0:00

When it comes down to it, almost

0:02

every religion out there sets forth an idea of

0:04

what it means to be a good person. But

0:08

while we can usually agree on the benefits of

0:10

virtue, who doesn't want to be kind

0:12

and generous? It's the flip

0:14

side, the idea of sin, that

0:17

people have a lot of mixed feelings about. It's

0:19

just a very loaded word, isn't it?

0:24

We mainly think of it as either quite

0:26

a horrifying concept that's been

0:28

used to beat people up

0:30

with, to impose guilt from

0:32

the outside, to make them

0:34

feel unclean or unworthy. Or

0:38

it sounds like lingerie

0:41

and cupcakes and calories.

0:44

Oh, it's a bit sin. It's a little bit

0:46

sinful. So it was not, uh,

0:49

Seven Deadly Sins was not something I thought, that's a

0:51

thing I'm desperate to talk about. And

0:54

then they massively surprised me. Elizabeth

0:57

Oldfield is host of The Sacred Podcast

0:59

and the author of Fully Alive, tending

1:02

to the soul in turbulent times. A

1:05

book that revisits and reinterprets Christianity's

1:07

Seven Deadly Sins. Elizabeth

1:10

wasn't always a devout Christian. She

1:13

lost her faith while working as a religion writer

1:15

for the BBC. I

1:17

was tasked with being the researcher on a particular episode

1:19

of a big drama series that was going to be

1:21

made of the Bible. I just

1:23

had a utter and completely

1:26

devastating loss of faith because the

1:28

book was not what I thought it was. And

1:30

therefore God wasn't what I thought God was.

1:32

And I had clearly been a fool

1:34

and ignorant and naive. And

1:37

now was the time to sort of let go

1:39

of all the childish fantasy and walk away. Yet

1:42

she found herself dissatisfied with the bleakness

1:44

of modern secular life. A

1:47

life often missing communal meaning and a

1:49

deep moral vision. Turns

1:51

out I'm a terrible atheist. I just

1:54

don't have the temperament for it. I really

1:56

don't. I really tried hard not to believe

1:58

in God. And it was. This

2:00

very strange sensation of like my

2:02

spirit was continuing a conversation

2:04

with the divine whilst my mind

2:06

was trying to shut it down and

2:10

eventually I gave up because it was making

2:12

me feel mad. And

2:15

because of that nagging yearning she

2:17

decided to look deeper into Christianity's

2:19

past and in so doing

2:22

found a way back to faith. A

2:24

way that includes thinking about the seven deadly

2:27

sins not as an instrument

2:29

of oppression or repression but

2:31

rather like a helpful manual for

2:33

understanding and addressing human weakness and

2:35

foibles. I quote Francis

2:38

Buffett whose shorthand for sin is the human propensity

2:40

to F things up. On

2:49

this episode, the first of season seven,

2:52

we're going to rethink the meaning of sin

2:54

and maybe, just maybe, figure

2:57

out what we can all do to F

2:59

things up a little bit less. I'm

3:04

Dave Dostino and this is How God

3:06

Works. You

3:09

know Jesus is very enigmatic. The Bible

3:11

is extremely complex and needs

3:13

to be treated with care but he says judge not lest you

3:15

be judged. Focus on your

3:18

own soul. Forget about what's going

3:20

on with everyone else. And when someone asked Jesus to

3:22

sum up the whole law he said love God and

3:24

love your neighbor, right? He put relationships at the heart

3:26

of everything. This for Elizabeth is

3:28

the key to understanding sin. It's

3:33

not really about judging others. It's

3:35

about that second part, relationships.

3:39

Yes, if you're a person of faith you want to

3:41

have a good relationship with God but

3:43

sinful acts don't only mess up that

3:46

relationship. They mess up all

3:49

relationships. Those with friends,

3:51

family, co-workers. And

3:54

when it comes to social relationships both

3:57

science and religion agree that we humans

3:59

are better. This

10:00

story in the Gospels, where we

10:02

see Jesus be in

10:05

his bones, an anti-polarization person.

10:07

He is just walking around, breaking

10:10

taboos, being seen with whoever he

10:12

shouldn't be seen with, no

10:14

concern for his reputation. I mean, it's

10:16

almost like puckish, it's playful. He

10:19

walks into a scene and then he winks at the

10:21

camera and he's like, who is going to make everyone

10:23

lose their mind if I go sit with them? The

10:25

rapacious capitalist or the sex worker, again and again

10:27

and again and again, to the point it gets funny.

