The 10 commandments of God and the 7 deadly sins are considered the basic rules of Christianity that must be followed in the world. They were given by God to Saint Moses at the beginning of the development of religion. In order to save humanity from the Fall and warn against danger, because systematic occupation with them will lead to the destruction of immortal souls that go to hell. Let's learn more about what sins and commandments are highlighted in Orthodox traditions.
Where does the expression “7 deadly sins” come from?
For the first time such a classification was proposed by St. Gregory the Great in 590. Although, along with it, another classification has always existed in the Church, numbering not seven, but eight main sinful passions. Passion is a skill of the soul that was formed in it from repeated repetition of the same sins and became, as it were, its natural quality - so that a person cannot get rid of passion even when he understands that it no longer brings him pleasure, but torment. Actually, the word “passion” in the Church Slavonic language precisely means suffering.
St. Theophan the Recluse writes about the difference between mortal sin and less grave sin:
A mortal sin is one that robs a person of his moral and Christian life. If we know what moral life is, then defining mortal sin is not difficult. Christian life is zeal and strength to remain in communion with God by fulfilling His holy law. Therefore, every sin that extinguishes jealousy, takes away strength and relaxes, distances one from God and deprives Him of grace, so that after it a person cannot look at God, but feels himself separated from Him; every such sin is a mortal sin.
...Such a sin deprives a person of the grace received in baptism, takes away the Kingdom of Heaven and delivers it to judgment. And all this is confirmed in the hour of sin, although it is not accomplished visibly. Sins of this kind change the entire direction of a person’s activity and his very state and heart, forming, as it were, a new source in moral life; why do others determine that mortal sin is the one that changes the center of human activity?
These sins are called mortal because the falling away of the human soul from God is the death of the soul. Without a grace-filled connection with its Creator, the soul dies and becomes incapable of experiencing spiritual joy either in a person’s earthly life or in its posthumous existence.
And it doesn’t really matter how many categories these sins are divided into - seven or eight. It is much more important to remember the terrible danger that any such sin poses, and to try in every possible way to avoid these deadly traps. And also to know that even for those who have sinned such a sin there remains the possibility of salvation.
Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) says
Let him who has fallen into mortal sin not fall into despair! Let him resort to the medicine of repentance, to which he is called until the last minute of his life by the Savior, who proclaimed in the Holy Gospel: he who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live (John 11:25). But it is disastrous to remain in mortal sin, it is disastrous when mortal sin turns into a habit!
And the Monk Isaac the Syrian said even more clearly:
There is no unforgivable sin except unrepentant sin.
Short description
Everyone plays their own game and must go their own way. Once on this cell you are faced with one of four obsessions - vanity.
In Sanskrit, Vanity is called "mada". It refers to self-deception, illusory thoughts and feelings, intoxication with one’s own imaginary successes. Once on this cell, the player is destined to come face to face with his pride and imaginary virtues, which in fact have no basis.
Often the “mad”’s companion is bad company, which only fuels the player’s pride and misleads him further. In this case, a person becomes completely entangled in the networks of self-deception and can no longer free himself from them.
Seven deadly sins
So, what are the seven deadly sins? Let's look at each of them.
Pride
Pride is a self-satisfied intoxication with one’s own merits, real or imaginary. Having taken possession of a person, she cuts him off first from people he doesn’t know well, then from his family and friends. And finally - from God himself. The proud man does not need anyone, he is not even interested in the admiration of those around him, and only in himself does he see the source of his own happiness.
But like any sin, pride does not bring true joy. Internal opposition to everything and everyone dries up the soul of a proud person; complacency, like a scab, covers it with a rough shell, under which it dies and becomes incapable of love, friendship and even simple sincere communication.
Saint Basil:
The beginning of pride is usually contempt. The one who despises and considers others to be nothing - some are poor, others are people of low birth, others are ignorant, as a result of such contempt he comes to the point that he considers himself alone to be wise, prudent, rich, noble and strong.
...How is a proud person recognized and how is he healed? Recognized because it seeks preference. And he will be healed if he believes the judgment of Him who said: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). However, you need to know that, although he will be afraid of the judgment pronounced for pride, he cannot be healed of this passion unless he abandons all thoughts of his own preference.
Envy
This location of the human heart becomes a launching pad for the most terrible crimes. And also countless large and small dirty tricks that people do just to make another person feel bad or at least stop feeling good.
But even if this beast does not break out in the form of a crime or a specific act, will it really be easier for the envious person? After all, in the end, such a terrible worldview will simply drive him into a premature grave, but even death will not stop his suffering. Because after death, envy will torment his soul with even greater force, but without the slightest hope of quenching it.
Saint Elias Minyatiy:
Envy is sadness because of the well-being of one's neighbor, which <...> seeks not good for oneself, but evil for one's neighbor. The envious would like to see the glorious dishonest, the rich poor, the happy unhappy. This is the purpose of envy - to see how the envied person falls from happiness into disaster.
Gluttony
Gluttony is slavery to one's own stomach. It can manifest itself not only in insane gluttony at the festive table, but also in culinary discernment, in a subtle discrimination of shades of taste, in the preference for gourmet dishes over simple food. From a cultural point of view, there is a gulf between the crude glutton and the refined gourmet. But both of them are slaves to their eating behavior. For both, food has ceased to be a means of maintaining the life of the body, turning into the desired goal of the life of the soul.
