The Seven Deadlies - Pride

Mark 7:14-23
Summoning the crowd again, he said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Nothing is outside of a person going into him or her which can defile him or her, but that which is from inside the person going out is what is defiling a person.”

When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, "Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

And he said, "It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For within, from the heart of people, the evil thoughts come out, fornication, thievery, murder, adulterous acts, greediness, wickedness, treachery, sexual excess, evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. All these evils within come out and defile a person.”

One of my favorite folks is Brantley Craig, somebody I got to know at UVA back when I was the Wesley Foundation director and also a fellow grad student with him in the religious studies department. Brantley stuck with the program, is finishing up his PhD work and will one day be recognized as one of our greatest teachers in the area of Christianity and culture. This week I sent him a birthday note and, as I did, mentioned that I was getting ready to do a sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sins, starting with pride. Brantley wrote back with this introduction, (appropriately since he is known for his introductions), which I could not improve on. So I want to start today with this mock response to my proposition to talk about the Seven Deadly Sins:

“Hey, Alex—what gives? I see in the newsletter that you’re going to start a sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sins. Seven Deadly Sins? First of all, I thought you were supposed to preach against sins, not on them. But more than that, this sounds sneakily Catholic to me. And sort of medieval. And we all know from Pulp Fiction what happens when people start getting medieval.
See, I’m no fool. I read your blog; I sat through your sermons. I even checked out some of those theology books you’ve been adding to the media center (yes, I’m the one). I was coming to understand that ‘sin’ was a human condition: brokenness, selfishness, separation from God, radical and unpleasant finitude and mortality. I was on my way to thinking that checklists of particular sins were so last millennium.

But here you come with these Seven Deadlies. That sounds like not only are there individual sins, but some are worse than others. Who ranks them? Church folks? And have we added homosexuality? ‘Cause I’d like to add denying global warming, reckless driving on bridges, and letting your cell phone ring during the emotional moments in plays and movies. Or is it God who ranks them? Well, that’s even worse. Because that sounds petty to me, like God is my mean old fifth-grade teacher who wrote our names on the board and put an ‘X’ by them each time we ‘acted up.’ And a God like that doesn’t sound like the gracious God you’ve been preaching to us. That doesn’t sound like the awesome and unpredictable God who spoke in the hurricane to that guy you like who owned the island (Hardhead Fishnet or whoever). That doesn’t sound like a God who would send Jesus to redeem, as you said, even Nassawadox Creek. That sounds like a God who holds grudges, micromanages, and keeps more stats than a baseball fan. What does something like Seven Deadly Sins have to do with 21st Century Methodists? Did you take one too many rolls in the kayak, or what??”

It’s scary to get an e-mail like that. Shows me for one thing that Brantley has heard and read way too many of my sermons. But as I said, I couldn’t improve on that. He gets right at all the problems with doing what I’m getting ready to do. Why is it that I would go back to this old way of numbering the sins? What value is there in talking about sins as opposed to sin? In the case of pride, why does it register as a sin at all since there are so many ways that we talk about pride as good thing? And what are the Seven Deadly Sins anyway? Why seven and why deadly?

Well, let’s start right there. You may know the Seven Deadly Sins from the mobile phone commercials or maybe from the Brad Pitt movie Seven, which came out a few years ago, but they are a whole lot older. In fact, they go back to the 6th century or earlier. Pope Gregory the Great generally gets credit for putting them in their current order. Pride comes first. (I guess you could say it gets pride of place.) The others are probably familiar to you, too. In no particular order we have to deal with anger, greed, lust, envy, gluttony and, everybody’s favorite – sloth. Why seven? Well, it’s a little bit arbitrary, but seven is a number that has a ring to it since it is a number of perfection and completion in biblical terms. You might say that you get a complete picture of the depth of sin by looking at in these seven dimensions.

Why are they deadly? Well, that goes back to a distinction in Roman Catholic theology between venial sins and mortal sins. Venial sins are offenses that do not threaten a person’s eternal fate. These are considered minor acts against God that are done without thought or intention. This may seem like a slippery slope to those of who know how insidious sin can be. But there is a biblical basis for this division of sins. 1 John says, “If you see your brother or sister committing what is not a mortal sin, you will ask, and God will give life to such a one -- to those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin that is mortal; I do not say that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not mortal.” (1 Jo. 5:16-17, NRSV)

Mortal sins, by contrast, are serious offenses that have the potential to separate us from God and condemn ourselves to damnation unless we confess them and seek absolution for them. In this sense, these sins are deadly because they threaten the life we have from God in this world and in the next. That is the realm we are in when we talk about the Seven Deadlies.

