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The 7 Deadly Sins: Fabricated Nonsense
A lot of people think the 7 Deadly Sins are written indelibly in the Bible. Well they aren't; they came from the mind of a 4th century Greek monk named Evagrius of Pontus (I had to look that up). Evagrius even came up with the notion of ranking the sins in order of seriousness: gluttony, fornication avarice, sadness, anger, listlessness, vainglory, and pride. But that's 8 sins, not 7. The list we know today, and which is a retooling of Evagrius' list, was helpfully whittled down to 7 and clarified by Pope Gregory I in 590AD. Vainglory and pride, and listlessness and sadness got rolled together, and envy got added. It wasn't until the 17th century that lust made its debut. But, it isn't as if the Bible doesn't list a bunch of stuff we shouldn't do, it simply doesn't make a list of 7 mortal sins. It also doesn't list things in order of seriousness. In fact, according the Bible, failure to pay taxes is just as bad a murder.
Why Should you Care?
You shouldn't. The stern notion of sinning goes against preprogrammed human nature, and much of what we think of as sin today is nothing more than the ravings of paternalistic clergy. What you should really care about, Christian or not, is the Golden rule. Every major religion, and most minor religions, incorporate the Golden Rule as a foundation of moral thinking. Besides, even if you aren't religious, it makes sense. Unlike the 7 mortal sins, The Golden Rule is actually found in the Bible and filed under The Great Commandment, Leviticus 19:18 of the Torah: “Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” There, that was much easier than the 7 mortal sins and the punishments found in The Divine Comedy (Dante, author and protagonist, held a grudge against a lot of people). Christians seem to have made something simple into something unbearably depressing and complicated.
Too Many Rules: On Parenting
What I just said wasn't all pointless rambling. The point that I've finally come to is that good parenting need not be fancy just like religious precepts don't need to be complicated. When you look at the 7 deadly sins, and the weird punishments that come along with them, you can't help but wonder what our friend Evagrius must have had hidden in his closet. Why did he think it was necessary to expound any further on the Golden Rule? Was he so preoccupied with sin that he forgot what his religion was all about? After all, shouldn't “Love Thy Neighbor... .” cover just about everything? Instead of a list of things to not do, a simple guiding principal is always more effective. Like religion, parenting does not have to be full of meaningless rules, intended only for the petty purpose of keeping the locals in line. Parents, at their best, are nothing more than seeders and caretakers. But, I won't deny that we also need to be disciplinarians. We don't however use discipline as a foundation for our parenting. If that were the case, our kids would be correct when they call us fascists (what? Your kids don't call you a fascist?).
Get in Line, Stay in Line:
My kids fall out of line frequently, and I have to correct them for the sake of the family. For instance, if my son got his way, he'd be playing video games all day. If I ask him nicely to go do his homework and he refuses, I have a responsibility to discipline him. He knows perfectly well that video games come after homework, but the lure of the box is great in him, and he pushes against the rules, testing for the breaking point. Religion, if you need that sort of thing to be good, is right to install the fear of punishment for the benefit of people who lack internal morality and need the rod. For that reason it is completely understandable that religion and parenting both employ the same dueling methods, fear and reward, that lead to the same place – salvation. The difference of course, is that parenting teaches kids how to be adults whereas religion teaches adults, who should already know better, how to be good. The kids have an excuse; they're kids, but frankly, if you're an adult and you need to be told not to kill the mailman, you're lost – sorry.
I got off to a meandering start, but finally said what I wanted to say. Parenting and religion need not be complicated with fancy rules but do require discipline when the obvious rules, through fault of the disciple, are broken (discipline, of course, meaning the training of a disciple). The obvious parallels between religious teaching and parenting cause us to sometimes miss the big difference, that parenting is a duty we have to our kids to help them grow while religion is a kind of parenting (padre, paterna, patria, parere, patriotic, Pope, patriarch etc... ) forced on us because the church (papists) figure that's what we need. Either way, the origins of many religions were, at some point, confused from their most basic principal -- love your neighbor as you love yourself, and now they resemble something completely off putting to those of us who are not children and are beyond needing to be parented. Holiness and spirituality are worthy goals in life. I admire the people who seek enlightenment. Enlightenment, however, is found in beauty and simplicity, not rules and flagellation.
