07/17/201807/25/2018 Irina Malinina 2 comments
The basis for the harmonious development of the spiritual and material worlds is compliance with existing, basic rules and laws, the violation of which will certainly lead to destruction and disasters.
Moreover, the moral rules of existence in society accurately reflect the commandments of the Christian religion, and therefore their observance is due to both believers and people far from the Church.
In Orthodoxy, sins are divided according to the severity of the ability to atone for them. Particular attention is paid to such a phenomenon as the seven deadly sins. Not everyone understands the meaning of this phrase and what kind of sins faith classifies as mortal.
Pride, or “the sin of Lucifer”
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Pride is considered one of the most serious sins, as it originated from Satan himself. The history of this sin goes back to the creation of the angelic world. One of the highest angels and the most powerful, Dennitsa, did not want to be in obedience and love for the Lord. This Angel became extremely proud of his strength and power and wanted to become equal to God. Dennitsa carried away many Angels with her, which is why a war was unleashed in heaven. Archangel Michael, together with his Angels, fighting Satan, won victory over the evil army. Satan-Lucifer, like lightning, fell from the kingdom of Heaven into the underworld. Since then, hell, the underworld, has been the habitat of dark spirits, a place devoid of God's grace and light.
A person who is sinful of pride is the successor of Lucifer’s work on earth. Pride entails all other sins, even those that are not included in the list of the seven mortals.
Pride is excessive faith in oneself and one’s capabilities, which conflicts with the greatness of the Lord. A person in such sin boasts of his qualities, forgetting about the one who gave them to him. Simply put, pride is extremely inflated self-esteem, exaltation of one’s real qualities and imaginary good traits. This is inflated self-esteem. In such cases, a person believes that he is better than he really is, and better than all other people. This leads to arrogance and arrogance. This is a biased assessment, selfishness, which leads to making terrible mistakes in life. This is self-praise, blind self-worship. A component of pride is also hostility towards others.
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One of the effective ways to overcome pride is to serve society, the Lord and family. By giving oneself to others, a person can change.
Pride is the source of negative thoughts and emotions. These things have a detrimental effect on a person’s psychological state and behavior. Too much self-importance gives rise to aggression towards the world around us.
We must fight laziness with work and prayer.
No one comes into our world with a soul that is incredibly lazy. But the fight against laziness is a necessary measure, which cannot be avoided. The temptations that lead to laziness are very great. Therefore, it is useful to know what helps to cope.
Hegumen Nektary (Morozov) advises:
“You need constant work, work on yourself, aimed at acquiring an extremely valuable skill: concentrating on the main thing, pushing aside the unimportant. It is necessary to force ourselves: we must not wait until the desire to do what a Christian should awaken in us, but simply take ourselves “by the scruff of the neck” and drag us in the right direction. This is actually almost always possible, with very, very rare exceptions. And it almost always bears fruit sooner or later: we are very dependent on skills, and if we acquire the skill of overcoming ourselves, then in the future it turns into a kind of spiritual lifesaver. And the most important thing: the Lord, seeing that we are not sitting idly by, but struggling, trying to move forward, even if only in tiny steps, Himself helps us, gives us His grace, and it already fills us with the strength we need, the strength we need. After all, it is only He, as once and now, who raises the paralytic from their bed...”
Nektary Morozov
abbot
The Lord extends a helping hand to those who struggle with laziness
And, of course, the main weapon against laziness remains prayer:
“And we must never forget about such a universal means of getting out of a state of relaxation as prayer.
Not necessarily in a temple, not necessarily even in standing before an icon in a prayer corner (although this is very important), even if it’s the shortest, but constant, sincere, filled with heartache:
“Bring me, Lord, out of this state, help me become alive for You, teach me to do Your will, give me strength, integrity, strength of soul and body...”
And she, too, will not remain without fruit.”
Greed
The second major sin in Christianity. Greedy is a greedy or stingy person who is inclined to increase his wealth. This sin is divided into the desire to receive more than a person already has - greed and reluctance to lose what he has, the desire to preserve it - stinginess. Greed stirs up internal illnesses such as fear and anger. A person, going over his head, using his comrades, regardless of the opinions of others, obtains for himself those benefits that are dear to him. A person in such sin puts money and material wealth first in his life, preferring them to spiritual values. The sinner is often willing to spend most of his time counting his existing wealth. If suddenly his wealth is lost, then such a person will feel emptiness in his soul, the meaning of life will be lost.