But all of this sounds very strange to Protestant ears. United Methodists are not used to talking about a list of sins that can get you into special trouble. As followers of Luther and Wesley we know that sin is trouble in all of its varieties and it takes hold of us in such powerful ways that the only we can talk about being freed from it is through God’s grace. Whatever list of the Top Seven you give us is going to seem incomplete and a little too tidy. Sin is much deeper and messier than that. Despite Thomas Aquinas’ attempts to put it all together in a nice system in the Middle Ages, we know that no system can capture the darkness of the human heart nor the greatness of God’s love that we know in forgiving grace.

We’re not alone. Those who are growing up without a deep Christian grounding are also suspicious of the list. When the BBC polled the British public on the Deadly Sins recently they found that only one of the traditional seven made the list as one of Britain’s greatest sins. And it wasn’t pride. You know what made the list? Greed. All the rest were out, replaced by things like cruelty, adultery, bigotry, hypocrisy, selfishness, and dishonesty.[i] Do you notice what has happened? Our sense of what constitutes a grave sin is now determined first by what we do to other people. There is no reference to what we do to God, which Christians might say is the root of all those other interpersonal sins.

Interestingly, we still keep track of those other sins. Beliefnet is still conducting an online poll asking people which of the Seven Deadly Sins they are guilty of most. Right now, leading by a large margin, lust is winning.[ii]

But again, even as Christians we are confused about this list. What is the point in keeping such a tally and keeping such categories? Actually, even as a Methodist who is used to the language of grace, I think it is helpful to take a look at this list. Aquinas was on to something in the 13th century. He was not just trying to build a handbook for priests to flip through when they got to confession. (“Let’s see here. You coveted your neighbor’s cart? That will be fifteen Hail Mary’s and a nice donation to the bishop’s palace. Next!”) What he was really after was trying to illuminate the human heart in all of its potential and all of its murky depths. He would have called these vices, habits of our heart that lead us away from God. They each had a corresponding virtue, which were habits that would lead us toward God. But if we could really get a handle on what was going on in our vices we might have a better sense of what needed to be transformed within us so that we could truly respond to God’s grace and to live. And not just to live but to live abundantly.

The heart is where we need to go. Jesus talked about sin as holding us in its grip, but he also talked about the place where it took its root. It is in our hearts. Things can be done to us, but it’s when we internalize evil that it takes its greatest toll. Poverty is a sin that attacks us, demeans us, dehumanizes us, but when we internalize that dehumanization it deforms not only our economic circumstances but our souls. Physical abuse, racial injustice, class bias – these things show a deep sin in our society, but when we allow those things to define who we are and what we are in God’s eyes, then the sin has worked its way in deep.

That’s why Jesus also said that there is nothing from without that can defile a person. It is what comes from within that shows our true deformation. Murder, theft, adultery, greediness, lust, evil thoughts, pride – all of these things come forth from our hearts and they reveal who we really are when we have been overcome by sin. So it is right that we spend some time, as we move toward Lent and a season of reflection, it is right that we try to let some grace shine in those dark recesses of our souls. And if the Seven Deadlies can help us uncover those places where we most need to be transformed, then I say, “Lead on!”

So we start with pride. Which seems a strange place to begin. Oh, I know that the Bible speaks often about pride and it is usually in a very negative sense. “Pride goes before destruction,” Proverbs says, “and a haughty spirit before a fall” [Pro. 16:18]. We know that pride has the potential to “set us up.” Sometimes it has tragic consequences, as when a leader ignores the limits and tries to forge ahead with a grand plan or a war believing that they must be vindicated by their ability or foresight – sometimes dragging many others with them to their doom. Sometimes pride plays out as comedy as when we see people deluded by notions of their own grandeur come crashing back to earth. Like all the bad singers on American Idol who finally have their run-in with Simon. As the cartoonist Bernard Baily once said, “When science discovers the center of the universe a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it.”[iii]

Yes, we know that pride is at least problematic, but is it all bad? We like to tell folks that they shouldn’t “get above their raisin’” or, if we’re in another generation, that they “ain’t all that,” but there is a kind of pride that we celebrate, too. There is a kind of pride that we want to instill in our children. We talk about taking pride in our work, about pride in our country, and by this we mean a healthy self-confidence. Even the apostle Paul talks about this when he writes to his churches. He says to the Corinthian Christians, “I often boast about you; I have great pride in you.” [2 Co. 7:4] Plus there’s something about this kind of pride that is attractive to us as Americans. As the pitcher Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”[iv]

But the pride that the theologians are talking about is a much deeper recognition of who we are as human beings. The Bible knows that we, as opposed to any of the other creatures of the land and sea, have an infinite capacity for self-delusion. We sometimes forget who we are and what we are supposed to be. We can think we are doing something noble, but end up doing something disastrous. We can think we are doing right, but end up doing wrong. We can think we are saving the world, but in the end we find that we are incapable of saving even ourselves.

It was all inscribed there from the beginning. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden is often where theologians go to explain the nature of human pride and it is a good place to start. You remember Eden? It was a place where all that was needed was provided. It was a place where the man and woman lived is communion with God, with the rest of creation and with each other. It was place that from the beginning was good. How do we know this? Because that is the blessing God pronounced over it. “This is good. This is very good.”

