Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing

by Andy Crouch

The church once enumerated seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Most of them are ways of pursuing authority without vulnerability. Sex without commitment (lust), food without moderation (gluttony), goods without limit (greed), anger without compassion (wrath), and above all the pursuit of autonomous, godlike power (pride)—all these are forms of what Scripture calls, most comprehensively, idolatry, the use of created things to pursue godlike power without risk or limit. (Sloth, of course, is the deadly sin that corresponds to Withdrawing, the safety of risking nothing in the world; and envy may be the besetting sin of Suffering, the jealousy and bitterness of those who can see only their own vulnerability and others’ authority.) All these are just variations on the promises that accompanied the very first idol, the fruit proffered by the serpent in the Garden: “You will be like God”—unlimited authority—and, “You will not die”—none of that vulnerable creaturely dependence.