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Celebrating the Seven Cardinal Sins
One of my gay friends (“Chad”) posts repeated rainbow-colored memes and pictures on his Facebook feed, every day during “Pride Month.” He views gays as a civil rights group: Why should someone be treated differently simply because they were born differently? At first, I found it odd that Chad insisted on celebrating his pride in, well, in simply being born different. Nothing he accomplished, but just the way he was born. That seems like me spending a month every year celebrating my pride in being born with brown hair. I mean, brown hair is nice, but it seems like an inadequate reason for parades.
Anyway, after a while, it occurred to me that Chad’s celebration of pride could serve as a model for other holiday months. Perhaps we should have a celebratory month for each of the Seven Cardinal (Deadly) Sins: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth. (Obviously, we would not celebrate The Seven Heavenly Virtues. That’s no fun.) Fortunately, the LGBTQQIP2SAA+ founding, um, fathers had the foresight to observe Pride Month in June, so each of the remaining six months of the year could be used to observe the six remaining Cardinal Sins. It works out so perfectly, I can’t believe that it’s a coincidence. This must have been the plan all along.
August will be fun – an entire month celebrating Lust! Woohoo! And I’m not sure exactly how some of our neighbors will observe the months celebrating Gluttony and Sloth. What, exactly, would they do differently? And, if I’m being brutally honest, I’m not sure what I would do differently in some of these months.
The Seven Cardinal Sins have always been commonplace in society. But they’ve moved beyond commonplace. Now they have become not just accepted but even admired in our society, to the point that we can have a month celebrating one of them and no one notices anything odd. You might think that somebody in their initial planning meetings might have said, “Hey, guys – er – people: You think maybe we should choose a different word? This is technically one of the Seven Cardinal Sins, ya know. This would be easy for some right-wing Christian hate-filled bigot to misinterpret and make a stink about it. How about, say, ‘confidence’ or something less potentially inflammatory?”
But we are a post-Christian society. Those in that meeting likely don’t know what the Cardinal Sins are, and it never occurred to them that Pride was one of them. Throughout history, religion has always been overlooked at times. Now it’s irrelevant. To many of us, anyway. So this concern probably never came up.
Imagine if I showed up to a Pride Parade, dressed in rainbow colors, carrying the following sign (with PRIDE in rainbow colors):
- Proverbs 16:18 – PRIDE goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
I think most people wouldn’t even understand my point. Although I’m fairly certain that any quote from the Bible would be met with hostility, whether they understood it or not. They don’t have to understand something to hate it. In fact, it’s much easier to hate something you don’t understand.
This is why I fear our new culture, which intentionally does not teach children about Judeo-Christian ethics, and teaches that Western Civilization in general (and America in particular) is evil. This lack of understanding enables people to hate that which has done so much good in the world. The leftist desire for power requires them to destroy other sources of authority. They destroy them at their peril.
Actually, they destroy them at everyone else’s peril, as well.
The Judeo-Christian ethic teaches that we are all God’s children and that we all have value. We are important to God. And He expects a lot from us. We do our best to please him, although we frequently fail. But God loves us despite our shortcomings, so we continue to try.
The fact that we are all God’s children helped lead to the concept of personal liberties, property rights, and the rule of law – not just for royalty, but even for lowly peasants. If God loves each of us, then we all have some value, and thus, some rights. All of us. Personal liberty is a wonderful thing.
But with personal liberty, comes personal responsibility. Liberty does not mean ‘just do whatever you want.’ Only a virtuous people can handle liberty, without disastrous consequences. There are external authorities on virtue, like God, for example. But what if we don’t care for some of His outdated opinions on virtue? Surely we can just agree amongst ourselves what virtue is. That way we can change it to suit our tastes, as times change.
This has not turned out well. Why even try to follow rules, if we can change the rules whenever we want? Plus, it makes no sense, unless there is no God.
If there is no God, then some will conclude that their existence has no deeper meaning beyond amusing themselves. Hunter S. Thompson could explain this better than I, but without the guardrails provided by an overseeing God, you can go from liberty to chaos to misery very, very quickly.
