SEVEN SINS
Lust: Unrestrained Sexual Craving, an intense and uncontrolled desire
Lust is a pleasure bought with pains, a delight hatched with disquiet, a content passed with fear and a sin finished in sorrow. A deadly sin it maybe but can you escape it. You might fall a victim to it and you might fall hard. When it comes, it speaks at the top. Nothing seems wrong, no boundaries at all. The desire to do good by force is never a good motive. Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed. Do not let lust consume you; let it not be a sharp knife which will kill you in the end. As when lust is conceived it brings forth sin and when lust is finished it brings forth death. Do not follow vain desires, learn to control them, and then curb them. A person who is not satisfied with one woman or one man will never happen to be satisfied with many because that sin has no limits. Those who wish to attain God and progress in religious devotion should particularly guard themselves against the snares of lust and wealth. Otherwise, they can never attain perfection. There is a very thin line between love and lust. Love demands attention but lust demands sin. That’s why people die for love and that’s why they kill for lust. Lust manipulates others to meet one’s own needs even at the sacrifice of others. Lust is all about me, it looks for what it can get not what you can give.
Gluttony: To over-indulge by over-eating
Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us. Gluttony has killed more than a sword. It is overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste. It is almost certain that excess of eating is the cause of almost all of the diseases of the body. But its effects on the soul are even more disastrous. Gluttony is the act of indulging in too much of everything. The gluttons did their graves with their teeth. Gluttony happens to be the most neglected sin. The flesh endures the storms of the present alone, the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is the lust of the mind. Gluttony is not a secret vice. Gluttony makes sure if one is not contented with what one has, would not be contented with what one would like to have. In the case of Gluttony pleasure is a matter of utmost precision. The fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony. One must eat to live not live to eat.
Pride: Inflated sense of one’s accomplishments
Pride will cost you everything but leave you with nothing. Pride will always be the longest distance between two people. Pride becomes the mask of one’s fault. Pride comes before a fall, it is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals. Hence, pride is concerned with who is right and humility is concerned with what is right. Think with your head, not pride, arguments drag out because one is too stubborn to forgive and the other is too proud to apologize. Spiritual pride is the most dangerous and the most arrogant of all sorts of pride. Pride is spiritual cancer it eats up every possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense. Pride would be a lot easier to swallow if it didn’t taste so bad. That is why it is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride. In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes and it is said to be the last vice the good man gets clear of. Pride will make you fall. False modesty is the meanest species of pride. Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages. Be humble and remain humble all the time.
Sloth: Laziness, lack of effort
Sloth is sometimes defined as physical laziness, it is the failure to do things that one should do. Sloth also indicates a wasting due to lack of use, concerning a person, place, thing, skill, or intangible ideal that would require maintenance, refinement, or support to existing. One excuses the sloth under the pretext of difficulty and hence one must avoid slot the wicked siren. The person sinning sloth may be doing nothing visibly wrong. Yet one is rejecting the presence of God and refusing the joy of love. This makes sloth the key to poverty. Spiritual sloth is a sign of extreme weakness, so do make peace with your broken pieces. Sloth may disguise itself as conscientious work and meet with various forms of public approval or success. But work that is not motivated by love for the life of the community, beyond the temporal and spatial confines of one’s small life, cannot free either worker or community from profound anxiety. Sloth becomes the sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin well; it is evil in its effect. It oppresses man as to draw one entirely from one's good deeds. Idleness or sloth is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. When you say sloth is a sin, it says softly, prefers to think of it as an adorable animal. Sloth is the spiritual or emotional apathy, neglecting what God has spoken and being physically and emotionally inactive. Acedia is a Latin word, from Greek, meaning carelessness. Sloth also indicates a wasting due to lack of use, a concerning a person, place, thing, skill, or intangible ideal that would require maintenance, refinement, or support to existing.
Wrath: Uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger
In the hearts and minds of the people, the grapes of wrath were growing heavy for the vintage. Hastiness is the beginning of wrath and its end repentance. The wrath of God is a way of saying that one had been living in a way contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning one’s life towards wrath. The little screaming fact that sounds through all history as repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. Sometimes the sweetest wine is squeezed from the grapes of wrath. Hence, the wisdom of God devised a way for the love of God to deliver the sinner from the wrath of God while not compromising the righteousness of God. This makes the sharpest sword been the word spoken in wrath. The child sobs curse deeper in silence than the strong man in his wrath. When angry with a friend, tell wrath and it does end. When angry with a foe, do not tell wrath and it does grow. We need not; we dare not water down the wrath of God. For without knowing God’s wrath, we would never know the amazing depths of his love. The habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials is what shields one from wrath. Fairest and dearest one’s wrath and anger are heavier than one can bear. The brave one uses wrath for their act, above all in attack for it is peculiar for wrath to pounce upon evil. Thus, making fortitude and wrath work directly upon each other. Hence, we must throw away the rod, throw away the wrath, and take the gentle path.
Greed: The excessive desire for material things
Greed is a strange sin. All one wants to do is acquire. Acquire money, acquire material, acquire time, acquire energy, and acquire attention. The running mantra is I want, I want, I want but then that quickly turns to I need, I need, I need. The riches of the rich is one who is not the prisoner to greed. Greed gives rise to anger, obsessive desire, delusion, ruin- Greed is the root of all evil. For greed, even all nature is too little. Life is not measured by how much you own. Greed one of the worst capital sins, it is not good for sure. It is not good for knowledge, love, and money. That is what makes greed the “the capital sin” necessary. Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. Hence, greed is permanent slavery. Greed eaters dig their graves with their teeth. Greed is a glorious effect of power to make that holy that was so depraved and under the dominion of sin than to confirm holiness on that which before had nothing of the contrary. There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontent and there is no greater disaster than greed. Hence, greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. Greed is a sin because humans are social creatures. They simply cannot survive alone with the opposite of greed which is cooperation.
Envy: Jealousy towards another’s happiness
Envy denies your uniqueness. Envy divides your attention. Envy wastes your time and energy. Envy leads to every other sin. Heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. One who envies others does not obtain peace of mind. Insecure people put others down to raise themselves. If one had a grateful attitude, one is going to be less focussed on what others have and less likely to be unhappy because of envy. People are probably not happy with their lives if they are busy discussing yours! Try not to be jealous of things or people or places. It is toxic. Just keep living. You will find your happiness. As iron is eaten by rust, so the envious consumed by envy. Envy is the art of counting another’s blessings instead of your own. Blessed is the person who has learned to admire not envy, to follow not to imitate, to praise but not to flatter, and to lead but not manipulate. Some people want to see everything go wrong for you because they have nothing going right for them. People will talk about you when they envy you and the life you lead. Let them. You affected their lives. Don’t let them affect yours. It is in the character of very few people to honor without envy a friend who had prospered. The envious are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves. Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate. Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred. Hence, a few who do are the envy of the many who watch.
About the author
Trishna Patnaik, Mumbai
By qualification, she has done her Bsc (in Life Sciences) and MBA (in Marketing), but she is an artist by choice. Self-taught Trishna has been practicing art for over 14 years now. After she had a professional stint in various reputed corporates, she realized that she wanted to do something more meaningful. She found her true calling in her passion, which is painting. Trishna is now a full-time professional painter pursuing her passion to create and explore to the fullest. She says, "It’s a road less traveled but a journey that I look forward to every day."
Trishna does fancy the art of creative writing and is dappling her hands in that too just to soak in the experience and have an engagement with readers, wanderers, and thinkers.
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