The seven deadly sins explained (1)
I talked a lot about the sins as they appeared as characters or concepts in all sorts of media. But here I want to return to the original, true concept of the seven deadly sins, as created and taught in the Christian religion, and as they were developed into Christian cultures. Don’t worry, I will make it simple and not delve into picky little details (cause there’s a lot, the deadly sins have been around for two millennia).
WHAT IS A DEADLY SIN?
A very common misconception is to believe that the deadly sins are the worst sins a person can commit. This is false, or rather this is a mistake. A sin is an action by which you transgress or oppose the laws of God/the principles of morality (the two being inter-connected in religion); it is the religious equivalent of a crime. The worst sins you can commit are the “mortal sins”, called as such because they doom you to Hell and thus prevents you from reaching a form of “immortality” in Heaven (Hell being perceived as an “eternal death” while those in Heaven were rewarded with the resurrection at the end of times). Mortal, deadly… you see why it might be mistaken. Though, interestingly, the deadly sins are only called “deadly” in English – for example in French and other Roman languages (Spanish, Italian, etc…) we are talking about the “Capital” sins. Capital from “caput”, the head – because they are the leaders of the sins, and because they are the sins of the/from the head. Others talk about the “cardinal sins”. But overall the idea to call them “sin” has been heavily criticized – and Thomas Aquinas, not only a saint living in the 13th century but also one of the major theologist and scholar of the Christian Church, rather advised the use of the term “vice”, “capital vice” or “cardinal vice”, which he deemed fitting better the notion.
Because a deadly sin is not an action like a typical sin. It is rather a perverse desire, a flaw in the being, the reason and motivation for human beings to sin. It is the temptation, the corruption, the little voice that tells you to do bad things. When you are guilty of a deadly sin, you are not guilty of committing it, but rather of committing all sorts of actions and sins caused and motivated by the vice in question. Dante Alighieri, the man who created the “Divine Comedy” (which shaped the popular culture vision of Hell), considered each of the seven deadly sins as a perversion of the notion of love – three a love perverted until it tries to hurt and harm others, three a love that falls into sin due to being excessive and unrestrained, and one a complete absence of love.
The current list of the Seven Deadly Sins was officially published in Latin by Pope Gregory I in the year 590, the end of the 6th century, and it has been used to this day in the Catholic Church as such, as well as in all the other branches of Christianity that are born of Catholicism, such as the Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist Churches. The Orthodox Church uses a slightly different list, since it was not an “offspring” of the Catholic Church but rather one of the two branches produced by the original Christian Church – more on that later.
THE LIST OF THE DEADLY SINS
ENVY
Let’s begin with Envy (referred in Latin as “Invidia”). Dante classified it as one of the sins born out of a love so perverted it tried to harm other, here the love for others and the admiration of others, perverted into cruelty.
Envy is a desire to have what others have. Many people mistake it for “jealousy”, however the two concepts are slightly different. Jealousy is considered a natural human emotion and the fear to lose something or someone to someone else, resulting in attempts at sabotaging the other and over-protectiveness of the loved one/thing. Envy is very different – it is the desire to obtain what someone else has, because you want it for yourself. Envy is born of what is called “sadness at another one’s good fortune” (and in fact it was originally called the sin of sadness). When an envious person see someone have something beautiful or when they see something good happen to someone else, they will not rejoice for this person but rather feel sad that they do not have or live the same thing. Envy is an inability to be happy or joyful for the others, only self-lamenting and pitying yourself. Interestingly, Envy is one of the rare vices where the sinner is always unhappy, because Envy often blinds the sinner to their own qualities and belongings. It doesn’t matter what quality or assets they have, they will not be satisfied with it because the envious person is obsessed with the others and turned outside, blind to their own self.
To specify, people tend to identify two types of envy: an envy based on materialism, as in an envy felt at seeing someone’s material possession (envious at someone’s wealth, beautiful house, new car or external traits such as beauty), and an envy based on spirituality, an envy felt at someone’s “inner belonging” (the envy of someone’s intelligence, talent or natural charisma).
Now, Envy is a fascinating sin in that it is double-faced, a dual sin. Because Envy is not just “sadness”. It is also “joy”. More precisely “joy at the sight of the others’ misfortunes”. The same way the envious person cannot rejoice at someone else’s happiness, they will rejoice at another person’s unhappiness. The lesser form of Envy is based around imitation, as in you want to obtain the same thing as the person you envy – however it is not the true core and form of Envy. At its core, at its root, the envious person is obsessed with an object because someone else has it, not because of the object in itself. An envious person will not be merely satisfied with being like the other person – an envious person actually wants to deprive the other of the belonging they desire. This is the “rejoice at another’s misery” part. An envious person will try to steal the other person’s belonging to take it for themselves, or if they can’t steal it they will try to destroy or ruin it (burn the house, disfigure the beautiful person, destroy the famous person’s reputation with gossips, either lies or truths). This is the core operation of Envy: the taking or destruction of the object you desire, so that the other person will not have it.
If an envious person succeeds in stealing or destroying the envied object, they will fall into “schadenfreude” (to use a psychology term), aka they will become cruel and sadistic, finding their joy and pleasure in the pain, loss and suffering of the envied ones. On the contrary, if an envious person fails to steal or destroy the envied object, they will fall into sadness, misery and even despair, as they will believe themselves miserable and consider their life worthless since they do not have what the others have. This is the duality of Envy, self-pitying sadness and cruel sadism.
Envy is nowadays associated with the color green (the expression “green with envy”) though yellow has also been used as the color of envy ; and in terms of animal symbols it tend to be associated with either snakes (snakes are the symbol of the evil tempting the innocent to ruin their perfect life, since the Snake tempted Eve to banish her out of Eden) or dogs (because there is this image of how dogs keep fighting each other for a bone, a symbol of an envious trying to take away from someone else something that ultimately is worthless).