Unbridled liberty should lead to happiness. It really should. Believe me, I wish it did.
But it doesn’t. For whatever reasons, it just doesn’t. It creates a hole in your soul that can never be filled. There are a lot of reasons for this. Many books have been written about this, including the book quoted above. But regardless of what those reasons are, this is just the way it is. Aristotle had a point with his discussions of logos. Man’s Search for Meaning sounds simple, but it can be complex.
Humans are funny creatures.
We’d rather not think about that, however. We’re having a wonderful time. So we march in parades and try to enjoy the moment, while trying not to think about where we’re all going.
And trying not to wonder why we have this nagging feeling, way deep inside, that something is just not quite right. We don’t want to search for meaning. We just want to have fun. So if we’re having so much fun, why are we so miserable? What’s wrong? What’s missing?
“It must be someone else’s fault. Those people over there. With their Bibles and their churches and crap. Man, I hate them, and everything they stand for. Whatever the heck that is. We must destroy them. Then, we’ll finally be happy.”
Leftist control of our educational and religious institutions has been an incredible success for them. Their fostering of ignorance, hate, and intolerance has put into motion things which will be difficult to undo.
I don’t see how this ends well. I don’t think that the left will see that they’ve won until we’ve all lost.
NOTE: Credit for the colorfully modified quote from Proverbs above, and for part of the inspiration for this post, goes to the indispensable Babylon Bee.
This was also partially inspired by stories told to me by my two kids in college. Their descriptions of their friends’ fun-filled misery added a lot to this as well. Many of their friends are having so much fun that they need Prozac and weekly counseling sessions.
Published in General
When you do decide to hold your Brown Hair Pride parade, give me ample warning so I can start work on a float . . .
Envy will be a big month for the left.
Dr.,
Oh, sure the deadly sins thing is so trendy. I’ve been trying to have each of the ten commandments have their own month for years but no dice. Sins can’t get enough but commandments forget about it.
Regards,
Jim
Too hot.
I think October and November would be very appropriate for Sloth and Gluttony. Football season, dontcha know.
Need to add to LGBTQQIP2SAA+. It should include “CP” at the end for Couch Potato.
This is why it kills me when Catholic bishops lend their support to big government programs. Don’t they know their history? Don’t they know that power-hungry government always try to either destroy or command churches?
By the way, though Christians and Jews are not the only people who may use rainbow imagery, we would do well to keep the traditional association with God’s mercy alive in our culture. Here is an image of the USNS Mercy while stationed in the Philippines.
Yeah – bookmark that one for Sloth.
Hanging Chad?
What exactly are they proud of?
My response to Pride Month.
https://rushbabe49.com/2019/06/03/sorry-i-just-could-not-let-this-go-celebrating-perverts-month/
That was in response to a WordPress post “Celebrate Pride Month With WordPress” that showed up in my backend feed on my own blog.
Like I said in the OP, I’m not sure, exactly.
I can think of two possibilities:
#2 makes no sense to me. I can’t imagine being attracted to a man, and women are beautiful. So I think it’s option #1.
But that doesn’t make much sense, either.
Heck, I have no idea…
If the left assigns Gluttony to November and either Envy or Greed to December, they can ruin two of America’s most wholesome holidays. Wait, maybe they did and just didn’t announce it.
Also, with modern progressives, every month is Lust Month.
I looked at this from a somewhat different angle, as you probably noticed.
I was careful not to criticize homosexual behavior, and I was open about acknowledging that I sin as well (along with everybody else). Are my sins worse than a homosexual man? Or are his worse than mine? I don’t know. That’s up to God. Not my department. But we all have our temptations, and we all deal with them with varying degrees of success.
But as a sinner myself, I wasn’t criticizing sinners.
I was expressing concern at our celebration of sin.
We should be trying to improve our behavior, rather than celebrating whatever we feel like doing today.
Sin has always been with us. And we deal with it as best we can. But this – this celebration of sin – I find this very concerning.
I’m sure it’s not pride-pride — you know, just like it’s not rape-rape.
