Which of the 7 deadly sins really isn't all that bad? Why?

 

Lust. Now, I want to be clear that, even though I’m not religious, I do believe lust can be a genuine vice. I’ve done some really stupid things which were primarily motivated by lust. I knew they were wrong when I did them, and I just didn’t care. I was lucky in that none of those mistakes had permanent consequence, but they easily could have.

That said, I think it’s fascinating how drastically the moral dynamics around sex have changed in the past centuries, mainly due to germ theory and birth control. Sometimes modern people will look back on more sexually restrictive generations as prudes or scolds or misogynists. I think that’s really unfair. Having sex 200 years ago was not a morally neutral proposition, it was basically Russian roulette.

Syphilis for example - I think we should take a moment to consider just how terrifying this disease was. A woman sleeps with a man once in a moment of passion, then she becomes severely ill, her face starts rotting, she goes insane, and dies in agony. And her kids are born with it too. If you didn’t have a modern understanding of germ theory, it would be pretty reasonable to conclude ‘God obviously isn’t a fan of that behavior.’

Aside from that, extramarital pregnancy could place enormous financial burdens on families, ruin marital prospects, and in some cases, led to infanticide. It was not unheard of, in certain times and places, for a mother impregnated out of wedlock to abandon the newborn in the wilderness to die of exposure. Her family depended upon a socially sanctioned marriage and dowry for survival. An extramarital birth meant the loss of that dowry, another mouth to feed, and intense social shame. The social calculus of infanticide checked out, even if the behavior was monstrous.

So it wasn’t irrational for people to feel ashamed about sex. It was a life or death proposition. Lust could genuinely ruin your life, your family’s life, and your children’s life.

That’s still true today, of course. People ruin their lives out of lust all the time. Unplanned, extramarital pregnancies are one of the best predictors of long term poverty. But we have a lot more information at our disposal. We have proven mechanisms for avoiding pregnancy and STDs - so long as you use them, sex is relatively harmless, and in fact quite good for your physical and mental well being in many cases.

Sex can still cause social harm - leading to heartbreak, jealousy, long term attachment issues, broken marriages, and more. It’s something I struggle with, personally, but the pain is mostly self inflicted. Even if I get my heart crushed, the long term consequences are less devastating than what might happen if I lashed out in anger or pursued wealth at any cost. The moral restrictions around sexuality which were devised centuries ago were constructed for a much murkier and riskier landscape than we live in today.

Not that long ago, sex killed people by the thousands. AIDS is still a thing, of course, but we have pretty effective preventive treatments even for that disease. It’s a different world, and there’s never been a safer time to have sex if you do your research and take basic precautions. Compared to wrath and envy and pride, which are still as dangerous as ever, lust seems pretty tame by comparison.