Or interesting any time, really.
Although usually credited to Mahatma Ghandi, this list apparently began with English Anglican Priest Frederick Lewis Donaldson (1860-1953). He made his list public when he was the Canon, or Administrator, of Westminster Abbey and delivered them as part a speech on April 1, 1925.
We find his list of the Seven Deadly (social) Sins useful as we discuss political leadership at all levels in our country today:
- Wealth without work
- Pleasure without conscience
- Knowledge without character
- Commerce without morality
- Science without humanity
- Religion without sacrifice
- Politics without principle.
He sent them to India to Mahatma Ghandi, who put them in his weekly newspaper, Young India, six months later.
Several books have been written that use these statements as their basis. The internet also is full of interpretations of them. We like the summary at exploringyourmind.com.
(I gave the list to my minister who wrote about them in our weekly church newsletter. He added an eighth one: unity without humility, commenting, “Too often people demand unity when what they really want is conformity. They want silence instead of conversation. Agreement instead of relationship. Control instead of community…Unity honors the dignity and humanity of others even when we disagree. It listens before speaking. It seeks understanding before judgment. It makes room at the table.”)
In his article a century ago, Ghandi wrote:
A Fair friend sends me “Crisp Sayings” by Dan Griffiths on crime and wants me to find room for them in these pages. Here are some extracts which a Satyagraphi (a person who practices nonviolent resistance) can readily subscribe to:
“State law is not necessarily moral. Crime is not necessarily immoral.”
“There is a world of difference between illegality and immorality.”
“Not all illegalities are immoral and not all immoralities are illegal.”
Who can say that whilst not to crawl on one’s belly at the dictation of an officer might be an illegality it is also an immorality? Rather is it not true that refusal to crawl on one’s belly may be illegal but it would be in the highest degree moral? Another illuminating passage is the following; “Modern society is in itself a crime factory. The militarist is a relative of the murderer and the burglar is the complement of the stock jobber.” The third excerpt runs as follows;
“The thief in law is merely the person who satisfied his acquisitive in ways not sanctioned by the community. The real thief is the person who takes more out of society than he puts into it.” But “Society punishes those who annoy it,—the retail and not the wholesale offenders.”
Ghandi published the “Seven Deadly Sins” after that with the comment, “Naturally, the friend does not want the reader to know these things merely through the intellect but to know them through the heart to avoid them.”
The entire issue of Young India can be found at: Full page photo. The last page, under the title “Practical Vendata” offers an interesting view of Hindu philosophy (Vendata) compared to the teachings of Jesus.
We have wandered a bit because, as usual, one thing has led to another. Getting back to the beginning: Where are we as a people and as a nation on this list of deadly social sins—-and how do we move closer to becoming repentant sinners?