Surviving parents and families who believe as you do. No small feat.
Two videos pertaining to your topic, Doc.
As I tell my backslid family — get thine butts back in the pews.
Edit: And a third, two of these courtesy of Henry Castaigne:
I’m sure the “pride” slogan was basically an extension of being unashamed. If homosexuality was not disordered, if it was not perverse and sinful, then one could embrace those impulses without shame.
It’s clever marketing. We celebrate our pride in things like America, family, and so on. Lack of shame is not something one celebrates.
I doubt the people who originated the movement made the connection to the deadly sins or thought it would be problematic. But the Devil knows what he’s doing.
Yeah, ok. Maybe that’s it.
Oh to have hair……..
I wish we spent a month counting our blessings. :-) It would result in true happiness. :-)
Heterosexuals have their perversions, too. I am also uncomfortable with public displays of that. I don’t need a leather queen stroking her 65-year old slave “boy” at the next table in a restaurant.
Is pushing drag queens at the library and promoting it among prepubescent children and calling it “pride” really your recipe for acceptance? And if we dare say that the “Amazing Desmond” is being sexually exploited, or object to having 11-year old boys pole dancing in a Brooklyn gay bar, we’re “homophobic” and “haters.”
You’re actually proud of this?
There has to be an opportunity for a career revival here:
If the guy on the float wearing chaps with no britches and a feather boa says he’s proud — I’m not going to ask for what, because I don’t care.
Quibble: The Cardinal Sins are only celebrated when exercised by the “correct” sort of people.
Pride and Lust may be virtues for LGBT+ folk and heterosexual women, but they are sins for Cisgendered Heterosexual Males.
Envy, Wrath, and Sloth may be virtues for members of “disadvantaged groups”, but they are sins for members of “privileged groups”.
Meanwhile, Greed has been redefined so that it only applies when a person is successful. Someone who tries and fails is rarely considered “greedy”. e.g. The McDonald brothers weren’t greedy, but Ray Kroc was. Shoplifting isn’t evidence of Greed, but running a ponzi scheme is. Selling loose cigarettes on the sidewalk isn’t Greed, but owning stock in a tobacco company is.
Finally, Gluttony has yet to be redefined as a virtue, but it has been redefined as an illness and/or a disorder.
…
Addendum: One could additionally argue that Pride has also been redefined as a virtue for someone whose ethnicity is different from their nationality, and a sin for someone whose ethnicity is the same as their nationality. e.g. It’s a virtue for a person in America to be proud of their Irish ethnicity, but it would be a sin for a person in Ireland to feel the same way.
I could cut mine off and you could wear it.
Bet his momma ain’t, though.
The 70s and 80s brought us the great coming out, in great part because of the scourge of HIV. Everyone recognized a great tragedy at work. (I lost a kind and gentle uncle to AIDS.) As the country lent our empathy and resources to those inflicted with this horrible virus, suddenly it was better to just acknowledge homosexuality than continue to wish it into non-existence. So it became acceptible to announce ones homosexuality rather than hide it. Uncloseted gays welcomed their newfound peers and encouraged them to join their botherhood of sorts. Lesbians followed, though perhaps less enthusiastically. The “pride” thing evolved to be more an exaggerated celebration of origin and culture, like the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, than anything else. Perhaps we are more accepting of those staggering drunk on March 16th than we are of those celebrating raunchy sexuality in a Pride parade. Everyone is a wee bit Irish on St. Paddy’s day. I don’t think Gay pride parades or Gay pride month inspires a similar sentiment. Of course the Irish (prolific as they have been) had something to do with that that the rainbow coalition cannot muster.
St. Urho’s Day? Those Finns are wicked.
In my town, in addition to the official Pride Festival, there’s another “family-friendly” unofficial pride festival called Glowfair. It takes place in the “gay village”, features lots of flamboyance, and employs all the same rainbow iconography, but the overt sexuality, transgressive politics, and pharmaceutical-enhanced hedonism is WAY toned down. It seems to do well. I would not be surprised if it tends to get higher attendance and/or make more profits than the official Pride Festival does.