The desires of the humans were good as well. They were created with a love for beauty, truth, goodness, and communion with God. But something happens. It’s not that Adam and Eve went out looking to sin. They had no need to do that. They had no inner compulsion to do that. But their natural desires led them to the tree – the tree in the middle of the garden – the one that God had told them not to eat from.

Now there was a serpent and he had a role to play. But the voice was already there, dancing in their heads. “God has given us all this and it is good. God has given us all these trees. There must be some more good to be had from that tree. We won’t die. We will become like God. We will know good and evil and be able to determine for ourselves what we ought to do and not do.”
Then what happened? Eve looked at the tree and she saw that its fruit was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, that it was desirable to make her wise…what possible reason was there not to follow those desires? And Adam must have felt the same. So they ate. The sin was not that they had chosen evil. The sin was that they had chosen to determine happiness for themselves with no reference to their natural limits, with no reference to God. Once that step was taken, who was there to tell us when we go astray?

We bought the illusion that we could determine our own course. And we’ve bought it ever since. It seems so natural. As Karl Barth put it, “When [a person] desires the enjoyment and use of his [or her] freedom is he [or she] desiring anything more or other than the most obvious and natural thing in the world?...Where is the wrong in this?...It does not look as though [the person] is wanting to be as God, to be God, and in that way becoming a sinner. It looks rather as though [the person] is modestly doing that which is obvious and right, fulfilling his [or her] true humanity and in that way the will of God as rightly understood.”[v]

But you know and I know how we use our freedom. Left to our own devices we can be pretty immature, pretty nasty, pretty destructive to ourselves and others. Most of the time we don’t even recognize it until too late. We look back at the decisions we made…decisions that seemed so good at the time…so right…and we wonder how did we make that wrong turn? I thought I knew better than the rules that time. I thought I was mature enough to handle it on my own. I thought my friends were wrong. I thought the people who cared about me were naïve. I thought I could get by without prayer, without listening to God, without any visible means of support. And look where it got me!

We never think we’re the ones who are trying to play God. It’s always somebody else. But it’s because we can’t see ourselves as we are that God must come. It’s because we can’t understand how helpless we are to see who we really are that God comes as a helpless one. You see who went to the cross? That helpless man who is at the mercy of soldiers, thieves and traitorous crowds? That is God taking the form of you and me. That is God revealing who we really are. That is God letting us see beyond a shadow of a doubt how deeply sin has deformed us and how ridiculous we look when we go about the work of saving the world or saving ourselves. That Jesus on the cross? He’s taking your place. He’s showing you up for all of your pretensions. There is hope for you and me. It’s in him and it’s in the work God does to resurrect even those made dead by sin. Even us.

Frederica Mathewes-Green tells the story of how she feels about Christmas letters describing the accomplishments of another year. You know the kind she’s talking about. The one’s that say, “It’s been a great year for the Lamplighters! Greg had been hoping for a promotion, but what a surprise when the CEO came to his desk and begged him to take over the company. The whole office chipped in and gave the family a week in Paris to celebrate. Wasn’t that nice?”
We get letters like that and we think – yes, pride is a terrible thing. How could those Lamplighters be so prideful, so self-promoting, so vain? We think, “They should have been more humble.”

But then she says she looks back at the letter and realizes they weren’t really showing off. They were just sharing what happened. “They’re telling you these things because they thought you were their friend. If you are, you’re happy for them and rejoice for them…Their success does not make you a failure.” As it turns out, Frederica says, they weren’t exhibiting pride, we were. It was our bitterness that wanted to see them brought low.

This, she says, is why we need a Savior. “We look so nice on the outside, but in the caverns of the heart vicious Pride is always brooding, ready to spring. Humility smashes our defenses, enables us to admit these dark emotions that frighten us, and admit that we need help to be the people we long to be.”[vi]

Pride is only the beginning of the thorny mess we often find ourselves in. But it is the start of so much more. If we are to know ourselves, truly know ourselves, we have to start with the ways pride has messed us up. As long as we believe we can help ourselves we will not understand the cross and we will not understand why it is that Jesus makes all the difference in the world. Humility is what brought God to the cross. Humility is what can bring us to ourselves.

We are not beyond redemption. We are in God’s hands. If only we can recognize it. Thanks be to God.

[i] Heaven and Earth Show, BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/heavenandearth/features/sins/sins.shtml, survey conducted 10-13 Dec 2004.
[ii] www.beliefnet.com/polls
[iii] http://www.quotationsbook.com/quotes/32325/view
[iv] http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=503362
[v] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1., p. 420.
[vi] Frederica Mathewes-Green, “Pride: The Anti-Self-Esteem”, www.beliefnet.com/story/110/story_11056.html