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"

Envy

Envy is the only one of the deadly sins that has a color - green. And is isn't the good green. To be green with envy is descriptive of envy's nature. It makes us feel sick. As such it is perhaps the only sin whose experience is not pleasant.

Envy is an empty sin which dwells on what we have not, while resenting those who have. We are covetous of goods, but we are envious of people. And envious of them because they possess some thing or quality we do not. In this envy not only leaves us dissatisfied, but it also drives a wedge between us and our brothers and sisters.

We envy people's possessions, their qualities, their bodies (the covers of fitness magazines are a testament to this). We even envy people their spiritual gifts and relationship with God. Instead of practicing thankfulness for our own gifts, we wish we could pray like Louise or preach like Frank.

Envy is different from admiration. We need to admire others, to have heroes - people to emulate. But admiration is a form of love and is therefore self-forgetful. Admiration does not lead us to envy because it has nothing to do with us. We are simply appreciating another. When we start comparing ourselves, our emptiness has crept in and we are envying.

Envy is the empty vice because it it rooted in our own emptiness and loss. The cure to envy can be found in the Beatitudes, specifically, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." (Matthew 5:4)

Just as anger is an indication that some boundary has been crossed, envy is an indication that some loss has not been grieved. My daughter, who has lost all of her grandparents, recently told me how she finds it hard to see grandparents spending time with their grandchildren because that can't happen for her. As it stands I think that she is actually grieving her loss - feeling sad about something she has not. But one can see how easily this can turn into envy, resentment of the other because of what they enjoy which I cannot.  And one can see how it is driven from emptiness and can drive a wedge between us and others.

In addition to grieving our losses, we need also to practice the Christian virtue of self-acceptance - being at peace with who we are, how we are, and what we have (both goods and gifts).  Many will be afraid of this because it sounds like complacency and we mustn't be complacent. (Why I mustn't be complacent I cannot articulate but I know urgently that I mustn't - this should be a clue to me that something is off here.)

If we struggle with this notion of self-acceptance perhaps we could benefit from considering how God sees us.  He seems to have no trouble accepting us in spite of our sins and emptiness, and yet has plans an intentions for us to be more, to continue to become.  Self-acceptance is really just accepting the truth about ourselves - reality as it is.  If we are trying to drive to San Francisco and are currently in New York, it will be of no use to wish we were in St. Louis, and resent the people who are already in St. Louis.  None of that will get us to the Golden Gate (double entendre intended.)

Gluttony

If greed or covetousness is unrestrained desire for the things other people have, gluttony is the execution of that desire.  We typically think of gluttony and the inordinate consumption of food.  Therefore the gluttonous are easily identified by their waistlines.  Obesity, we think, is the obvious face of gluttony.

Gluttony is, in reality, just unrestrained consumption.  The item or items being consumed may vary.  One does hear frequently about the problem of obesity in America.  The concern about obesity is not that it has its root in a sin, but that it is "unhealthy" and puts a strain on our healthcare system which is costing us more and more and leaving us less available income to, well, consume.  I live in Vermont - perhaps the least obese state in the union.  But it is not free of gluttony.

Here's a picture that sums up gluttony - a Costco cart piled high with foodstuffs (including the cake-sized "muffins" they sell) as well as various small electronic devices and, say, a large TV.  It is a good picture because it places all of those goods into the same category - consumables.  For that is what they are.  We consume perishables - food - but also non-perishables like furniture, televisions.  When the non-perishables wear out or are broken we don't fix them, we chuck them.  And consume more.

I know all of this because I go to Costco (because you can get SO MUCH STUFF for a comparatively small unit price.)  You can't buy small at Costco.  I was once there preparing for a small party and thought a little ale would be in order.  You can't buy 12 (all I needed) at Costco.  You have to get 24.  This is not a rant about Costco, I am merely using them as an example of what is common everywhere.

We are called, in our economy, consumers.  And consumption is not a sin, it is a virtue.  As I consume more, I stimulate the economy and help drive the engines of commerce.  It is a public service.  I am not convinced.  I think that consumer is just a modern sanitized word that actually means glutton.  Just think what the news would sound like.  "President provides stimulus to encourage gluttons to spend more."

I am not taken to too much food.  That is not the item I am tempted to over-consume.  But get me talking about gadgets or electronics or equipment for outdoor activities and I am a regular Jabba the Hut.  Again, fed by a covetousness of the items and envy of their possessors (I will get to Envy later this week), I am a reckless consumer.  I am a glutton.

