One of the more misunderstood of the cardinal sins is sloth. This is because most see it merely as laziness. But there is more to sloth than that. Let's take a moment and consider some aspects of the cardinal sin we call sloth.
Sloth is one of the seven capital sins in Catholic teachings. It is the most difficult sin to define and credit as sin, since it refers to an assortment of ideas, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states.
Sloth is a sin against God's love in that it goes so far as to refuse the joy that comes from God and to be repelled by divine goodness. It is a loss of hope in ever achieving what God wants for us: our eternal happiness.
They are typically ordered as: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.
Most of the seven deadly sins are defined by Dante Alighieri (c. 1264–1321) as perverse or corrupt versions of love; lust, gluttony, and greed are all excessive or disordered love of good things; and wrath, envy, and pride are perverted love directed toward others' harm.
The unpardonable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Blasphemy includes ridicule and attributing the works of the Holy Spirit to the devil.
The strongest of the Seven Deadly Sins is Escanor, the lion's sin of pride.
(The traditional Seven Deadly Sins are: pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth.) The eighth deadly sin is eagerness, bordering upon mania, to be seen as avant-garde, progressive, and revolutionary.
These sins are vices and are defined as contrary to the Christian virtues of holiness. They are pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth (acedia).
They held that both the Bible and Christian tradition taught that alcohol is a gift from God that makes life more joyous, but that over-indulgence leading to drunkenness is sinful.
Sloth. Sloth is a habitual disinclination to exertion. This sin is unique in that it's the only one characterized by a lack of something rather than an abundance of something. For your slothful ways, your eternal home in hell will be a pit of snakes (a pit of sloths would be better).
If we assume that each of the Seven Heavenly Virtues is the opposite of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, then diligence would be the opposite of sloth. It is somewhat aligned with courage, or fortitude, especially in the way we defined courage in our article on the Serenity Prayer—the sense to change what must be changed.
Someone who is slothful is lazy and unwilling to make an effort to work. [formal] He was not slothful: he had been busy all night. Synonyms: lazy, idle, inactive, indolent More Synonyms of slothful.
A later 6th century Latin edit gave us the Seven Deadly Sins. In this list, acedia was subsumed into “sloth”, a word we now associate with laziness. Acedia appears throughout monastic and other literature of the Middle Ages.
In Mark 3:29 Jesus says that “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” Matthew's account adds that even blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31–32).
The idea of listing the vices began in the fourth century. In the fourth century, a Christian monk named Evagrius Ponticus wrote down what's known as the “eight evil thoughts”: gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sloth, sadness, vainglory and pride.
A mortal sin is to murder. A similar pattern applies to the other sins. Wherefore, those sins nearer to the pardonable end are penanced lighter, while those nearer to the mortal end are more severely penanced."
Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come" (Matthew 12:22-32).
As we discuss this topic—“Pride: the Mother of All Sins” —consider this quote: “Pride is a cosmic crime. It has the dubious distinction of standing alone atop the list of the seven deadly sins, because it is in essence the source of all sins.
Traditionally, the origin has been ascribed to the sin of the first man, Adam, who disobeyed God in eating the forbidden fruit (of knowledge of good and evil) and, in consequence, transmitted his sin and guilt by heredity to his descendants.
In Christianity, it is considered a sin if the excessive desire for food causes it to be withheld from the needy. Some Christian denominations consider gluttony one of the seven deadly sins.
Envy is considered one of the “seven deadly sins.” And for good reason. If covetousness is desiring another person's traits, status, abilities or rewards for yourself, envy takes it a step further. It's not only desiring that for yourself but wanting to deprive the other person from having it.
Meliodas is the captain of the Seven Deadly Sins and the strongest fighter in the group. He was originally the leader of the Ten Commandments, but then he fell in love with Elizabeth and decided to quit being their leader.