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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
It sure is. I used to run a conservative non-profit (the American Cinema Foundation) and there’s always the imperative to show that every single dollar is at work doing visible stuff. Like any business, there’s a need for at least some staff and infrastructure. But if you do it conscientiously, you’ll quickly come to resent organizations that are essentially wallet-fatteners for their staff. Those are the groups that have to keep their supporters at a constant boil, or everybody has to go out and find a real job. It’s that way on the Left (“Neo-Nazis Threaten Your Kids!” “Trump’s Worst Nightmare–Will You Give Today?”) and on the Right (“Gun Confiscation Begins August 1–Pelosi!” “Kamala Harris Hopes You Won’t Read This!”)
I miss Christopher Hitchens. Happily, pretty much everything he ever said is on Youtube.
And we are so good at perpetuating and memenizing those caricatures.
So if you want more acrimony over religious beliefs or the lack thereof. I make the case that life isn’t necessarily worth living.
Acrimony is to Ricochet web traffic what Dylithium crystals are to Federation starships.
I believe Abe Lincoln said it first. Words as true today as they were then…
I would add two more possibilities:
3. They had a traumatic event which turned them gay, or
4. They stink at picking up women (for gay men).
People are born homosexual.
They then choose to be gay (which is an effort, albeit worth it) or to stay in the closet.
Being gay is a choice, and it takes some work. You need to come out.
And that’s what gives gay culture its strength. It requires people to introspect and find the strength to go against the smug (imho idiotic) consensus. And once they’ve questioned that and survived -well. They can do anything.
I think you are splitting hairs Zafar. I just know of no one else who makes that distinction. Although 1) I obviously agree that coming out is volitional, difficult, and life changing, and 2) I guess you’re entitled to see whatever nuances in, and distinctions between, the terms “gay” and “homosexual” that you want. I’m just questioning whether your take on those terms is in common usage.
That’s an interesting way to describe it. I’ve never heard it put like that before.
Maybe you are. But that’s a pretty good description of the path some of my friends have followed.
You should get out more.
I actually split that hair the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Christians make that distinction.
It fits Christian theology – we are born sinful and fallen. We choose to act according to our sinful natures or we choose to submit our lives to God. Sometimes, those submitting to God make mistakes. Sometimes those following their own nature act on internal promptings to good. Its universal, not just about homosexuality.
I do get out. I come here to learn what you Christians think of us homos.
As long as we’re splitting hairs, I believe Zafar is saying something different from the Christian distinction you refer to (although he can obviously correct me).
I believe Zafar is simply saying that the homosexual/gay distinction is a distinction between the same sex orientation which comes naturally to some of us, and the decision to identify ourselves to the world around us as gay (i.e. to “come out”).
To the Christians you refer to, I’m quite certain, the distinction is between the orientation and the decision to engage in homosexual sexual acts, not the public self-identification. One could publicly self-identify as homosexual in orientation and choose celibacy. I suspect that’s actually what you’d recommend. But that person would be “gay” in Zafar’s taxonomy I believe, not merely homosexual.
It is, but not with a lack of knowing what it is I’m asking or how heavy that burden appears.
That’s awesome! Still laughing…
I understand that depending on the chemicals that we are exposed to in the uterus we lean one way or another. Men tend to be more homosexual or heterosexual and women tend to be more bisexual. But I cannot help but observe how bi non Abrahamic cultures were. Taking a boy lover was not considered a homosexual thing to do. Sex was fun and with boys you didn’t need to worry about pregnancy. (It was very often boys in the ancient world. The idea that lovers should be equal and both should be mutually respected is a more modern interpretation of homosexual impulses.)
I think that the human race is actually a lot more bi than we think it is. Even if a homosexual doesn’t want to engage in coitus with a women, he usually likes looking at attractive women and I think that is a shred of heterosexuality.
Furthermore, superhero comic books which are beloved by mostly heterosexual dudes are actually very homoerotic. Heterosexual dudes are very much attracted to the idealization of the male form. Allow me to make my case.
The Changeling is a shapeshifter we almost never fights in his human form because he can be a bear or a tyrannosaurus.
The Green Lantern’s power set never has anything to do with physical strength.
This idealization of the male form has been going on for awhile.
The flash is basically a track star with a decent knowledge of how to throw a punch. No reason for him to have washboard abs.
The only way an old guy gets that look is from steroids. Additionally, none of Dr. Strange’s power comes from his muscles.
I remember an article that said the movie Roadhouse was filled with homosexual references from prison sex, to “your a$$ is mine, boy”, to “I see you found my trophy room. I’ve got everything on that wall except your a$$.” Those are obvious, but I missed the homosexual reference in, “I thought you’d be bigger.” Or maybe the man who wrote the article was already leaning that way? NTTAWWT
I love you homos!
Gay is to homosexual as purple is to lavender.
I’m straight. I can’t tell the difference between purple and lavender.
Irrelevant for your purposes. Not to fret.
So what about the gay pride consensus? Does the fact that it is even endorsed by some government post offices take some of the thrill away?
Duplicate deleted
I’m gay and I don’t understand the point you’re making either Zafar.
Homosexual says which gender you are attracted by.
Gay says who you choose to be in the world. True or Untrue. For starters.
Not thrill but importance. Probably.
It’s not a question of a “thrill.” It’s a question of fortitude and courage. “Coming out” is a huge hill to climb. If you’ve never done it, you won’t get it. And I’m speaking to my experience and the experience of my predecessors. God willing it’s a less overwhelming task today. But when I did it, the stigma was so intense and the risk seemed so great that it took years and incredible fortitude to do it. I was literally risking my life. Short of going off to war, few straight people face a challenge like that in their youths. Mock it if you want, but any gay person is just going to look at you and smile, knowing that the fact that you don’t get it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Surviving it does make everything that comes after somewhat anticlimactic. I remember the first couple of people I told. I remember where we were and exactly what I said – almost 30 years ago. They were pivotal moments in my life and they changed my life forever. And happily, it worked out for me. But if I’d have been born 30 years earlier, I am certain I would not have lived to the age I am today. The cost of honesty would have been too great and would have made me one of the all too many gay suicides.
Ok, that I get. That’s what I thought you were saying. I just don’t get how purple and lavender fit into it, though I doubt it matters. Maybe just a metaphor that went over my head.
He needs to hire an interior decorator . . .
This is why you keep the gays around. I’m almost as good a decorator as I am a lawyer.