This wonderful rant was written by a friend.

My take on 'sin'. I'll use the 'cardinal' sins as enumerated by the Latin Rite (Roman Catholic Church) as a template. But first I want you to forget everything that we normally associate with sin- religion, morality, Heaven, Hell, The Final Judgment- in fact ANY construct outside of the word itself. Sin.

To my admittedly untutored way of thinking, sin is at it's most fundamental, a simple bait and switch. Something looks very tempting, we involve ourselves with it and we invariably and inevitably end up feeling like a stack of crap.

The seven deadly sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. From a purely spiritual point of view, and by spiritual I mean emotional and physical well being, look at each of them. Wrath. Do you feel better after you've lost your temper or harbor a burning resentment toward someone? Greed. Do you feel better in the long run for cheating someone or piling up more than your share of stuff? You may at first, but it will eventually distort you into, in the words of Dickens, a 'wretched, grasping, greedy, covetous old sinner'. Sloth. Isn't it a wonderful feeling to procrastinate for days and weeks or even months at a time, knowing all the while that you still have to face the music? Ain't it a picnic to lie in bed until your bones ache and you start to develop agoraphobia? Pride. Have you ever noticed that most people don't share your pride? That the prouder you are, the more people generally despise you? Lust. We're not talking about what your body does when it meets another body coming through the rye. We're talking about sustained, obsessive pornographic behavior or even thoughts that flood out other events in daily life. It's a fearsome, lonely life that deprives you of true friends, and even if you find like-minded people to associate with, you're not really having fun. Once lust is momentarily slaked, people in scenarios like that generally despise themselves and their 'partners'. Envy. That one should be self-explanatory. At first you feel a small thrill of satisfaction from your righteous self-pity, but envy and spite can quickly develop into habits, and I think we all know people that are chronically spiteful and envious who probably aren't aware that they are or how they ever came to be that way or why everyone avoids them. Gluttony. That one's easy. It will outright kill you. The temptations of all-you-can-eat buffets and Mohlson's 12 packs day in and day out, will make you feel shitty over time, and then it will simply kill you. Or leave you with a droopy eye and slobbering out of the left side of your mouth.

Forget God. Fuck Heaven and Hell. (Did anyone happen to notice that blasphemy ISN'T one of the cardinal sins?). SIN is very simply something that traps you by looking very inviting and then kicks your ass. I think the concept of sin has a very functional place in the simple process of survival to maturity. If you don't like the word 'sin' with all it's 'judgment from on high' connotations, call it 'dworb' or 'slurf', but understand its spiritually destructive nature.

The name Lucifer is Latin for 'Angel of Light'. And that's how these mind/body/spirit beguilers will first appear. Before they kill you.

Here endeth the rant.