Wrath, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and gluttony. I've always wanted to incorporate the 7 Deadly Sins into a book, and I'm sure I will. One of these days... months... years...
But that's not really the point of this post. A couple of the sins have always confused me. I can understand wrath, greed, lust, pride and envy, but the inclusion of gluttony and sloth as "deadly" sins doesn't make much sense to me.
According to Wikipedia, the most reliable of sources, the 7 deadly sins are ones that threaten a person's sense of charity and will therefore potentially cause eternal damnation. I can see how wrath, greed, lust, pride and envy could hurt someone's ability to be charitable, but I feel gluttony is a sub-category of greed (come to think of it, 'envy' and 'lust' stem from greed as well), but sloth seems an odd inclusion. I'd expect the 7th deadly sin to be dishonesty, or something, not laziness.
Side tracking for a bit: just the other day, I heard a story that made me angry. It was a neglect case in which the horse died of dehydration. The owner claimed she'd put water and food in the paddock, but the horse couldn't reach it because its foot was stuck in the fence. Dear reader of this blog, I'm sure you can figure out what made me angry, even if you know nothing about horses. Because the owner wouldn't do something as simple as get her horse's foot out of the fence, the horse died.
Which brings me back to Sloth. After much - far too much, I can be a bit obsessive - thinking on the topic, I think equating sloth to laziness is a bit inaccurate. I think a better synonym for 'sloth' would be 'neglect'.
Neglect, to me, makes sense as a deadly sin.
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