The life of such a person is often accompanied by anger. This is a natural feeling for a greedy person. He is not interested in anything except material gain. The spiritual emptiness of such a person is filled with money or things. The root of this vice is a feeling of insecurity, danger, instability.
The main problem of greed in religion and psychology is considered to be the degradation of a person’s personality. The individual simply wants to be happy and believes that he will achieve this through the preservation and accumulation of material things. The feeling that the more you have, the happier you will be. But due to the fact that such things are not pleasing for a long time, you have to purchase them again and again.
Envy
This sin is also prohibited by the Ten Commandments. A person in this sin wants to have something that does not belong to him. The objects of envy are both material and spiritual things. According to religion, God gives everyone what this particular person needs in accordance with the Lord’s plan. And the desire to have what the Lord has given to another contradicts and strives to carry out personal will in defiance of God’s. Despite the fact that envy is one of the seven deadly sins, and the fact that this vice causes a person a lot of trouble and trouble, envy still lives in everyone, and it has not been possible to get rid of it.
Every person is susceptible to this sin to some extent. This is explained by the fact that everyone has a certain number of needs and needs, which he often cannot satisfy in his own life, but sees them in other people. In addition, it is much easier to explain your shortcomings and mistakes not by your problems (laziness or weakness), but by the mistakes and injustice of fate, which, for some unknown reason, benefits someone else and not us.
There are many examples of envy in human history. In the Bible, these are the brothers Cain and Abel, selling Joseph into slavery because of the love of their father. A parable about King Saul and defenseless David. The entire life path of Jesus Christ was accompanied by human envy. Using examples from the New and Old Testaments, one can understand that for a long time, envy filled the souls and hearts of people.
Anger
This mortal sin is a manifestation of the “irritable” part of the soul. God gave rational anger to man as a weapon; it is the power of the soul with which man resists evil. As a result of the Fall, this rational power is perverted and becomes the most terrible vice for the individual. Anger has many varieties. It has the appearance of a serpent that produces young that are more dangerous and poisonous than itself. These children are: envy, jealousy, rancor, rage or hatred and rancor. All these traits make a person and his loved ones unhappy. We combine this sin - anger - with other passions, in which case a wide variety of vices appear.
Anger with stinginess creates a negative attitude towards the poor and poor. The sinner looks at such a person as if he were an aggressor who is encroaching on his property. He will call them deceivers and idlers.
Anger combined with sadness gives rise to frustration and irritability, dissatisfaction with everything and everyone around.
Anger and despondency give rise to ardent hatred, contempt for life itself, often even aggressive atheism. This condition can often be a reason for committing suicide.
Anger combined with vanity can give rise to vindictiveness and envy. For such a sinner, the enemy will be the person who has surpassed or been ahead of him in some way. A person in sin is ready to use the most disgusting and base means to harm his “enemy”: slander, denunciation, caustic ridicule.
Pride combined with anger creates hatred towards humanity.
Excursion into history
The classification of the seven sins appeared in 590. The author was Saint Gregory the Great. In fact, there are many varieties of bad deeds, and the number “seven” indicates the number of main groups into which sins are conventionally grouped.
At the same time, the Church put forward a theory about eight sinful human passions:
- Gluttony.
- Adultery.
- Love of money.
- Anger.
- Sadness.
- Dejection.
- Vanity.
- Pride.
The concepts of sin and temptation were differentiated. Desire in itself was not equated with sin. A Christian who allowed himself to think about an evil act was not deprived of the opportunity to find peace in the Kingdom of Heaven. Sin is not resisting temptation, giving in. The desire for a tasty meal was not blameworthy, but a constant habit that turned into an addiction could already push a person to sin. By sadness was meant grumbling against the Lord God, distrust of his will. Pride manifested itself in a feeling of superiority over loved ones.
In the Middle Ages, the philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas in his writings also adhered to the theory of seven sins, changing only their sequence. The teacher of the Church attributed vice to character, and believed that sin surpasses vice in evil.
