Two Home Towns

It was back to the Church of the Incarnation this morning, and this time I went to Sunday School. I decided I’d join a newly started class on the Seven Deadly Sins. It seemed that discussions of topics like lust, gluttony, greed, etc. should be loaded with opportunities for lively discussion and humor. If not, I probably needed to go find another church. Aside from that, the other classes just didn’t sound interesting to me. I wasn’t disappointed. As I entered the room I asked “Is this where all the deadly sins are?” to which I got a good laugh.

Having deadly sinned a fair measure myself, I was interested to learn a few things today. One was that in order of increasing deadliness, at least one prominent theologian lists them as lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. I happen to agree with that order. Everybody lusts to some degree for example, but I think that’s far from the worst problem we’ve got. Excessive pride, on the other hand, is one of the things I find hardest to bear in another person and most likely to lead to really bad behavior.

We were all about lust today. We’ll get on with the other sins on successive Sundays apparently. I was glad to see a healthy distrust in the room for various priggish ideas related to lust. Among them was the idea that all sexual desires are sinful. My take on it is that which consumes the mind with desire while objectifying another person is lust. Regardless of what your sexual morals are or how you might joke about them, you’d have to admit that’s probably a bad thing. Especially as a habit.