Just when you thought there were only seven . . .
As I was writing this book, BBC Focus magazine reported a worldwide survey that ranked the world’s most sinful countries.1 Using metrics similar to those used by Thomas Vought and colleagues in their mapping of US sins – theft statistics for envy, BMI for gluttony, number of sick days for sloth – the BBC compiled the following list of winners:
Lust: South Korea
Gluttony: United States
Greed: Mexico
Sloth: Iceland
Anger: South Africa
Envy: Australia
Pride: Iceland
With just a hint of pride (the authentic variety, of course), I’m happy to say that, overall, Australia was deemed the world’s most sinful nation. I do feel sorry for those who came close – the United States in second place and Canada third – and sorrier still for those that didn’t make the list at all. (Greenland, anybody?). But virtuous Greenlanders and those like them need not worry, for it seems that there might be other ways to take the mantle of ‘world’s most sinful’.
On 9 March 2008, Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, one of the most important tribunals in the Roman Catholic Church, revamped the seven deadly sins for the new millennium. In an interview with the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Bishop Girotti added various ‘social’ sins such as drug use, abortion, pollution and stem-cell research to the traditional, and hopefully now familiar, seven: ‘You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos.’2
And it’s not only the odd Regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary that has taken a shot at updating the list of deadlies for the twenty-first century. According to a 2005 BBC
survey,3 a contemporary list of deadly sins would read:
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Cruelty |
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Hypocrisy |
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Adultery |
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Greed |
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Bigotry |
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Selfishness |
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Dishonesty |
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Not to belabour the point (and not to miss the point that the BBC poll was somewhat tongue-in-cheek), but the label ‘sin’ (and the related notion that certain behaviours are uniformly bad) does nothing but render complex psychological and social phenomena simplistically unidimensional. Greed you’ve already heard about. Dishonesty, categorically bad? How about hypocrisy? Haven’t you ever tried a little innocuous dissembling to spare someone’s feelings? ‘How do I look in this dress, darling?’
There is no doubt that for some, explicit guidance from respected authorities provides a much-needed moral compass in a complex world. Indeed, the ability to judge a behaviour as black or white, as obviously right or wrong, does simplify life quite a bit. But as we’ve seen with the traditional deadly sins, the reality is much more complex. Simplistic categorization of social and psychological phenomena into ‘sins’ and ‘virtues’, into the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, strips human action of its inherent and fascinating richness. What’s more, it marginalizes ‘sinners’ and hampers serious and sophisticated discourse.
What strikes you as a more sensible course of action? Reasoned and informed debate about the ethical consequences of stem-cell research, or simply asserting that such research is a sin and abandoning it all together? Drug treatment programs based on careful consideration of the scientific evidence surrounding the distal and proximal causes of drug abuse, or a ‘drug abuse = sin’ mantra, which condemns drug users not only to an eternity in hell, but to social exclusion and stigmatization?
You have seen throughout this book that seven psychological characteristics of the human species that have for about sixteen centuries been demonized as mortally sinful are in fact rather good for us. All it takes to get to this conclusion is a little careful thought, a perusal of the scientific record, and a willingness to abandon a cultural legacy that drastically simplifies human nature. If you take a moment, it’s not difficult to see how lust, gluttony, greed, envy, pride, sloth and anger can often work for you and for those around you. And if you take just a few moments more, you’ll find it an equally reasonable proposition that almost any facet of human behaviour – from genetic engineering to selfishness – is too complex, too multifaceted, and in the end often simply too functional to be given the label ‘sin’.