It’s Easter weekend.

For Christians, this is the culmination of Holy Week, a celebration of the grace of God who gave his son in sacrifice to wash away the sins of the world. The death and resurrection of Jesus is a symbol of the faith that it is never too late to choose to be reborn, purified, and begin behaving like a decent human being.

I was raised in a Christian sect founded in the religious revival of the late nineteenth century. My father was very religious, so much so that his children all left the faith. My experience of the community of the church was one of judgement and back biting and other non-Christian behavior.

Still I liked the new Easter clothes, the egg hunts, the clove-festooned ham, and even Peeps (bright yellow marshmallow baby chickens, which are no doubt carcinogenic). I did not enjoy the stepped up sermons of purifying my thinking and living a sin-free life. Sin seemed like fun; every kind of fun I wanted to have as a teenager was labelled sin.

Sin

I wrote a 20 page term paper on erotic literature in eleventh grade, which included two distinctly out of context Bible quotes combined:

“Sin lieth at the door. . .
. . . Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.”

I don’t know when I developed my irreverent sardonic writing style. Some teachers didn’t like it; some did. Mr. Nichols gave me an ‘A’ with the comment:

“Excellent! Well documented research and HILARIOUS! I read it three times to get through grading these papers – fun. Thanks!”

I did not show off my grade or the paper to my parents. My mother would have been ‘so disappointed,’ and my father . . . well, let’s say, I doubted his excellent sense of humor would have stretched that far.

Before Easter, a LinkedIn connection, Dr Ali Anani wrote about fraud and how greed caused people to make such poor choices. For a few short term dollars some business people destroy trust and drive away customers.
Greed is one of the medieval Christian Church’s seven deadly sins. It has been thought to be a bad character trait for a long time. I wrote Brother Ali, that this trait is “foundational, the other six sins flow from always wanting too much and more.” (I’ll share more of that thought later.)

It got me thinking about sin again, some sixty years after my high school exposition.

People aren’t perfect. Religions have rules, laws, and commandments to deal with the imperfections of humanity. Violations of those rules are defined as sin in most religions. Some sins are worse than others. Despite the fact that there are 613 commandments in Judaism, the 10 commandments listed in the Torah are still the biggies.

The Seven

The seven deadly sins had their roots in the fourth century when Christian monk Evagrius Pontius had the best definition of sin I’ve run across. He called it “hurtful desire.” “I know you want that, but it will hurt you and others.”

Evagrius delineated eight evil thoughts: “gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sloth, sadness, vainglory and pride.” Why sadness? If we are sad at another’s good fortune, that’s envy. If we are internally focused on our own inadequacies –“poor me” – that denies that God has a plan for us. Pride and vainglory? Pride is not giving credit to God, but taking it ourselves; vainglory is greed for acclaim.

Pope Gregory (sixth century) removed sloth and added envy and said that pride, not giving credit to God, drove all the other sins. This is like hubris, the flaw that leads to the hero’s downfall in Greek tragedies, “competing for glory with the gods.” It is also like Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden, “eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” hoping to become like God.

In the fifth century Augustine called this “original sin.” He opposed Pelagius, a Briton monk of the Celtic Church, who advocated that people were born with “original blessing,” free will to sin or to choose a life of asceticism and good works. In the Celtic Church, Jesus and clergy were exemplars of the right choices, not saviors who interceded on behalf of the irresponsible. Augustine won this debate and Pelagianism was declared heresy in 415 CE.

Back to the Seven, Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century) brought back sloth, got rid of sadness, and combined pride and vainglory. Thomas agreed that they all flow from pride, because, well, who wants to contradict a pope?

Oh well, sorry Greg, but I think the seven all flow from greed. As I asserted in my response to Brother Ali Anani:
• Pride is greed for esteem, acclaim.
• Lust is being greedy for sex.
• Gluttony is greed for food.
• Envy is greed for what others have.
• Wrath is greed for control of everything, even the uncontrollable.
• Sloth is being greedy for rest and leisure.

All are “hurtful desires.” All come from wanting more and even more, “too much and never enough.” Why are greedy people greedy? Why can’t those who crave compliments stop encouraging suck-ups?

Antidotes to Sin

There is a lot of psychological theory that comes from the study of addiction. There develops a hole at the center of the being, a felt inadequacy that craves to be resolved, but no amount of gluttonous consumption of alcohol, or sex, or whatever others have, will ever fill the hole. Creating your own glowing press won’t fill the hole; using anger to get your way won’t fill it. Denying your sin, “not me,” doesn’t work.

Nor does “reframing” it, as Gordon Gecko, the corporate raider in the movie Wall Street, tried:
” Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”

Nope. Greed ain’t good. It’s a hurtful desire, because the greedy don’t ever say, “I’ve got enough.” Being a billionaire leads to wanting to be a trillionaire for some who have to fill that hole.

“I have enough” is the antidote to greed and therefore to the seven deadly sins. I don’t need ever more money, esteem, sex, food, or leisure. I accept that others may have more or different things. I moderate any righteous anger I feel at injustice, I channel it to make change, not to hurt, but to help.

So here are the antidote seven:
• Not pride, but humility.
• Not lust, and maybe not chastity or celibacy, but love, giving comfort and pleasure.
• Not gluttony for food, drugs and booze, but moderation.
• Not envy, but gratitude, and charity.
• Not greed, but generosity.
• Not wrath, but fairness.
• Not sloth, but focused capability and contribution.

The focus of the un-magnificent seven is “me, me, me, mine.” The focus of the antidote seven is others.

I’m still working on not being such a sinner. How about you?