One of the tragedies of gluttony is its waste - food, furniture and TVs discarded is part of the waste.  But the other waste is money.  Money is a tool, nothing more and nothing less.  It can be used to meet our needs and those of others, or it can be wasted on that which is unneeded.  The leaves us less money for things like charity and alms - more virtuous uses of our money.  Another tragedy is debt, the accumulation of which appears to be a national pastime.

Here, as with covetousness, I must not confuse what I need with what I want - regardless of whether the object of my desire is an actual consumable or some flashy piece of silicon, glass and plastic that simply everyone has.

Greed

There is a Looney Tunes animated short which retells the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.  Elmer Fudd is the giant, Bugs Bunny is Jack and Daffy Duck is along for the ride.  At a given point Bugs decides it is time to get out while the getting is good.  Daffy, on the other hand refuses to go saying, "I came up here to get those solid gold goodies and I'm not leaving without them. On account of I am greedy."

Greed (also known as avarice or covetousness) is a familiar and common sin.  It might be defined as the willful desire and drive for more than I need.  Gluttony and envy are it close cousins in the list of the seven deadly sins.  much of our economic system depends on it for its health.  We are a people who desire more than we need.  And the best way to allow this particular vice to grow is to redefine the word "need" or encourage people to confuse it with the word "want."

Greed comes in all sizes.  The spectacular proportions of the greed I mentioned in passing last week in naming Lehman Brothers is an easy and dangerous target.  Dangerous because it distracts us from our smaller but no less perilous covetousness.  Just because I don't have the opportunity to sin with large amounts of other people's money does not mean I am free from sinning with my own.

The avaricious become one of two things, spendthrifts or misers.  Both misuse money - the first in the thoughtless expending of it, the second in failing to use it at all.  Money, as a resource, can do great good.  Wasting it or stockpiling it is bad stewardship.  The misers exist, but are less obvious in our culture; the spendthrifts a dime a dozen.  And there are so many opportunities for the spendthrifts!  Good Christian opportunities at that.  Check out your local Christian bookstore - a more apt name is the Christian Knick-knack store.  They stuffed with ceramic and plastic trinkets which, interesting as they may be (MAY being the operative word), no one really needs.

Greed begins, I think, with the creation of artificial need.  I need this or I need that because, well because everyone else has one.  Where is the flaw in this statement?  There are at least two.  One is a falsehood.  Everyone else does not actually have one.  We may think so and advertisers will help us think this very thing but it is not true.  The second flaw is one of logic.  Just because everyone else has one does not mean that I need one.  As an example, even if everyone did have a flat-screen television (and they don't) I still wouldn't need one.  I need a roof over my head, clothes to wear, food to eat and meaningful work.

I am not here espousing aceticism, nor yet miserliness.  I am merely suggesting that we be honest about distinguishing between what we need and what we want.  They are very different things.  And there is not necessarily sin in buying something just because we want it.  There are things that are beautiful that are not needed which we may want or desire.  The sin comes in when the willful desire leads us to ignore others and their needs in our race to acquire or when we live beyond our means in that same race.

St. Paul exhorted the Philippians with these words, "Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever circumstance I am to be content."  Contentment, willfully cultivating it rather than imagined need, and thankfulness, also cultivated, are the foils to greed.  There is a third foil - generosity, another virtue which does not grow naturally.

There are great examples of people who swim against the current of greed.  C.S. Lewis lived very frugally despite very significant income from his writings.  He simply gave it all away.  Rick Warren has followed in his footsteps.

One last comment.  I offer these thoughts, and all of my thoughts on the seven deadly sins not as a victor, but as a sufferer.  I am at least as avaricious (and lustful and wrathful) as my neighbor and need to repent deeply.

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"

The Seven Deadly Sins

Ever since writing a little about sloth in December, I have been thinking on and off about the seven deadly sins. Questions that come to mind immediately: What are they and why are they deadly while others might be merely perilous or mildly distressing?  And why think about them at all?  After all, as pointed out to me by a friend, they are not named as such in the Scriptures, while St. Paul in a number of places lists various flavors of distastrous sinfulness.  Are not these better named the deadly sins?


I am not sure I can adequately answer all of the questions I have posed, but I can try, and at least, I hope, articulate why they deserve our attention.  And I am not the only one who is interested.  These sins have been the subject of a 1995 film with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman and also a number of photo shoots with America's Next Top Model, both of which are disturbing for different reasons, the first for being rather gritty (I have only seen the trailer) and the second for trivializing something that is truly deadly (and only appearing to invoke one of seven.)

Naming a list of seven things is always challenging whether it be deadly sins or dwarfs as one is always apt to miss one on the list.  (On the dwarf front I almost always miss Bashful.)  So the seven are (sins, not dwarfs*) Pride, Gluttony, Lust, Sloth, Wrath, Avarice (Greed) and Envy, in no particular order.