Venerable John Cassian the Roman:
Gluttony is divided into three types: one type encourages eating before a certain hour; another loves only to be satiated with any kind of food; the third wants tasty food. Against this, a Christian must have threefold caution: wait for a certain time for eating; don't get fed up; be content with all the most modest food.
Fornication
The sin of fornication includes all manifestations of human sexual activity contrary to the natural way of their implementation in marriage. Promiscuous sex life, adultery, all kinds of perversions - all these are different types of manifestations of prodigal passion in a person. But although this is a bodily passion, its origins lie in the realm of the mind and imagination.
Therefore, the Church also classifies as fornication obscene dreams, viewing pornographic and erotic materials, telling and listening to obscene anecdotes and jokes - everything that can arouse in a person fantasies on a sexual theme, from which the bodily sins of fornication then grow.
Hieromartyr Vasily of Kineshemsky:
...Consciousness is more and more filled with images of voluptuousness, dirty, burning and seductive.
The power and poisonous fumes of these images, enchanting and shameful, are such that they crowd out from the soul all the sublime thoughts and desires that captivated (the young man) before. It often happens that a person is unable to think about anything else: he is completely possessed by the demon of passion. He cannot look at every woman as anything other than a female. Thoughts, one dirtier than the other, crawl in his foggy brain, and in his heart there is only one desire - to satisfy his lust. This is already the state of an animal, or rather, worse than an animal, because animals do not reach the level of depravity that a person reaches.
Anger
An angry person is scary. Meanwhile, anger is a natural property of the human soul, put into it by God to reject everything sinful and inappropriate. This useful anger was perverted in man by sin and turned into anger at his neighbors, sometimes for the most insignificant reasons. Offending other people, cursing, insulting, shouting, fighting, killing - all these are acts of unrighteous anger.
Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk:
Look at the anger, what signs of its torment it leaves. Look what a man does in anger: how he becomes indignant and makes noise, curses and scolds himself, torments and beats, hits his head and face, and shakes all over, as if in a fever, in a word, he looks like a demoniac. If his appearance is so unpleasant, what is going on in his poor soul? ...You see what a terrible poison is hidden in the soul, and how bitterly it torments a person! His cruel and pernicious manifestations speak of him.
Greed (selfishness)
It is sometimes believed that only rich people who already have wealth and strive to increase it can suffer from this spiritual illness. However, a person of average income, a low-income person, and a completely beggar are all subject to this passion, since it does not consist in the possession of things, material goods and wealth, but in a painful, irresistible desire to possess them.
Saint Theophan the Recluse:
Self-interest is an insatiable desire to have, or the search and acquisition of things under the guise of benefit, then only to say about them: mine. There are many objects of this passion: the house with all its parts, fields, servants, and most importantly - money, because you can get everything with it.
Dejection (laziness)
Dejection is considered to be a general relaxation of mental and physical strength, combined with extreme pessimism. But it is important to understand that despondency occurs in a person as a result of a deep mismatch between the abilities of his soul, zeal (an emotionally charged desire for action) and will.
In the normal state, will determines for a person the goal of his aspirations, and zeal is the “engine” that allows him to move towards it, overcoming difficulties. When despondent, a person directs zeal at his current state, which is far from his goal, and the will, left without an “engine,” turns into a constant source of melancholy about unfulfilled plans. These two forces of a despondent person, instead of moving towards the goal, seem to “pull” his soul in different directions, bringing it to complete exhaustion.
Such a discrepancy is the result of man’s falling away from God, the tragic consequence of an attempt to direct all the forces of his soul towards earthly things and joys, while they were given to us to strive for heavenly joys.
Evagrius of Pontus:
Dejection is a continuous and simultaneous movement of the furious and lustful part of the soul. The first is furious over what is at her disposal, the second, on the contrary, yearns for what she lacks.
Food fashion
Of course, the passion of gluttony has existed since the Fall. People have always been susceptible to it, but let's face it, in the 21st century, the discussion about food has reached some new level. A huge number of restaurants are opening, every second program on TV is about food, on the Internet everyone watches reviews of different dishes and saves recipes that they will never repeat.
During the day, a person sees food more often than he eats it.
In 2022, there was a boom of nutritionists on Russian Instagram. Every fifth person took courses online and came to tell you how to eat properly. And even earlier there were adherents of proper nutrition, counting calories and the ratio of BZHU (proteins, fats, carbohydrates).
Someone says that you can’t eat after 18.00, someone says that after 20.00, there is an opinion that before 12.00 you can eat whatever you want in any quantity, some theories openly contradict each other, but people don’t care. Everyone has become concerned about food and the size of their body. Others talk about the dangers of foods that we have always eaten, suggesting that we give up gluten, dairy products and meat. In itself, all this does not cause any harm, of course, but, as I wrote above, people are prone to crossing the line.
This is how calorie counting turns into mania. My younger sister, while still a minor teenager, at some point became so carried away by this that during the day she tried to maintain a zero calorie balance, when the number of calories burned per day is equal to the number of calories consumed. I had to tell him long and hard that calories are needed to breathe and blink. Such a relationship with food is also destructive; a person only thinks about how not to eat, and then how to eat within the limits of what is allowed. In such a state, where is the place to think about yourself, let alone your spiritual path?