Lust or fornication
According to the dictionary, lust means sexual desire, rough and voluptuous. In Christianity, lust is “an unlawful passion, corruption of hearts, leading to evil and sin.” Lust and sin are closely related to each other, as stated in the letters of the apostles, which form part of the New Testament. Lust or, as this sin is also called, fornication is not equivalent to the word love. The latter implies a bright feeling directed at the object of one’s interest. The fundamental components of these feelings were and remain respect and the desire to selflessly do something nice for your partner. Love is not combined with selfishness, due to the fact that it is initially aimed at sacrifice.
A person who is subject to this sin cannot be concentrated on anything else. The sinner is in the grip of passion. He looks at women as if a lady is an object of passion and satisfaction of animal desires, and nothing more. Dirty thoughts, filling his consciousness and darkening his soul, clouds them.
A lustful person constantly remembers his animal desire and passions; these feelings do not leave him. Because of this, the sinner constantly wants those who do not care about him and who, in essence, do not need him, and if they do need him, then the sinners will chase him, looking for new pleasures, trampling and humiliating the feelings of another. This is due to the fact that lust and fornication are based only on sexual desire, which is not combined with respect and holiness of feelings.
For air signs
Air signs are agile, intellectual, receptive and independent. At the same time, they are unreliable, superficial, and unfounded. As for the main vice - pride and vanity, they are unanimous on this.
Twins
Geminis are often accused of duplicity and the desire to show off. However, the root of the problem is deeper - it is pride. This sign tends to consider itself better than others or strive to surpass everyone. Therefore, he embellishes his own achievements, talents and results of work. This leads to isolation, superficiality, and inability to build real relationships. Gemini should think about the philosophical meaning of universal equality.
Aquarius
The mortal sin is the same as for Gemini. This sign is subject to pride, since it considers itself chosen, incomparable, completely different from the others. Associated with this are communication difficulties and an inability to experience true intimacy.
Aquarius has unconventional thinking, originality and many talents, but he needs to realize that each person is unique in his own way, and no one is better than another.
Scales
Libra men and women are also susceptible to pride. Their vanity often translates into narcissism. They look over their virtues and achievements and enjoy a sense of self-importance. But when narcissism crosses a critical line, there is neither strength nor time left for anything else (they fall into the trap of despondency or laziness). Libra needs to switch from contemplating past achievements to the present moment, new goals and actions.
Gluttony
Gluttony is also often called gluttony. This sin is a kind of addiction to overeating in excess of the norm. This also includes drinking. Gluttony is considered one of the main sins in Christianity. This kind of sin disfigures both the soul and the person himself. This is due to the fact that an overly full belly often plunges the consciousness into a dark slumber, devastates it and makes it lazy, the latter being another item on the list of mortal sins.
A person who is subject to the sin of gluttony cannot conduct rational discussions on spiritual topics, nor can he comprehend anything deeply enough. The womb of such a person is like a lead weight, which pulls down the soul, grounded by vices and sins.
Religion has many ways of getting rid of this sin: prudence, the content of fasting, and the memory of the Supreme Court, the predominance of the spiritual over the material.
A glutton is a person who lives for his stomach. All plans and desires are aimed at food. The sinner lives and works for the purpose of acquiring a variety of food. Lonely people with such sin are often selfish. If the sinner is bound by marriage and family life, it will be a disaster for the whole family.
What does mortal sin mean?
What does sin mean? This is an action, word or thought that is contrary to the Lord. There are serious, ordinary sins, and there are mortal ones. The latter are understood as serious sins, which, in case of unrepentance, close the door to the salvation of the soul.
In Catholicism and Orthodoxy there are some differences in these concepts, but in general the essence is clear - by behavior, thoughts and feelings, a person moves away from God, distorts his plan, because the Lord created him in his own image. Any sinful passion, be it fornication or greed, especially if it captures a person entirely, deprives the soul of Divine grace and destroys it.
The Holy Fathers compare mortal sins to a heavy stone. If you put it around your neck and jump into the water, the person will die. Likewise, sins cause the soul to drown in the “abyss of hell” under its own weight. Mortal sins are mortal because they kill the soul, making it incapable of repentance, mercy, and love.
