First, we have to figure out what a sin is. "A sin is something that's 'bad'" is the usual understanding. In fact, a sin is an offense against God. Sure, breaking the law is a sin. But that's not a bottom-line measure of sin, because there are many things that are completely legal (especially in America) that are sinful. They are things that we do that are effectively a thumbing of our noses at God. And at the world in general. But why should we care?
As it turns out, God wants the very best for us. He loves us dearly. We're all His kids, after all. Would you want anything bad for your kids? Of course not. You may want them to endure certain trials and tribulations, but only as a means of building their character, having perspective and a bit of a sense of reality in their lives. But I digress.
If a sin is an offense against God and God only wants the very best for us, you can see how a sin is categorically a bad thing. It is an action that does something that isn't good for us. The worse the action, the more serious the sin. It's not a case of getting gold stars in a ledger in heaven, jumping through hoops and dotting the requisite 'i's. It's a case of living a joyful, loving, exultant experience while we spend our days as mortal beings. When you're doing that, you're living a virtuous life. When you're at the other end of the spectrum, living an unhappy, contemptuous and asocial existence devoid of love, you are living a sinful life.
I'm trying to work around to the cardinal virtues and deadly sins. To do that, we have to realize that this whole sinning business is about love. When we're acting in ways that don't exhibit love for others, we're in the sinning space. When we're acting in ways that DO exhibit love for others, we're in the virtue space. And that brings us around to the categorization of actions that the seven cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins represents. It's a way of looking at our actions to figure out if they're loving or not.
The cardinal virtues and deadly sins are really one and the same. Each virtue is paired with a sin. The virtue is an act of loving and the sin is an act of not loving. For example, let's take the pair of Gluttony and Moderation. Gluttony is the sin and Moderation is the virtue. The man who practices gluttony is the one who seeks to overindulge in whatever it is that he's a glutton about. That might be excessive eating, but it might also be excessive time at the beach. Any kind of overindulgence in a selfish pursuit is, by definition, something that is focused on "self" and not on others.
That statement should jump out at you. If your action is not predicated in loving others, then it is sinful. Not loving. Sinful. Get it? A virtuous act is something that demonstrates love for others. A sinful act is something that is devoid of love for others. We don't often have actions that are purely virtuous or purely sinful, so don't stand back at 100 feet and declare something sinful or virtuous. Take some time to look closely and see the mix of the two in any act.
Here's the list of pairs of sins and virtues:
| Lust | Chastity |
| Gluttony | Moderation |
| Greed | Generosity |
| Sloth | Zeal |
| Wrath | Meekness |
| Envy | Charity |
| Pride | Humility |
I don't know about you, but those strike me as being powerful words. They jump to the heart of any motivation that we might have for doing pretty much anything. Imagine somebody with all the sins and none of the virtues. That would be one Walking Nightmare. Would you want them living your neighborhood, around your kids? But what about the other end of the spectrum? Someone with all those traits would seem to be your typical Christian Killjoy. Chastity, moderation, meekness AND humility? Give me a break. What do they do for fun? Rearrange their holy card collection?
That's the funny thing about the vices and virtues listed. We're all drawn to our favorite vices in the here and now, while realizing that the virtues are probably best for us in the long term. But the virtues are invariably boring, so we continue to dabble in a vice or three. The trick to life is figuring out how to see that stack of virtues as a wonderful place to be. (That's the column on the right, for those of you who are having difficulty with this) Maybe such a person wouldn't be a complete weenie, but instead could be someone as remarkable as Pope John Paul II. Or Ghandi. I'm sure you can think of other powerful, dynamic and motivated people who realized great power and influence, yet didn't turn into a hedonistic, self-aggrandizing imbecile. A jerk.
I was going to do an article on winning a lottery a while back. That article was going to touch on the fact that our ability to indulge in vices and virtues is magnified when we do something like win a lottery. We attain more power, and our inclinations to vice or virtue are put on steroids. So instead of the choice of giving $100 to a charity or blowing it on a nice meal, we have the choice of giving $100,000 to charity or renovating the entire house. Your choices of virtues and vices may be working for you now, but what would happen if you were tempted on a grander scale? Would your acts be loving or despising of those around you? Of God Himself?
In the coming articles, I'll talk a bit about each vice/virtue pair. A lot of it is going to be trying to open your eyes to why the virtues are worth pursuing. It can be tough to imagine it when the environment we're in is dominated by so much of the vice.
