Jason Locke's Blog

Think of Gilligan's Island as a parable based on the Seven Deadly Sins. Many folks think the creators based the series on these classical vices. ( Here's one example .)  A three-hour cruise turned into a seeming eternity. They were hopelessly marooned on a deserted island.  One of the most common story lines across the show's 99 episodes is a potential rescue. And in almost every case, one character unwittingly or incompetently destroys any hope of leaving the island. It's Gilligan, the figure who most readily represents this week's vice: sloth . Many in our contemporary world equate sloth with laziness. But the ancient vice of sloth, as brought to us via John Cassian from the desert fathers, comes from the Greek work acedia . This word is best translated as apathy or avoidance. This is what Cassian wrote about a theoretical monk faced with the danger of sloth ( acedia ): "He must also contend on both sides against this most wicked spirit of acedia ...

Greed makes the world go 'round. Or is love what's supposed to make the world go 'round? Regardless, Western capitalism is built on the premise of managed greed. The desire to want more pushes people to excel and acquire more. Without this drive to consume, the economies of market-driven nations would grind to a halt. The basic premise behind the vice of greed is that people tend to want more than they need. But it's not just about wanting something. Thomas Aquinas wrote that greed "is a sin directly against one's neighbor, since one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them. . . It is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, inasmuch as man [scorns] things eternal for the sake of temporal things." His definition reveals the two main problems with greed—and helps us see what greed is NOT. First, greed is something that harms your neighbors. Having broadband internet when your neighbor only has DSL is n...

Gluttony and temperance are polar opposites. Gluttony represents overindulgence. Temperance symbolizes an ability to exercise self-control. As simple as these definitions are, however, both words are a bit exotic and relatively unknown to contemporary audiences. What familiarity there is for these terms calls to mind particular images. For gluttony, one almost certainly pictures a character like Friar Tuck from the Robin Hood saga. The jolly good Friar never had a shortage of ale, and his round belly was always ready for a feast. This love of food and drink makes him an obvious symbol of gluttony. Temperance is a relatively unknown word for many younger people. It likely reminds older folks of temperance movements that sought to ban or limit alcohol. The American Temperance Society was a major force in the US with tens of thousands of members pledging to abstain from alcohol. Various temperance movements across the world have stood in opposition to Western tolerance of ex...

This Sunday, January 8, I’m starting a new series of lessons on vices and virtues. Dating back to the fourth century, much of the Christian world has grouped all sins into several major categories. In their efforts to become perfect, the desert fathers were the ones who created eight groupings of sins. John Cassian brought their work out of the desert and into the major centers of Western civilization. Pope Gregory 1 then reorganized the list about 590 AD. He created the well-known and widely-accepted catalog known as the “Seven Deadly Sins.” Thomas Aquinas, Geoffrey Chaucer and many other major teachers, writers and leaders have used these lists as sufficient representations of all the sins that afflict humankind. My sermons will work off this list. Hieronymus Bosch’s The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things The listing of “major sins” is nothing new. It goes back to the Bible. The wise teacher listed 7 “abominations” in Proverbs 6:16-19. Paul’s writings include se...