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Jeff Cook teaches philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado. He is the author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes. He pastors Atlas Church and longs to front a funk band again. He lives with his wife and two sons in Greeley, Colorado.

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Our world is charged with both the grandeur of God and the void of his absence. The seven deadly sins are the force causing that hole. They are at work in each of us. They decimate our relationships, our souls and our world. These deadly sins often seem pleasing and good for gaining what we desire, but they are thoroughly poisonous. Conversely, the Beatitudes are Jesus' pictures of a restored creation. The Beatitudes introduced what Jesus said to his earliest followers about a life strong and fruitful. In fact, the Beatitudes give us a glimpse of a world empty of evil and filled to the edges with God's life. Looking at the Beatitudes and the seven deadly sins in turn, we see two paths, two sets of invitations. Both call to deep places within us to come and taste. Both invite us to take up residence. Both present themselves as life as it actually is. But only one will draw us further into reality.And only one will make us happy. “Of the many, many books about the Gospels, or about Jesus, or about Christian morality, only one in a thousand gives us a real breakthrough, a new ‘big picture'. Most are just nice little candles on the cake. Seven is a bonfire. It's not just good; it's striking. It doesn't just say all the things you've heard a thousand times before. And yet it's totally in sync with both the saints and the scholars.”--Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, and author of over forty-five books, including Fundamentals of the Faith.

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Seven

Zondervan

Contents

Introduction: Holes in a Good World....................................91 Pride and the Poor in Spirit.........................................312 Envy and the Mourner.................................................493 Sloth and Those Who Hunger for a Life Made Right.....................674 Greed and the Mercy Giver............................................835 Lust and the Pure of Heart...........................................1036 Wrath and the Meek Peacemaker........................................1217 Gluttony and the Persecuted..........................................1458 The Story God Loves..................................................163Notes, Resources, Discussion...........................................177Questions for Discussion and Reflection................................203Acknowledgments........................................................213

Chapter One

One is the loneliest number. Three Dog Night

The story is told of a man who had a dream in which an angel showed him two doors - one marked Heaven and the other Hell. Curious, the man went to the door marked Hell. Inside he saw an unhappy sight. Twelve emaciated people sat around a cauldron of steaming hot soup. Beside them were large spoons - too large, in fact. The spoons required both arms and all one's might to lift and place in the cauldron. Many were able to get food on the end, but the weight of the spoons caused them to tip over as the people brought the food to their lips. Those in hell were never able to eat from the deep cauldrons. The spoons were too long, too heavy.

"Most in hell," the angel explained, "have spent long hours trying to feed themselves but have failed again and again."

The dreamer watched them staring, starving, and he recoiled from hell's doorway. These people have no hope, he thought. It seemed that God was mocking them. "It is torture," he said to the angel, "to have what you desire sitting before you yet be unable to have even a taste!"

Turning, he opened the door marked Heaven. Inside he saw twelve people sitting around a deep cauldron of soup, with spoons too large to lift to their lips. The room was the same as the one in hell - the same light, the same size - but in this room there was a joy unlike anything the man had ever seen. He and the angel were caught up in the laughter. There was even singing, and the people celebrated for long hours as the soup sat boiling before them.

Leaving, the man was puzzled by the contrast between the two rooms. One so filled with joy and the other a prison of misery. Certainly those in heaven were in denial. Perhaps they had grown content with want. Looking at the angel, the dreamer asked why those in heaven were happy while those in hell were not.

"Those in heaven have learned to feed each other," said the angel.

Whereas the kingdom of heaven is communal and bent toward the ser vice of others, the attitude of hell assumes everything exists for me - to serve me, benefit me - because I am that significant.

John Milton's classic Paradise Lost begins with Satan falling from the presence of God into a dark world. Looking around, he affirms himself by saying, "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n." Some move toward the void of hell - not because reality is too ugly or painful, but because the kingdom of heaven is about others and not one's self. And when all people everywhere stop serving one another and begin groping for what is "rightfully theirs," this inward focus becomes deadly. The ancients called this attitude of persistent self-focus pride, and when pride takes hold of a culture, everyone starves.

Pride is the natural love for myself magnified and perverted into disdain for others. Augustine called pride the foundation of sin, for "pride made the soul desert God, to whom it should cling as the source of life, and to imagine itself instead as the source of its own life." In other words, the more I make my life, my well-being, my enlightenment, and my success primary, the farther I step from reality. Thus the hell-bound do not travel downward; they travel inward, cocooning themselves behind a mass of vanity, personal rights, religiosity, and defensiveness.

Obsession with self is the defining mark of a disintegrating soul. Unlike the other sins, pride usually appears when I am at my best. Pride capitalizes not just on my failures but even more so on my successes. When I choose to abstain from base desires, gluttony and lust may be defeated, but not pride. Pride tells me what a fine person I am for resisting such rubbish - and my eyes turn inward. When I fast, pride is there to pat me on the back and tell me what a devout person I am - and again my eyes turn inward. If I stop fasting so I won't draw attention to myself, pride marks the occasion with trumpets. If I share wisdom or withhold it, if I give money or refrain, if I pray or remain silent - pride is always there as a false light to bask in. No matter what I do, pride loves to hold up my reflection as an idol to be cherished.

We're each capable of turning what we see in the mirror into our god. I see this tendency clearly in myself when I believe I have all the right answers, not just for me but for those I judge as having messed-up lives and messed-up beliefs. "If they only knew what I know, their lives would be so much better," I say to myself. I am comfortable with such condescension because in the back of my mind, I think God agrees with my opinion. (And he has clout.) I'm just offering clearheaded discernment because I am that close to the divine.

Smells rotten, huh?

One writer said that pride is the only sickness that makes everyone ill except the one who has it. We ought to take this a step further, because pride hurts everyone, especially the proud. Those in the vicinity of pride may be stepped on, abused, dismissed, even shot in order to keep the pristine image of the proud intact. But self- obsession ultimately destroys the proud soul. It eliminates every life-giving relationship the proud may have enjoyed. Even God draws close to the proud, but the proud cannot draw close to God or anyone else, for pride destroys our ability to connect with others. Perhaps this is why many great Christian thinkers have identified pride as the first lethal step into hell's hands. Pride chooses itself over the rest of reality. It is the complete antirealist frame of mind.

Pride, then, is not possessing extraordinary talents, viewing my skills highly, or even showcasing my gifts for the benefit of others. Pride instead spurs me to view myself as the only one in the entire world who matters, to think that I have somehow earned the prime spot in the universe, and now all of creation is a grand symphony celebrating me. I may have a lowly job, no money, no friends, no iPhone, yet still meditate continually on myself as the one whose thoughts and feelings matter more than anyone else's.

Pride is not thinking too much of myself; pride is thinking of myself far too much.

Jesus told a story of a man with two sons, both consumed with themselves. The younger brother's pride led him to waste everything he had been given - his identity, his inheritance, his past. His conceit ultimately led him into the isolation of...