By Trevin Wax, TGC.
Whatever happened to the seven deadly sins?
For centuries, theologians, philosophers, and poets treated pride, envy, sloth, gluttony, lust, wrath, and greed as a diagnostic of the human soul in its self-centered sickness. These sins were the biggest windows into the condition of humanity’s broken-down house, the particular ways the soul curves in on itself rather than turning upward to God.
Modern Lens for Sin
A couple weeks ago, political commentator Jonah Goldberg wrote about a shift in how our society views sin in general, and the seven deadlies in particular. They’ve been reframed, he said. No longer are they evidence of personal moral failure as much as the result of a psychological condition or systemic cause.
Consider envy. John of Damascus called it “sorrow for another’s good.” Kant saw it as the propensity to view the well-being of others with distress. Both recognized it as spiritually and socially corrosive. But serious studies of this deadly sin have largely disappeared, perhaps because envy has become useful as a motivating force for political grievance. It’s harder to name envy as sin if it’s what’s powering your coalition.
Pride has undergone a remarkable transformation. Wikipedia now begins its definition by saying it’s “a primary emotion characterized by a sense of security with one’s identity, performance, and/or accomplishments.” What was once the queen of sins—the root from which all others grow, the posture that places the self above God—is now a personality trait, even a virtue. The opposite of pride isn’t humility but shame.
The others have undergone similar revisions. Gluttony has become, in Goldberg’s phrase, “a purely aesthetic, self-referential sin against yourself.” Whether reframed as a metabolic disorder or an identity to celebrate, the way we talk about this deadly sin shows how the very concept of an “ideal behavior outside ourselves” has vanished.
Wrath is recast as vengeance and retribution, even among Christians who now applaud political figures for the mobilization fueled by their performative fury. Sloth, once seen as spiritual torpor and indifference to duty, is now a systemic failure or a psychological diagnosis.