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And this is a particularly difficult envy to resist because these are licit wants. Those of us stuck inside can envy the freedom of those who must go out those out can envy the safety of we who are in. Then there's envy in its more familiar form, the envy of each other. Any difference is enough for this discontent. It doesn't matter how much or little has changed day-to-day. Sloth may have an element of fantasy: daydreaming about what you'd like to do as an escape from what you ought to do.Įnvy runs on fantasy, too, and the pandemic has given every one of us a shining object of endlessly defensible envy: our own lives, three months ago. Aijian describes at Christianity Today as 'the feeling of dread when faced with certain tasks or the desire to distract yourself with easier or more pleasant work.' It is a refusal to care which may take the form of capitulation to distraction or indulgence in immobility.

Sloth is acedia, which Biola University professor J. More substantively, sloth is a surrender to apathy, especially apathy toward doing needful good. The inverse of self-aggrandizing pride is sloth, but sloth is not limited to mere laziness. We can ignore data that conflicts with our conclusions and testimony that fails to echo our feelings. It convinces us we can brush off remonstrance and refuse to heed caution. This pride is a kind of self-deceit, and it is found across the coronavirus debate. It's unjustified confidence in our own judgment, unmerited certainty in our understanding of this extremely uncertain situation. Pride as sin is self-aggrandizement - see our Insta-boasts of workouts completed and dinners made - but, more gravely, it is hubris. The public dimension feeds the next sin, too. Not often do we feel we have half the country at our back, verifying and justifying our fury. 'When we try to have a discussion,' the correspondent continues, 'it turns into a fight.' Not often does the political so doggedly meddle in the personal - and with such high stakes. 'My husband and I have opposite views on dealing with social distancing,' begins a recent letter to The Atlantic's 'Dear Therapist' column.

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My extended family has argued over whether and how to comply with stay-at-home orders, and we're hardly unique in such acrimony. Lewis wrote in a poem on the deadly sins transformed, it is 'postulating still/Inexcusables to shatter.' And in this pandemic, inexcusables abound. Wrath, by contrast, never wants its expression left incomplete. Greed, as the confession from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer says of sin more generally, is in both 'what we have done' and 'what we have left undone.' The greed of not offering help to family and friends who have lost their jobs while you still have yours.

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But there's more mundane greed here, too: the greed of not tipping the delivery driver well. It's the greed of coronavirus testing and remedy scams, pitches of pills, salt, and toothpaste as false cures. This is the greed of the Tennessee brothers who collected 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer in their garage in early March, intending to sell it to the desperate at an exorbitant markup. Sicker, then, is the greed of advantage and fraud, both of which have taken the pandemic as occasion to flourish.

The hoarder doesn't think of how his greed harms others, only how it benefits himself. There is a greed in hoarding, but of a simple, self-centered sort. Though it's often an element of gluttony, greed is its own sin, too. Gluttony is as well the ever-present temptation of unlimited entertainment, as our use of 'binge' has long confessed. The gluttony of some thus constricted fulfillment of others' legitimately greater needs. The toilet paper hoarding was nothing if not gluttonous, so too any buying behavior that prompted stores to assert purchase limits. Its province is not only food: Gluttony can entail selfish and wasteful over-consumption of any kind. Gluttony sprang up as soon as distancing rules were announced. Take gluttony, the first sin of seven nipping at our heels.

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