The Seven Deadly Sins are Now Virtues

Recently Matthew Fox spoke at Jubilee, in Asheville. He spoke of an affliction of our time: “Couchpotatoitis.” He also used an old word for this condition, “sloth,” and it reminded me of an article I had written years ago:

When I read Kevin Phillips’ Wealth and Democracy a passage jumped out at me: A research firm called SRI International had written that the Catholic Church’s “seven deadly sins”—pride, gluttony, envy, sloth, greed, lust, and wrath—are capitalism’s virtues.

I think this is a profound observation. For a long time I have felt there is a flaw in capitalism but struggled to find a way to express it, and this may be it.

Early in its history the Catholic Church developed a classification system for sins: some were minor and could be forgiven easily but others were “mortal”; these carried the threat of eternal punishment. These mortal sins are the seven deadly sins and were obviously extremely serious transgressions. 

In the Medieval era artists helped to warn Christians of the peril of committing one of these sins, for an example see “Seven Deadly Sins,” by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1480, above). In Inferno (written around 1315), Dante Alighieri envisioned nine circles of Hell. Sinners condemned for the relatively less serious sins of the flesh (lust, gluttony, and avarice) were in the upper circles, while those condemned for sins of the spirit (sloth, anger, envy, and pride) were placed in the deepest circles of Hell.

Why did the Church consider these feelings so deadly? By looking at them in terms of relationship to God we can discover some answers. Three can be seen as choosing the material world over the spiritual: greed, gluttony, and lust all imply an unhealthy desire for more money or food or sex than the body needs.

The other four can be seen as sinning in thought against God. Envy means you desire something someone else has and you don’t—in other words you are saying God made a mistake in your creation. Wrath likewise implies a judgment that something is wrong with God’s creation. In medieval times sloth didn’t mean general laziness like we think today, it meant laziness towards the things of the spirit. Thus it was a rejection of God. Pride has been called the “deadliest sin.” Pride means wanting to set yourself above everyone, including God.

What do we think of these “sins” today?

Grateful For Every Breath

Today I went to Jubilee, a wonderfully alive and joyful "faith community" in Asheville, NC. This is a dog-friendly church, so there are always a few dogs present, but today there were more than usual. Finally I realized it’s St. Francis day, when animals are blessed in churches all over the country. Not only were there lots of dogs, there were a few birds and even one very brave cat.

Howard Hanger, the minister, chose “greed” as his topic: so much is given freely to us, yet we are greedy for more. We sang of the sun, the wind, and all the ways the earth provides for us abundantly (a version of St. Francis of Assisi's hymn, "All Creatures of our God and King"). Howard spoke of the mist flowing through the mountains this morning; what a gift that was. He spoke of the love that flows from our animals, freely and without condition.

This brought to my mind other living creatures that have given a great gift to us: cyanobacteria (algae). Billions of years ago there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. Early microbes evolved the ability to manufacture energy from sunlight—photosynthesis—and oxygen was their “waste” product. Slowly over hundreds of millions of years oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere until it reached the level that could support animals.

I was reminded of this by an article in this morning’s New York Times about a new book, “Oxygen: A Four Billion Year History,” by geochemist Dr. Donald Canfield. The article quotes Dr. Canfield:

“People take oxygen for granted because it’s just there and we breathe it all the time. But we have the only planet we know of anywhere that has oxygen on it.”

Breathe in and give thanks to the cyanobacteria!