Pride

I am proud.  Made evident by the fact that I am unwilling to admit that I am a fan of Star Trek. (I would rather that people think me studious and erudite, eschewing the vulgarities of popular culture). But the bald facts are that I have seen every episode of all the series (except Deep Space 9, which tried even my fanatic devotion), and certainly all the movies at least once.

Science fiction is interesting because it is deeply philosophical.  Worldviews are very evident in this genre, more so than in, say historical fiction.  In all the series, but particularly in The Next Generation, there is an evident philosophical conviction that with time and progress we will build the perfect world - where there is no disease, or war or need for money.  This has, of course, been accomplished on earth by humans.  The conflict that make the show worth watching arises from encountering other-worldly species who have not yet reached this level of enlightenment.  Not to point out inconsistency, but for all his talk of peace and harmony, Jean-Luc Picard gives the command to arm the photon torpedoes fairly frequently.  But I digress.

This widely-held notion, in Star Trek and in us and our neighbors, is what the ancient Greeks would call hubris, a manifestation of pride.  It is the basic conviction that we can do it (whatever the it is) ourselves.  Man can build utopia.  Dorothy Sayers puts it this way:

"It [pride] is the sin of trying to be as God.  It is the sin which proclaims that Man can produce out of his own wits and his own impulses and his own imagination the standards by which he lives: that Man is fitted to be his own judge."*

Pride is the first sin and the very thing that the serpent tempted Eve with.

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

That knowing of good and evil can and has been understood as judging for ourselves what is good and evil.

The conviction that we can build the Utopia or Heaven on earth, the Brave New World, as Aldous Huxley called it, is simply pride.  Huxley saw that the "progress" brought not Utopia but Distopia.  Both Hitler and Stalin were trying to build a Utopia by encouraging or coercing people to progress.  Great damage is done by this manifestation of pride.

But I am no Hitler or Stalin, I think.  For this I am grateful.  I have much less opportunity to harm.  But I am still trying to build my own Utopia in some way.  If only we could educate more, or inoculate more or recycle more we can save _________ (fill in the blank). If only I can try harder, think better, or read more, I can overcome my addiction, or make my family happy or get out of debt.

"So, who is this guy anyway?" you might be asking, "Some kind of Luddite that hates progress and good things?" Perhaps, but I don't think so.  I love education, the advances we have made in medicine and science.  I am thankful for indoor plumbing and, most days, for my cell phone.  I think that frugal use and reuse of materials we have (a definition of recycling) is virtuous. This is not a call to complacency and sloth - a different problem and sin. Pursuing improvement, betterment, brings much good.  But I am not so naive as to think that any of this will make a perfect world, because the world will still have a critical problem.

What pride and the trust we have in progress, another name for trusting in ourselves, fail to take into account is sin.  The obvious, if I but look at myself, and unfortunate reality that my education, medication and hard work does not cease to make be desperately self-centered.  There is only one cure for that cancer and only one Surgeon who can perform it.

I had a friend in high school and university who, with me, was involved in Model Parliament (Model Congress to translate for my American friends).  He was in opposition trying to defeat a bill put forward by the Government that welfare payments be increased.  It is worth noting that ideologically he would have been in favor, but one's task in debating is to argue the side you have been assigned.  Mike's (for that is his name) line of reasoning was that this is dangerous because of, and I quote, "People like me." He continued to point out how unmotivated and lazy he was and how he would delight in taking advantage of the system.  Mike put his finger on the problem in trusting the progress to Utopia.  It is hubris because of people like me, because of sin.

The Scriptures warn us against this particular manifestation of pride in this way:

Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. (Psalm 146:3)

And that warning is for, and against, this son of man - me - and my Utopian dreams as well.

*Dorothy Sayers in "The Other Six Deadly Sins"

Lust

Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers which brought to our attention the robust sin of greed for universal condemnation (as if we had never participated in the staggering culture of greed ourselves) it would seem that sex had lived at the center of our moral consciousness one way or the other. And even now it remains so. At the heart of that consciousness is a "smoldering subterranean Manichaeism"* which assumes that anything pertaining to sex is somehow impure and beneath dignity. This is true of both puritanical approaches and libertarian ones. Those espousing the casting off of repressive Victorian morality to embrace "free love" proclaim with loud voices, "There is nothing wrong with ________." (Fill in the blank with sexual practice of choice.) It seems to me that the louder we shout this phrase, the more we are trying to convince ourselves.

