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As someone who likes to ponder all the really big questions in life from time to time, the concepts of sin and salvation are things I've thought about often over the years. I suppose I'm the type of person to overanalyze just about everything, so this hardly surprises me, but already I digress. I've often thought especially hard about the Seven Deadly Sins and wondered... "why those". What makes that particular selection of trespasses "extra deadly", so to speak, and at some point in my musings on the subject, I noticed something about them. To me, they all seem to be tied in directly to basic human instincts and desires that simply come with being a creature of flesh. However, they represent the resulting excess that occurs when any one of these basic instincts is allowed to run amok.

As a result, every last one of us probably commits these sins to some degree and at some point in our lives. We all need to eat to survive, and most of us also find eating pleasurable, so chances are we've all eaten more than we needed to at some point, shaking hands with gluttony in the process. Sex is another basic human drive, and I think nearly every hormonal teenager knows what it's like to feel lustful, not to mention a few hormonal adults as well. In turn we all would like our lives to be easy and carefree, so we very likely know what it is to be lazy and slothful. We all want to be more than we are, as well as acquire more than we already have, so we're all familiar with at least some level of greed and envy... and then pride as well when we come to make some progress in that area. Then there's wrath, which I honestly feel is the most common and natural of all. Who among us hasn't ever felt truly angry and unhinged at least a few times over the years?

At that point, I began to ask myself another question. If the seven deadliest sins of all are nearly unavoidable simply due to being human, is it then... inherently wrong to be human? Are we all doomed simply by existing at all? I suppose there are some out there that might say that we are, but I personally think the outlook is a bit brighter than that. I think salvation lies in the one thing that truly separates us from the lower animals - our ability to reason, think, and then make wise choices based on what we come up with through that process. None of us are ever going to purify ourselves to the point where we actually stop craving food or sex. None of us are going to stop ever feeling angry or lazy at times. However, we can choose how we handle those natural instincts and not let them take over our lives by going to extremes.

My motto is and always has been "everything in moderation," and I definitely think that motto could be properly applied here as well is it could to anything else. I personally believe that these drives are healthy and natural when properly moderated by a human mind that can, and does reason. After all, our basic instincts are what drive us to live and survive. They are what eventually drive us to create other human beings and strive to provide the best for them, as well as for ourselves. The real struggle for salvation is in finding a way to rise above the level of the animals and learn to control ourselves, rather than live our lives as slaves to the animal instincts that drive us.

Learn more about this author, Shannon Hilson.
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