10:29

If you read the Gospels through this lens, Jesus is

10:32

someone who gives no

10:34

F's whatsoever for other people's understanding

10:36

of tribal boundaries and moral purity.

10:41

And then he gives us some very, very practical things. The

10:45

really famous phrase where Jesus says, if someone strikes

10:47

you on the face, turn the

10:49

other cheek, steady yourself. Do

10:53

not hit them back. Do not pour contempt on

10:55

them. Do not attack them. Do

10:57

not insult them. And

10:59

don't run away. Don't withdraw into your

11:01

little filter bubble. Don't go passive,

11:04

but stay. Stay connected. Stay

11:07

in relationship. Look them in the

11:09

eye. Flip the

11:11

dynamics of the situation. And that, which

11:14

has been so embodied in the non-violent tradition,

11:16

has like meet threat, meet attack with as

11:18

much compassion and empathy and steadiness as you

11:20

can. And then he goes even

11:22

further and says, don't just love your

11:24

neighbors, love your enemies and pray for them.

11:29

It's doing something very similar as loving

11:31

kindness meditation would be in expanding our

11:33

circles of compassion. We

11:35

start with love God, love your neighbor as

11:37

yourself, love your enemies and pray for those

11:39

who persecute you. And when they do harm

11:41

to you, do good back to them.

11:44

Bless them. This

11:48

can all seem a little sanctimonious, like

11:51

be the bigger person because it's the right

11:53

thing to do. But

11:55

does it actually solve anything? So

11:58

one way that this worked out? out in my

12:00

life is I was once tweeting something I thought

12:02

very innocuous and had someone that I knew a

12:04

little bit actually, a high profile atheist in the

12:06

UK, and I was running a Christian think tank

12:08

at the time, really go on

12:11

the attack, you know, a long

12:13

thread, calling me names, disingenuous, I

12:15

didn't understand my own faith. I

12:17

hadn't read any evolutionary psychology, basically called

12:19

me stupid and dishonest. And

12:22

I felt this rush, right, quarters

12:24

are on adrenaline, this like UF

12:26

thing, der h

12:36

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12:55

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12:59

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13:15

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h h

34:00

It's advice for how to live a good life,

34:03

how to find joy and connection while you're here,

34:06

how to make a positive impact in this

34:08

world. As we said at the

34:10

top of the episode, avoiding the

34:12

seven deadly sins is something like a user

34:15

manual for humans. And with

34:17

science backing up the benefits of honesty,

34:19

generosity, kindness, and the like, the

34:21

virtues that come from avoiding these sins, this

34:25

user manual is one we all

34:27

can adopt whatever our beliefs. Doing

34:30

that means facing our faults, learning

34:33

from them, and yes, forgiving

34:35

ourselves for our failures. That

34:38

self-compassion doesn't mean we're letting ourselves off the

34:40

hook. It doesn't mean

34:42

loosening our standards. It's

34:44

just a recognition that none of us is

34:47

perfect. And self-forgiveness,

34:49

rather than self-flagellation, is

34:52

what helps us persevere and do better the

34:54

next time, something every bit

34:56

of research on self-compassion out there backs

34:59

up. Next

35:06

time on How God Works, we all

35:08

know about YOLO. You know, you only

35:10

live once. The kind of no regrets

35:13

mentality that on its surface seems like

35:15

a great philosophy to live by, a

35:17

bold, free, and happy one. But

35:21

while it might sound great, it turns

35:23

out it's not. Confronting regret

35:25

is actually a really important

35:27

and necessary part of helping

35:29

us flourish. The idea

35:31

that you should never have negative emotions and you

35:33

should never look backward is foolish

35:35

because regret is an emotion that when

35:37

we treat it right is

35:40

powerful, misunderstood, but powerful

35:42

in helping us make progress in the

35:44

future. And while

35:46

regret certainly doesn't feel good and

35:49

can even make us feel trapped sometimes, it's

35:52

what we do with it, how we think

35:54

about it, that can lead us

35:56

towards greater knowledge and happiness. And

35:58

it's here that spirit is here.