Hello, i have my own ideas on sin and i can't find a way of influencing this world. Sin go's on and because of the legal system we can't do a thing to stop the onslaught of evil. When the world economy fails, and anarchy is rule, there will be the final fight against sin and i think the odds are stacked against us. If i am still alive i will fight for Queen, country, and God.
-- james

The Seven Deadly Sins received a notable mention in worldwide news media recently when a Florida minister shot himself in the head during a sermon comparing sin to Russian roulette. The cleric was using the revolver to dramatize the perilous nature of sinfulness, describing each one of the Seven Deadlies and then spinning the chamber, putting the gun to his head, and pulling the trigger. One of the chambers was loaded with a blank, which the minister assumed (correctly and tragically, as it turns out) would explode with a loud noise and frighten everyone.

As tragic as the following events may be, here's a real Teachable Moment. Blank rounds are comprised of a wad of cardboard and packing material around the kind of explosive charge that one might expect to find in, say, a bullet. When a blank is fired, the packing material shoots out of the gun's barrel at high speed, with potentially lethal results. It may not be a chunk of metal, but they say a soap bubble moving at high enough speed can kill you, if you put your head in its path.

At one point in the sermon, the minister spun the chamber, put the gun to his temple and fired the blank round, inflicting serious brain injuries. Over 200 people were present, including the man's wife and four daughters, and witnesses reported thinking that the explosion and subsequent collapse were part of the sermon. The minister died five days later.

I'm not sure what to make of this story. I considered and rejected a snide allusion to Pride: you can't really read the details of the tale without feeling a sense of how unspeakably sad it is for a youth minister to inadvertently shoot himself in front of his congregation and family in a not-so-vain attempt to impart the deadliness of the Deadly Sins. What he really illustrated, you may suggest, is the deadliness of ignorance, the terrible impact of misjudging the power of the potent props and toys that society places at our disposal. He stood before a crowd of eager souls, you may say, and presumed to help them know evil without even knowing the deadly capacity on his own hands.

But there is a blurred line, a border war, between the lands of ignorance and innocence. Children, by adult standards, are stupid; they frequently engage on acts of wanton self-destruction and must be rescued by older and smarter relatives. Like the late minister, they may do it to prove a point: I can so climb that tree without falling! See? Virtually every single child has at one point aimed a stick or other gun-analogue at a friend and made shooting noises. Increasingly, young people in the American urban homeland point the real thing at their pre-pubescent peers and blow their adult lives into the realm of What Might Have Been. They do it with the same cheerful abandon with which they innocently play at war. They do it in a culture in which guns are at once the agents of salvation and misery, the Promethean fire that grants us both the strength to be free and the power to indulge our murderous nature.

Innocence knows neither good nor evil, and despite centuries of sermons, we're still confused and stupid as children. The ill-fated minister's message was this: Know Thine Enemy. That which you refuse to understand can more easily destroy you. If you think innocence is benign, find the most wide-eyed child around. Give him or her a gun. Load just one of the chambers, take off the safety, and reassess your position.