Category Archives: satan

Seven deadly sins

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You’ve heard of them. Ever wonder where the list comes from? (And as an aside, I reserve the right to end any sentence in a preposition, no matter how many English-language gurus there are who read this. If you want to tell me I shouldn’t do it, leave a comment. But I digress…)

Surely the list comes from Exodus chapter 20, right? God must have spoken those in the same breath as the Ten Commandments.

Nope.

Then it must be 1 Corinthians. That church in Corinth had so many problems it took Paul two letters to get them all sorted out.

Nope.

Then whence cometh they? (See? No preposition there. Not at the end anyway.)

First things first. What are those 7 practices every Christian must avoid at all costs? Here they are, in alphabetical order:

  1. Envy
  2. Gluttony
  3. Greed
  4. Lust
  5. Pride
  6. Sloth
  7. Wrath

There they are. Avoid those and you shall live long and prosper, right? Well, maybe, but more on that later. Where did the list originate? Certainly not in the Bible. There are lists of sins in the Bible, to be sure — Proverbs 6:16-19, Romans 1:29-31 and Galatians 5:19-21, to name only three such lists. These lists written by the Holy Spirit, with the hands of Solomon and Paul, were like the 7 deadly sins in that none of them was intended to be a complete list of “avoid these transgressions and live”.

The list most likely had its beginnings with 4th century monk Evagrius Ponticus, though he actually listed 8 “evil thoughts”:

gluttony, fornication, avarice, sorrow, anger, discouragement, vain glory, pride

Pope Gregory I revised the list in the 6th century to become what we know as the 7 deadly sins. I’ve always been a proponent of the idea that there is basically one deadly sin — selfishness. Pick a sin, whether one of the “7”, a violation of one of the 10 Commandments, or any other sin. I believe you can see selfishness (self-centeredness, God-less-ness) at the root of every one of them. Regardless of how long the list is though, the “avoid these, and you shall live long and prosper” holds true, but I prefer to think in positive terms. Certainly the Bible teaches that we should run from the devil (Matthew 4:10, et.al.), that we should shun evil companions (1 Corinthians 15:33), and so on. But even a cursory study of the Bible reveals more positive teaching on doing what is right, than negative teaching on avoiding what is wrong.

Indeed, if you love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40), you won’t have to worry about avoiding sin; avoiding sin will be natural.

Does satan get better with age?

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satan -- he's got a lot of practice!

Someone made a comment in last Sunday morning’s Bible class about satan, and how we sometimes give him more credit than he deserves. Frankly, I think we sometimes don’t give him enough credit too, but more times than not, we see him as having attributes that he doesn’t have.

satan is not omnipresent, for example. He’s not everywhere. He’s not omniscient. He can’t read our minds and know what we’re thinking. So if that’s true, how is he so effective at the temptation game?

I believe that satan is one of the craftiest beings ever created (which is another of his attributes — he’s created, not eternal). I also believe that he gets “better” (from his perspective, that is) with age. By that I mean that he learns from his failures to convince us to yield to temptation, and after each failure he tries something different. I believe that with practice, he has managed to hone his craft such that he’s better at what he does than he was, oh let’s say 1,975 years ago.

What do you think? Does satan get better (all right — worse) the older he gets?

Become a Christian and do whatever you want!

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Sort of sounds like an advertisement, doesn’t it? As crazy as it sounds, there is a good bit of truth in that statement. It doesn’t have anything to do with the idea that once you’re saved you can never lose your salvation. It doesn’t have anything to do with tricking people into becoming “Christians” either. I first heard this idea several years ago, and have really come to see it as one of those ideas that the more you think about it, the more it makes sense.

I monitor over 100 blogs every weekday. Most of them I just read the headlines and skip over the story, reading only the ones that really pique my interest. One of the blogs on my list is ChristianPF (which stands for Christian Personal Finance). In a post this week, the author said this:

I have always (and still do believe) that God’s will for our lives will line up with our desires. He often calls people to do things that they may not think they are capable of and along everyone’s journeys there will be moments of pain and discomfort. But, following our passion is often a good first step in finding God’s plan for our lives.

I agree with that, and it meshes very nicely with the idea that as a mature Christian, there is a very real sense in which I can literally do whatever I want to do. As I mature in the faith, my “want to do” list comes more closely aligned with my “need to do” list so that at some point they become one and the same.

Paul tells us that Jesus preached the idea that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). The more we give, the more we realize the truth in that, and the more we want to give. We give because it’s not only the right thing to do, but because it’s what we want to do. That’s just one example, but you can see how this idea fits into all aspects of our life. Of course satan’s still around, tempting us to do things that, as Paul said, “I do not want to do” (Romans 7:20), but what characterizes our day-to-day life are those things that bring us joy and bring God glory.