Deadly Sins: Lust

Greed and gluttony seem to share similar qualities with each other. This weekend Erin Dawood pointed out to me that lust also falls into this broader category.

We can define lust in a general sense as “the unrestricted pursuit of sexual desire”. The sin of lust, then, follows the same pattern as greed and gluttony: excessive or unrestricted action is itself the base sin, whether this be the storage of goods (greed), the consumption of goods (gluttony) or sexual desire (lust).

It seems reasonable to me that all seven of the deadly sins could follow a similar pattern. Greed and gluttony are more similar to each other than to lust, since they deal with the acquisition of goods, so we can describe the seven sins with a tree structure. As I think through the remaining three sins (wrath, sloth, and envy) I’ll build up the tree until we have a complete relation of the seven sins–and we can see which of the sins takes its place at the root of the tree.

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Pride   Lust    Greed    Gluttony