To be sure all sin, unrepented of, is deadly.  Resolutely clinging to our right to our anger or the little fictions we tell ourselves and others is a sure way to exclude ourselves from grace.  God does not entertain or indulge our sense of offense or untruthfulness.  To be repentant means to give up our attachment to these things and to prefer God's justice and truth over ours.

The deadliness of the seven is due, perhaps, to their ageless and perennial nature.  The theologians of the middle ages, including Thomas Aquinas, considered these and reflected and wrote on them.  And here 800 years later, they are, each an every, perfectly familiar and recognizable to me.  They are ancient and, sadly, familiar foes that show their faces in every generation.

They are also deadly because they are the fount and source of other sins.  Wrath's or anger's special danger, says Peter Kreeft, "is that it leads to the worse sin of all: hatred, the opposite of love, which is the greatest good." 1  Lust leads us to using and treating people as objects or things, a degrading and despising of the image of God.  Envy leads us to hate and despise the good in, and possessed by, others.  And pride, suggests C.S. Lewis in a number of places, is the root and cause of all other sin, the first one committed in the Garden of Eden.

Through the rest of this Lenten season, now nearly two weeks old. I want to reflect on the deadly sins. I have already dealt with sloth, or at least wrote about it, in December.  A couple of weeks ago, in My angry car, I inadvertently continued the series in reflecting on wrath by its more common name of anger.  So I have five to go, and due to my sloth in not writing last week, four weeks in which to do it.

1 Peter Kreeft in Back to Virtue, Ignatius Press, 1992
*Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey for those who care.

My angry car

I was meeting with a pastor/mentor some years ago (more than 20) and we were talking about conflict resolution.  His assertion in the conversation was that Christians should not be angry.  I am still angry when I remember it.  It is a ridiculous thing to construct any phrase which includes "should not" followed by any emotion.  "You should not be happy", or "you should not be sad" are statements we would be LESS likely to say but which are essentially the same.  They seek to prohibit the experience of emotion.  The only way to accomplish this would be to destroy one's feeling being entirely.  Not a good idea.

Anger we seek to prohibit most particularly.  We are fine with people being happy (or most folks are) and can live with people being sad (but sometimes not, as we rush to comfort them with kleenex in hopes the tears will stop for all our sakes), but we cannot tolerate anger.  We will redefine it as some nicer word.  "Frustration" is a popular choice.

But what do the Scriptures say about anger?  Interestingly enough there is no prohibition of the emotion in the Bible.  God is described as angry and Jesus appears to have been, ahem, "frustrated" when he chased the money changers out of the temple.  Indeed, the wisdom of the Bible suggests a couple of things.  First that "in your anger do not sin." (Ephesians 4:26)  It is not the emotion, but what we do with it that causes the problem.  Second, it is also suggested that we not let the sun go down on our anger. (also Ephesians 4:26)  This is sage advice, because anger stored becomes wrath and bitterness.

I am not saying that anger cannot be dangerous.  Of course it can.  As can unrelenting sadness.  James in his letter tells us we should be slow to become angry as our anger does not bring about God's righteousness. (James 1:20) I'm down with that.  SLOW to anger - not anger-free.  Habits of anger may be rooted in an unholy sense of entitlement or pride and indeed should not be indulged.  (Note here the should is attached to what we do with the anger not the felling itself.)

Anger is one of the emotions with which God has gifted us.  And I am not using the word "gifted" sarcastically.  It is a gift for two reasons (and here I get to the uses of anger).  First, when we feel angry it tells us that some boundary we have has been crossed or that some expectation we had was not met.  Now here is where it is useful.  When I feel angry, I ask myself, "What boundary has been crossed?  What expectation has gone unmet?"  Once I have identified that I am wiser, but then can ask a supplemental question, "Was it a reasonable boundary or expectation?"  If the answer to the second question is "yes" my response to the anger will be different than if my answer is "no."

Second, there is a lot of energy in anger.  I was once very angry with some people in my church - shocking, I know.  I went out into the driveway and washed and waxed my car within an inch of its life.  It looked beautiful!  A good use of the energy.  Sometimes the energy in anger will actually move us to take action on something that has been long overdue.  Feeling overwhelmed (another anger euphemism) at expectations placed on me and my team at work, I was spurred to have a very fruitful conversation with my boss about what could be done.

Felling ticked today?  Ask yourself what boundary has been crossed and whether it is a reasonable one.  In your anger do not sin.  It might be a good day to clean your car.