In contemporary art and film, the seven deadly sins are often portrayed provocatively, hinting that rather than something to be avoided, these are worth the time to pursue. Sometimes they arouse morbid fascination, like in the 1995 film Seven, where viewers watch a serial killer murder victims in a twisted attempt to mimic each deadly sin. Sometimes the portrayal of the seven deadly sins evokes a sense of glamor and seduction, like in the Harper’s Magazine piece where Madison Avenue advertising agencies created a full-page campaign “selling” one of the seven.

In the Christian tradition, however, the seven deadly sins have played a more serious and practical role in identifying and warning against destructive human tendencies. Since at least the fourth century, faithful Christians have recognized that these seven vices are dehumanizing, destructive, and the source of all kinds of wreckage. Century after century, theologians, pastors, and Christians of every stripe have repeatedly warned us that these malicious evils decay our love for God, degrade our humanity, and harm everything and everyone they touch.

Evagrius Ponticus (born in 345 ad) was an influential theologian who became known as one of the Desert Fathers (ancient Christian thinkers who lived in the Egyptian desert). Ponticus recognized eight “evil thoughts” that regularly plague the human heart. Ponticus passed his wisdom for combating these pernicious temptations on to John Cassian, who then passed it on to Gregory the Great. Gregory combined sloth and sadness/melancholy, shrinking the list to seven. Eventually, by the thirteenth century, the wisdom tradition surrounding the seven deadly sins worked its way down to Thomas Aquinas, who solidified the list as we know it now: pride (or its offshoot: vainglory), envy, sloth, greed (or avarice), anger, lust, and gluttony.

While each of these sins are repeatedly mentioned in Scripture, nowhere are they explicitly grouped together. We do have other lists of harmful sins (Proverbs 6 and Galatians 5 for example offer some overlap with the seven). Yet while Scripture does not explicitly focus on these sins as a category, we have good reason to take seriously the list, which reflects the wisdom and intense biblical reflections of faithful women and men across the centuries. These men and women were familiar with human frailty and insisted we must be particularly wary of these destructive temptations common to us all (see 1 corinthians 10:13).

Of course, this list is not the final word to consider regarding human vices. It simply provides one opportunity to learn from others’ example and to reflect on how (or where) these temptations are manifesting in our own life. If you find the list incomplete or unhelpful in any way, then simply use it as an insightful tool and discard whatever doesn’t make sense to you.

Also worth noting is that this list is not intended as a comprehensive list of all human sins. In fact, these seven were not even intended to catalog the most egregious sins (murder, for instance, is not listed). Ancient Christians actually didn’t refer to these as the seven deadly sins but rather as the seven capital vices. And they called them capital vices, not because they are the worst things a human could do, but because they believed these seven vices were the source, the fountain, of a multitude of temptations and grief. For instance, anger can lead to murder or abuse, while envy can lead to the obliteration of a community and the destruction of friendship. Each sin, when indulged, ignites a whole other world of hurt and heartache.

But the list is also profoundly practical and can even give us hope. For a vice is essentially an immoral habit or practice—and habits, thank goodness, can be changed. We peer intently at these seven sins, therefore, not because we want to harshly judge our failures and grovel in the muck. Rather, familiarity with this wisdom tradition helps us recognize our deeply embedded imperfections, those ruinous habits and cracks in our character that we might ignore without help—and that’s how transformation begins. This revelation of our shortcomings is good news. The Bible assures us that we can resist these devastating vices, and over time (and with much grace and diligence) God can renew us to walk joyfully down a different path—one that leads to joy and freedom.

To encourage us toward this transformation, with each vice discussed in this booklet, we will also suggest a practice that will offer concrete help in our desire to abandon that vice and walk into freedom. In Scripture, the emphasis is never on our sin but on our dependence on the grace that yields virtue and the renewed life Jesus makes possible.

As we ponder this list, we will discover how liberating it can be to name our temptations and failures, to speak the truth plainly, without excuses. exercise can remind us that we have nothing to hide, and that our struggle with sin is unremarkably ordinary. God’s people across history have struggled with these same things just as much as we do—and they have discovered help from the Scripture and the Holy Spirit to free us from temptation’s shackles.

Left to ourselves, however, we will only continue to plunge ever lower into our dehumanizing cycles. As Augustine confessed: “Without you, [God], what am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction?” So many of us feel trapped in sin’s dingy, suffocating confines. But, as the book of James tells us, God calls us into the brilliant light. We do not have to live in the “shifting shadows,” in the dim place in opposition to everything God tells us is true (james 1:17).

In fact, as we’ll discover, these destructive patterns actually reveal good longings and desires gone bad. As we confront evil, the goal is not to chastise ourselves but rather to turn to the God of hope, where we will be overwhelmed by love and mercy. We ponder these vices, not to wallow in them or fixate on them, but because we want healing. We want what the old Christians called a “cure for the soul.” We are sick and need help, but God’s love (which is the point of every bit of this after all) promises to heal us.