Seven Deadly Sins

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Years ago, at the old Baptist hospital in downtown Atlanta, I learned something of the craft of pastoral counseling. One day a week, I sat with several other counselors-in-training, and wrestled with real-world cases of mental and emotional illness. Under the supervision of skilled professional counselors, we also practiced what we were learning at various out-patient clinics around Atlanta.

One of the tools I was given was the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders." It was an encyclopedia of knowledge about the diagnosis and treatment of emotional disorders and full-blown mental illness. By consulting this manual, a counselor could draw on the received wisdom of how a particular disorder functioned and was best treated.

Fifteen hundred years before the DSM made its debut, Christian tradition developed such a diagnostic tool: it was and is called the "Seven Deadly Sins." The Seven Deadly Sins were not so much bad things to be avoided as they are windows on the soul. They were keys to understanding why otherwise intelligent and well-meaning human beings, keep doing harm to themselves and one another.

One modern interpreter has dubbed the Seven Deadly Sins "Seven Habits of Highly Destructive People." That gets to the nub of the matter. These seven character disorders are "deadly" because they set us on a course of becoming someone we don’t want to be. If one persists blindly and doggedly in any of these paths, long enough, the end-game is moral and spiritual disintegration or "death"--certainly "death" to the kind of vibrantly alive, fully-formed person we see in Jesus.

With the possible exception of envy, each of the seven deadly sins has something good at its heart: pride (healthy self-esteem), anger (righteous indignation), sloth (renewing leisure), greed (motivation), gluttony (appetite), and lust (God-given sexual desire). Instead of viewing the "deadlies" as inherently bad, they are best understood as the extreme end of a spectrum beginning with something positive. But when otherwise natural and desirable dimensions of our humanity become all-consuming--in theological language, gods--they destroy us. For example, the problem with the glutton is not delighting in good food and drink; the Bible commends such enjoyment (Psalm 104:15-16) and Jesus practiced it (Matthew 11:19). The problem with gluttony is trying to satisfy with excessive food and drink the hunger and thirst for something, Someone, else.

Starting this Sunday and continuing through Lent, we’ll be asking, "What’s So Deadly about the Seven Deadly Sins?" Each Sunday, the sermon will address one of seven proven ways of doing serious damage to oneself and others. Why bother? Because 1,500 years of Christian reelection suggests recognizing the true shape of our bondage is the first step in getting free.