Much of this is directed at libertarians but one quick word to the puritanical. And I quote St. John Chrystostom's Twelfth Homily on the Epistle to the Collosians. In speaking of sex in the union of man and woman as one flesh he said, "Why do you blush? Is it not pure? You are behaving like heretics!"

Lust is a perversion, a twisting of a good and indeed holy thing. Sexual desire was given to us by God. It was his idea, not Satan's as it appears some think. But it is a perversion of the good. Lust most commonly manifests itself in promiscuity, either with another person or persons or in our own, now internet pornography fed, fantasy life. But lust has a sister which is another twisting of the good of sexuality and her name is Frigidity. Lust is sexuality unbridled. Frigidity is sexuality killed.

Lust, of course, is not about love or true eros, to use the Greek word. In fact lust is most often driven not by love but by anxiety. When we feel alone, abandoned or anxious we look to be comforted. And the physical pleasure of sexual release is a powerful comfort that leaves us craving more. Dorothy Sayers says, "men and women turn to lust in sheer boredom and discontent."** What is boredom, ennui but anxiety?

Lust is about anxiety and this leads to another reason why it is not about love. Love is mutual submission (Ephesians 5:21) - a mutual giving. Anxiety-fueled lust is about getting - getting pleasure, getting my anxiety medicated. One of the newer trendy phrases in the lust culture is "friends with benefits", meaning a relationship with little or no commitment, just for sex. This is not about friend love (phile, the Greek word again) but about getting my needs met. Lust is about getting. Love is about giving.

And the cry to those who are bound up in lust-driven compulsions is that of "rebuke and restriction" (again Dorothy Sayers,) who says this is "worse than useless." And it is. Our need is first for God to fill our holes of anxiety and abandonment. We may feel we have been abandoned, left on our own by others. But God says he will never leave us or forsake us. (Hebrews 13:5)
Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49:15)

Being filled with love that comes from the God who made us, and made us as sexual beings, we are then free to give in love, to bless in love, even in physical love. And here we discover, with St. John Chrysostom, that what we thought a necessary evil, even if unconsciously, is truly pure. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

* Josef Pieper in "The Four Cardinal Virtues"
** Dorothy Sayers in "The Other Six Deadly Sins"

Sloth

Dorothy Sayers is one of my favorite authors.  She was mystery author (creator of Lord Peter Wimsey, aristocratic amateur English sleuth), translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy, playwright, and Christian apologist.  In this latter role she wrote an essay called “The Other Six Deadly Sins.”  In this essay she makes a case that the Church has been guilty of an overemphasis on sexual sin (Lust) and near silence on the “other six” – Pride, Gluttony, Avarice (or Greed), Wrath, Envy and Sloth.  In this she is not recommending lightening up on Lust, but rather getting serious about the rest.

At the risk of committing the same error with a different vice, I wonder if we have been serious enough about Sloth.  I take up this strain because the cry of Advent is that we not be found sleeping.

Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.  (Mark 13:35-36 ESV)

In Matthew 25 we read about the wise and foolish virgins, all of whom fall asleep, but only half of whom came prepared to the slumber party.

Sleeping and slothfulness go together for us.  We think of slothfulness as laziness or lack of initiative.  Or perhaps as an aversion to hard work.  Slothfulness is certainly these things, but it is also more.  Slothfulness and its indolence are not limited to the physical realm.   Boredom, for instance, is a sign of intellectual or spiritual sloth.  The careless attitude, and by this I do not mean cheery and virtuous care-free, but real lack of interest in anything – this is Sloth.  The constant need to be entertained, perhaps because we are bored, is a presenting symptom of Sloth.   And to be entirely counter-intuitive, our frenetic activity and busy-ness, as much as it is our way of coping with or escaping boredom, is also a sign of Sloth.

And it is deadly.  Because it lulls us to sleep.  And sleep is death.  The New Testament speaks of those “who have fallen asleep” meaning those who have died.  Asleep we are not attentive to the presence of God.  Nor are we appreciative of the presence of God.   Our slothful boredom conditions us to pay no attention to anything unless it is “exciting.”  Elijah discovered that God was not in the exciting things, like the earthquake, wind and fire (1 Kings 19) but in the still small voice.

The warning of Advent is to watch, to awake, to attend to the still, small voice now. For if we do not we will find, at the last day, that his coming is more exciting than we would prefer.

Wakened by the solemn warning

Let the earth-bound soul arise

Christ, her Sun, all sloth dispelling,

Shines upon the morning skies

E. Caswell - translated from Latin of 6^th century