WWJD*
*What would Jesus drive? License "never expires."Photo credit: JP Brown (a.k.a. my husband).
Draco Layer Three: The Moral or Tropological Sense
Learn to discern. We all know what sin is, right? Right?! Once upon a time in the desert , the hermit Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399) set out to make a list of the most deadly ones, albeit he called them “deadly thoughts,” not “sins.” You probably know the list, even if you don’t think you do: gluttony, impurity (a.k.a. lust), avarice (a.k.a. greed), sadness (a.k.a. feeling sorry for oneself), anger or wrath, acedia or sloth, vainglory, and pride (two different things). Not quite the list you were expecting? That is because some centuries later—we’re talking ancient times here, when centuries passed like decades do now (or vice versa)—Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) revised the list, somewhat accidentally, in his commentary on Job. Gregory had been expounding Job according to its multiple layers—yes, that’s right! Job, like Shrek, has layers! —and he happened somewhere in book XXXI to mention the “seven principle vices” to which Pride, the “Queen of Sins” gives rise: Vainglory, Envy,
One theory is that Jesus would tool around in an old Plymouth because “the Bible says God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in a Fury.”
ReplyDeletePerhaps God favors Dodge pickup trucks, because Moses' followers are warned not to go up a mountain “until the Ram's horn sounds a long blast.”
Meanwhile, Moses rode an old British motorcycle, as evidenced by a Bible passage declaring, “the roar of Moses' Triumph is heard in the hills.”
Some scholars insist that Jesus drove a Honda but didn't like to talk about it. As proof, they cite a verse in St. John's gospel where Christ tells the crowd, “For I did not speak of my own Accord.”