Dante Aligieri - Divine Comedy

Stalactites in Guilin Cave 

The Poet Dante Aligieri in his magnus opus Divine Comedy writes about a man who followed an angel into the 9 caverns of Hell, I listened to the audiotape with interest and can conclude that this guy has an overreactive imagination, but it makes for good reading and listening. He also lists the 7 deadly sins which are considered worth an eternal damnation. They are :

a) Gluttony

b) Pride

c) Lust

d) Envy

e) Sloth

f) Greed

g) Wrath

Of course these are all the human emotions which sometimes we are not aware of. The logical mind in me would raise the following doubts ; 1. When you are a child, you would not know that these are evil, and if you had the misfortune of not having parents, or a broken home, or worse still being caught up in armed conflict, then your actions cannot be faulted, if to save your life. Can they ?

2. We see all these acts in many forms in society today. The streets of USA are a battleground of wrath and anger for an innocent black man being choked to death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police force. So, do 2 sins make a right ? Obviously not !

3. Prideful people are everywhere, show -offs, greedy people, people who eat till excess and the list goes on. How does a person know where the limits are in life, if he so unfortunately ends up with the 'wrong crowd', born in a place of armed conflict and he or she has to do any or all of the above just to survive. 

I would say, that we must keep all these emotions under control. However, circumstances sometimes override our emotions that we may be caught up in a 'Fight, Flight, or Fright' situation and wrath unfortunately gets the better of us.

To err is human. But to forgive divine.