Seven Deadly Sins: Introducton

Sin is at it’s most powerful when we think it is least present.  It is most destructive where we think it a subtle, ordinary, every day reality.  This recognition lays behind the list of the seven deadly sins. It’s not a list you find anywhere in the Bible, though it has much to say about each of them.  The 7 are rather common place, ordinary, and everyday.  Pride, envy, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, and sloth don’t seem like big deals.  Yet, in the late 300’s a desert monk named Evagrius of Pontus put most of these on a list and described them as ‘demons.’ Gregory the Great would tweak the list a bit and call them the seven “leaders of wicked armies.”  What at first glance seems benign proves in a longer gaze to be a cancer causing much human evil and misery.  They are like head waters of a mighty river or the rooted trunk of a tree bearing bitter fruit.