Is the true sin immoderate behaviour?
* Lust
We all know love is good, and that procreation is necessary for the continuation of the species. Much of love is associated with finding the other person sexually attractive. Lust in excess of physical attraction.
* Gluttony
If we eat too little we are in as bad a situation as if we eat too much. Also those who eat what is available without causing others to go without will survive famine better. So gluttony is only excess of propper healthy eating.
* Avarice (covetousness, greed)
If we don’t seek to better purselves and improve our conditions then we stagnate. Avarice is just taking this to the extreme that you deny things from others who need them more.
* Sloth
If you do not relax and take time over things then you will suffer stress and be mean. Sloth is just too much relaxation until you don’t do those things you need to do.
* Wrath (anger)
If you are never arroused to action you will be a doormat, people will walk all over you, tht cannot be right. Wrath is just anger that occurs too easily and which leads to consequences beyonde mere reciprication.
* Envy (jealousy)
If we do not compare ourselves with others, we fall outside of social conventions and become outcast. We might not bathe or wear socially appropriate clothing. Only when we let our position within society lead to resentment do we become jealous.
* Pride (vanity)
If we care not what we do and take no interest in our actions we become slothernly and lazy. Some pride is a virtue in giving us an expectation in the quality of what we do. Only in excess does this become problematic and ‘sinfull’
This sounds like a variation of the idea of one of the ancient Greek philosophers ( Aristotle ? ) that the virtues are the midpoints between extremes. Like so :
Cowardice----------Bravery------------Foolhardiness
Spendthrift-------------Prudent-------------Miser
Easy mark-----------------Compassionate--------------Cold hearted
Doormat------------------Strong willed----------------Fanatic
I think there’s a fair amount of truth to it.
The seven deadly sins are the opposite of virtues. What they all have in common, though, isn’t that they’re immoderate, but that they all are selfish.
Lust is the desire to satisfy your own sexual urges. You don’t want to have sex with the person because you want to fulfill a natural desire to procreate or to deepen your emotional ties or please the other person, but because it will make you happy.
Gluttony is the desire to eat merely for the pleasure of eating, not because you need to satisfy your hunger.
Avarice is the desire to obtain things, not for the good they can do or for the ways you can use them to help others, but merely to horde them.
Sloth is not just well earned rest to recover yourself, but physical, mental, and spiritual inaction, whereby the person becomes focused on his own doubts and fails to take neccesary actions because of them.
Wrath isn’t just anger…it’s anger at something or someone, not because the thing you’re angry at is morally wrong, but because it inconvenienced you. It’s the kind of anger that says “You hurt ME”
Envy is when, instead of taking pleasure in someone else’s success, you resent those successes because they didn’t happen to you.
Pride is when, instead of taking deserved pleasure in your own success, you try to elevate yourself beyond what’s appropriate.
The OP looks very similar to something C. S. Lewis wrote, in Mere Christianity, I think. I don’t have the book with me to verify.
This was the first thing the OP made me think of. “Everything in moderation” is, however, more of a Greco-Roman ideal than a Judeo-Christian one, so while it might be somewhat valid to consider the Seven Deadly Sins from this viewpoint, this is probably not the way the Christian theologians who originally listed and discussed them would have defined them. I think their understanding, and the one that “fits” best within the mainstream of Christian thought, would be closer to Captain Amazing’s. I think they would have thought of the Seven Deadlies not so much as desires that are immoderate but as desires that are misdirected (Lust, for example, being sexual desire for thy neighbor’s wife), or that are untempered by the appropriate virtues.
That’s true; I read it not too long ago.
Lewis mafe the point that as far as Christian were concerned, there were no “less bad” versions of the 7 Cardinal Vices (not sins, in the Catholic Church; these aren’t sins in and of themselves, but they lead to sin when not controlled). In contrast to the Aristotlean theory, which stated that one ough to err on the side of which vice was “closest” to the virtue.
In his Purgatorio, Dante had a level of Purgatory Mountain set aside for each of the Seven Deadly Sins (or Vices, whatever), and the souls being purged on each level would be practicing the opposite of that sin – the slothful would be running around practicing and proclaiming zeal, the gluttonous were starving their spiritual bodies into skeletons, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purgatorio#Purgatorio
Interestingly, though, the Catholic Church’s traditional list of Seven Virtues does not consist of polar opposites of the Deadly Sins. There are four secular or Cardinal Virtues – prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice – and three Theological Virtues – faith, hope, and charity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues Hope would be the opposite of despair, which you’ll find nowhere in the Deadly Sins. Fortitude would be the opposite of cowardice – you get the picture.
OTOH, there is more than one canonical list of Seven Virtues in the Catholic Church – there is an alternative list of virtues which are formulated as polar opposites of the Deadly Vices; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues.
I are confused.