The Seven Deadly Sins: What, when and why?

Steven Jones was working at a university in Siberia when his zest for life fell off a cliff. Everything he used to love had lost its flavour and his motivation had evaporated. A colourless mood descended on him, lasting for months.

Steven’s an expert on the late Middle Ages (1100 AD to 1500 AD). Stuck in a Siberian university in the middle of winter, an ancient pastoral tool came to his rescue.

From eight to seven

In the 300s AD, a desert monk, Evagrius Ponticus, set out to analyse the negative workings of his mind and came up with what he called "Eight Generic Thoughts".

Before long, his idea was picked up by another monk, John Cassian, who turned the idea into a more marketable tool for Christian growth.

Cassian rebranded the Generic Thoughts; he felt that "Deadly Sins" sounded much more dramatic. Pope Gregory the Great, 200 years later, tweaked the list, ending up with the seven we know today: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust.

Over the next 900 years, this model was written into a number of pastoral handbooks for clergy. Like Two Ways to Live or The Purpose Driven Life, these were intended as an encouragement to faith. Those seven vices became a means of understanding yourself and devising a route towards greater virtue.

A look in the mirror

Take pride as an example. Medieval thinkers understood it as a failure to see other people properly, as well as a failure to understand ourselves – we look at others and decide we are better than them. Then, convinced that we are special, we decide which rules apply to us and which we can ignore.

Gradually, we become immune to feedback or criticism; we cannot change because we do not see.

At its worst, pride leads us to believe that others exist to serve our purpose, and it is okay to use them to get what we want.

If I can’t see who I really am then I need to take a long hard look in a mirror. To do this, we need help from Scripture, from our Christian community, and perhaps from a mentor who will tell us the truth.

Yet we need to balance self-criticism with forgiveness because the aim is to release people into a life of wellbeing and not leave them crushed. We need to be compassionate with ourselves and with others. It is no coincidence if this resembles a modern Christian counselling approach.

'Wonky' love

Let’s think about lust. Surprisingly, medieval theologians felt it was less serious than pride because it was, at its heart, a form of love. If you like, lust is wonky love.

Don’t be fooled though, because lust is dangerous. It assaults our senses through what we see, touch and smell.

Hugh of St Victor warned that lust tricks the eyes with pleasure and then fools the brain to plunge after it. Under the spell of lust you believe that nothing else matters. Forget the past, forget the future, there is only now, just do it!

If lust closes you down, infatuated with an image or a fantasy, the antidote is to open ourselves up, rekindle love by finding the courage to be honest and vulnerable rather than hiding in our own fantasy bubble.

I once sat with a group of friends, all in Christian ministry, while one talked about his problem with pornography. My very reformed friend was working to a very medieval model.

Paul wrote that, “… where sin increased, grace increased all the more”. My behaviour might give a foothold to sin, but God’s generosity will always create an opening for redemption and forgiveness.

This is what the seven deadly sins were supposed to do. Stephen Jones writes: “A way of mapping the mind... To help us work with our envy, or anger, or sloth, and learn to push them in a better direction”.

Self-Help from the Middle Ages, Stephen’s book about all this, is well worth a read. Though not a Christian as far as I can tell, this ancient Christian mind map pulled him out of a very dark mood.