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The Eight Deadly Sins

The Midrash-Book of Metaphor describes eight things which destroy the world and four things that revive the world; the eight destructions are: perverted law, idols, and sexual improprieties, murder, disparaging the Name, ugly speech, arrogance and gossip. The four which redeem the world are: charity, justice, truth and peace.

Laws are perverted by seeking something other than truth; these crooked laws are the foundation and permission to do wrong and still be able to say: I followed the law. Idols are anything standing in the place of the Creator of Heaven and Earth to whom we pray and vest our hopes. Sexual improprieties are those things outside the rules established by the community to protect women and children.

Murder is self-evident, but not so using God’s Name in vain—a thing which has pervaded Western culture in the form of Hell and God-Damn; the idea of Hell is bad enough—assuming God is so bad as to create a place of eternal suffering, but actually invoking the Name of God to damn some thing, person or situation is the epitome of arrogance. It is the stupidity of arrogance which leads one to speak badly about their neighbor.

Life is a long journey and when we see our reflection in the wrongful actions of others we should remember that life is a long journey. To journey is dangerous and mistakes are abundant—the main thing is to cross that river to the other side. To accomplish this goal God gave to the human being four characteristics when used become attributes: charity, justice, truth and peace.

Charity awakens within the human being the spirit of kindness; justice tempers kindness into law; truth goes beyond law to what is correct and peace is the sum result. These four attributes are like the four walls of a room within which one can sit on the floor and invite God down from the heavens to bring light to the earth. The light produced within these four walls can dispel tons of darkness thus reviving the earth.

According to the Cabala life is a function of the number four: four elements, four directions and the Four Letter Name YHVH which is the spiritual atom of existence. It is interesting that scientists have also divided life into four segments both as the microcosm of gravity and energy invested in weak and strong forces called the theory of everything—TOE. The astronomers also look into the cosmos and find: black holes, quasars, stars and galaxies.

The Torah teaches, even in the deepest darkness each person in the world created in the form of the YHVH has the capacity to live in this world within the structure of charity, justice, truth and peace—reflecting the goodness of life by being a light into the darkness. These small acts of kindness live within the four walls of charity, justice, truth and peace; they accompany us in death to a place where what is small becomes very big in the world to come.