Posts Tagged ‘hope’

In the previous posts we examined the root sin of pride and then the sins of vainglory, anger, and sloth.  The next three deadly sins—greed or avarice, gluttony, and lust—represent a shift in perspective.  Traditionally they are denominated as sins of the flesh, whereas the previous ones are categorized as sins of the spirit.  Before discussing the specific sin of avarice, we need to clarify this distinction between types of sins and demonstrate its dangers and advantages. Read the rest of this entry »

Henry Fairlie wrote, “Envy is the one Deadly Sin to which no one readily confesses.”[1] Why is this so?  Pride is the root of all sins, and yet it can have a positive meaning and even in its sinfulness has a sort of perverted nobility.  What makes envy so nasty?  In order to answer this question, we’ll need to define envy carefully and distinguish it from two closely related words “covetousness” and “jealousy.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Christian tradition of the seven deadly sins firmly maintains that pride is the chief of all sins.   The title of the chapter on pride in C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity is “The Great Sin.”  So strongly is the centrality and destructive force of pride felt that it is often listed separately from the seven sins as the source of the others.  Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) states that pride is the “queen of sins,” and that the seven are its “captains.” As pride’s “first progeny,” they “spring … from this poisonous root” (Moralia xxxi:45). Read the rest of this entry »

 

In 1973 the famed American psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote Whatever Became of Sin? In that book he provocatively argued against psychology’s watering down the concept of sin to sickness. Add to this the corroding effects of the denial of objective norms by moral relativism, and it is no surprise that over forty years later opposition to a thoroughgoing concept of sin has escalated dramatically. Read the rest of this entry »

The 1956 French film A Man Escaped is a taut, tense drama of a resistance fighter imprisoned in Lyons by the occupying German forces during World War II. Based upon historical events, with minimal dialogue and an effective but sparse soundtrack, the film focuses on one man’s seemingly hopeless single-minded determination to escape.

In this sense, A Man Escaped is an outstanding suspense movie of the prison escape genre.  However, Robert Brisson, whose efforts won for him the Cannes award for Best Director, offers us much more than a great nail biter. In his hands the story becomes a metaphor for hope and freedom. Read the rest of this entry »