love of a person's soul - so much love, in fact, that it was necessary to harm them physically.

The condemnation of anger as a sin is therefore useful in repressing efforts to correct injustice, in particular the injustices of religious authorities. Although it is true that anger can quickly lead a person to an extremism which is itself an injustice, this does not necessarily justify the total condemnation of anger. It certainly does not justify focusing on anger but not on the harm that people cause in the name of love.

Dismantle the sin of anger
It can be argued that the Christian notion of "anger" as a sin suffers from serious flaws in two different directions. First, however "sinful" it may be, the Christian authorities quickly denied that their own actions were motivated by it. The real suffering of others is, unfortunately, irrelevant when it comes to evaluating things. Secondly, the "anger" label can be quickly applied to those seeking to correct the injustices enjoyed by ecclesiastical leaders.

Punishment
Angry people - those guilty of committing the deadly sin of anger - will be punished in hell by being dismembered alive. There seems to be no connection between the sin of anger and the punishment of dismemberment unless it is that the dismemberment of a person is something that an angry person would do. It also seems rather strange that people are dismembered "alive" when they must necessarily be dead when they get to hell. Isn't it still necessary to be alive to be dismembered alive?

Greed - or avarice - is the desire for material gain. It is similar to Gluttony and Envy, but refers to gain rather than consumption or possession. Aquinas condemned greed because:

"It is a sin directly against one's neighbor, since a man cannot overflow with external wealth without another man missing him ... it is a sin against God, just like all mortal sins, as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things “.
Dismantle the sin of greed
Today, religious authorities rarely seem to condemn the way in which the wealthy in the capitalist (and Christian) West owns much while the poor (both in the West and elsewhere) own little. This may be due to the fact that greed in various forms is the basis of the modern capitalist economy on which Western society is based and Christian churches today are fully integrated into that system. Serious and sustained criticism of greed would ultimately lead to continued criticism of capitalism, and few Christian churches seem to be willing to take risks that could arise from such a position.

Consider, for example, the close political connections between capitalist and conservative Christian leaders in the Republican Party. What would happen to this alliance if conservative Christians started condemning greed and gluttony with the same fervor that they currently direct against lust? Opposite greed and capitalism would make Christian countercultures in a way they have not been from their early history and are unlikely to rebel against the financial resources that feed them and keep them so fat and powerful today. Many Christians today, especially conservative Christians, try to paint themselves and their conservative movement as "countercultural", but ultimately their alliance with social, political and economic conservatives only serves to strengthen the foundations of Western culture.

Punishment
Greedy people - those guilty of committing the mortal sin of greed - will be punished in hell by being boiled alive in oil for all eternity. There seems to be no link between the sin of greed and the punishment of being boiled in oil unless, of course, they are boiled in rare and expensive oil.

Sloth is the most misunderstood of the seven deadly sins. Often considered a simple laziness, it is more accurately translated as apathy. When a person is apathetic, they no longer care about doing their duty to others or to God, causing them to ignore their spiritual well-being. Thomas Aquinas wrote that sloth:

"... he is evil in his effect if he oppresses man so much that he completely turns him away from good deeds."
Dismantle the sloth sin
Condemning laziness as a sin works as a way of keeping people active in the church in case they begin to realize how useless religion and theism really are. Religious organizations need people to remain active to support the cause, usually described as "God's plan," because such organizations produce no value that would otherwise invite any type of income. People must therefore be encouraged to "voluntarily" time and resources on pain of eternal punishment.

The biggest threat to religion is not anti-religious opposition because opposition implies that religion is still important or influential. The biggest threat to religion is really apathy because people are apathetic for the things that don't matter anymore. When enough people are apathetic towards a religion, that religion has become irrelevant. The decline of religion and theism in Europe is due more to people who no longer care and find religion no longer relevant than to anti-religious critics who convince people that religion is wrong.

Punishment
The lazy - the people guilty of having committed the sloth's mortal sin - are punished in hell thrown into the snake pits. As with other punishments for deadly sins, there doesn't seem to be a connection between sloth and snakes. Why not put the lazy in frozen water or boiling oil? Why not get them out of bed and go to work to change?