The Seven Deadly Sins of Fundamentalism

Most of you are familiar with the Seven Deadly Sins recognized by the Roman Catholic Church: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride. I don't necessarily subscribe to just seven deadly sins (all sin is deadly!) but they are at least Biblical.

Being raised in an independent Baptist Church I became familiar with a different set of deadly sins. Now the list of these sins is infinite, but I'll give you the Big 7! So here is my list of the Seven Deadly Sins of Fundamentalism.

1. Smoking. This is one of the first tenants of being a good fundamentalist...Thou shalt not smoke. One old preacher used to say "If you ain't going to hell why would you want to smell like it!" Clever. Of course he used to say this from the pulpit while his wife was out back of the church smoking. Folks, smoking may be bad for your health (what isn't these days) but it is not going to send you to hell. Some of the most famous Christians of the modern era smoked and if they didn't make it to Heaven I'm outta luck! The original picture on the paperback cover of Mere Christianity was one of C.S. Lewis sitting in a lounge chair smoking a cigarette at Cambridge University. Charles Spurgeon, probably the most famous Baptist preacher of all time, used to smoke cigars. A parishioner of his once asked him if smoking was a sin and he said, "Only if I smoke two cigars at once, sir," (See Gluttony under the RC 7 Deadly Sins)

2. Drinking. This sin should probably be number one as it will send you to hell faster than any other known to mankind. Alcohol is the Devil's Kool-Aid! It, not the love of money, is the root of all evil. Thou shalt not drink. But here's where we run into a sticky wicket, indeed. All throughout the Bible we see people (i.e., prophets, priests, kings, and even Jesus himself) drinking. The whole "wine is really grape juice" argument doesn't fly if you know anything about the original Biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As if that were not bad enough there is even mention of beer and liquor in the Bible (Hush your mouth, Rick!) The only prohibition to drinking in the Bible is the admonition not to get drunk. It was such a rarity not to drink that Nazarites (like Samson and possibly Paul) had to take special vows not to do it. Folks, Jesus turned water into wine...let the party begin!

3. Dancing. Oh the horrors of the human body writhing in lustful movement. As the old joke goes, "Why don't Baptists have sex standing up? For fear that it lead to dancing!" Thou shalt not dance. It is a well known fact that dancing leads to sex and sex leads to pleasure and we can have none of that! But wait a minute. What about the prophet/king David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant? Or what about the Biblical admonitions to dance before the Lord. There must be some mistake here. There is, but it is not the Bible's mistake.

4. Since I've already mentioned the "S" word let's talk about sex. Thou shalt not have sex except to procreate. I've always been a little confused by this one. If sex is so bad why do so many fundamentalist preachers like to do it. Remember Jimmy Swaggart? How about Jim Baker? Sex was created for multiple purposes. The first and foremost being procreation. No arguments here. But if that is its only purpose why does Paul tell married couples that their spouses body is theirs and vice-versa? He says that we are not to abstain from sex unless it is mutually consented to. I'm going to let you in on a little secret...when done within the confines of marriage and mutually agreed to, almost anything goes. Read the Song of Solomon in a modern translation if you would like a little erotic reading this evening.

5. Long-hair. When I was a kid we were always told that long hair was a sign of being a sinner and a closet homosexual. Only women should have long hair. Men should always have their hair cut above the collar and off of the forehead. Men, thou shalt not have long hair. Now maybe my inquisitiveness has been more of a curse than a blessing because I'm always pondering things. I've often pondered how a preacher could stand in the pulpit and condemn men with long hair while being overshadowed by a giant picture of Jesus with long hair. There was nothing effiminate about Jesus. He was a man's man! He was a carpenter by trade, an intellectual, a radical, and oh yeah, HE WAS AND IS THE SON OF GOD! Enough said about that one.

6. Cussing. Now I'm going to catch some flack for this one. A cardinal tenet of all good religious folk is - Thou shalt not cuss. I agree that cussing is not always a good thing. But I do need to point out that there is a difference between cussing and cursing. Cussing is using slang venacular that some find offensive. Cursing is Biblical prohibited because it is calling down evil upon the person or thing it is directed toward. We are told to bless, not curse. No arguments here. But cussing is a time honored Biblical (that's right) and Christian tradition. I need to remind you of the time that Elijah asked the prophets of Baal if their god was taking a shit while they cut themselves waiting for him to respond. That is literally what it says in the Hebrew and it was just as offensive then as it is now. That's why he said it. Or maybe I need to remind you of the time Jesus compared a Gentile woman to a bitch when talking about crumbs from the table. Look up the Koine Greek if you don't believe me. And again, it was just as offensive then as it is now. It was meant to be. Or maybe you should read some of the early Reformation literature put out by Martin Luther and others. It would offend you puritanical sensibilities.

7. The King James Bible only. There is no true Word of God except the King James Version of the Bible. You've probably heard the story of the woman who was offended one Sunday when the pastor read from the new-fangled NIV Bible. She promptly confronted the pastor and reminded him that if the King James Version was good enough for Jesus it ought to be good enough for him! I actually had to take a class on this in Bible college. I'm not going to bore you with the details of the Alexandrian Text or the Masoretic Text and such that were used to translate the modern Bible. The reality is that no matter what modern translation you use they are 98.5% in total agreement with each other. You will find it interesting that Jesus actually was a rebel when it came to modern translations. The first century Jews believed that the Hebrew translation was the only true translation of the Bible. Yet when Jesus quoted the Bible he did so from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible. This is why when you read the Gospels the Old Testament quotations are sometimes a little different. Jesus used the version of the Bible that was written for the common folk in the street language of the day.

I want to say that these observations are from my own personal experiences and I am not trying to pick on the Baptist. That is just what I know. But I can tell you the same is true in many other evangelical and pentecostal traditions. Martin Luther once said, "Where the Bible speaks, speak. Where it is silent, be silent." St. Augustine said something similar centuries before. We do not need to add to the Bible. The real sin is adding or taking away words from the Bible.

There are plenty of sins that are "real" listed in the Bible that we each struggle with. Why do we want to add to our guilt un-necessarily?