Can The ‘Pride’ Flag Celebrate Other ‘Deadly Sins,’ As Well?

The first sign of spring is said to be the appearance of a robin. That sign is followed by the first sign that June has arrived: An “official” gay flag, festooned with what seems to be an ever-increasing number of colors and symbols, foisted up the flagpole, right under (or alongside) Old Glory.

For as long as most folks living in a civil society can remember, the sins of pride and lust were part of that shameful list known as the Seven Deadly Sins. The list can be found in many places and ordered in a variety of ways, but according to Christianty.com, the specific categories are Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.

Image by Ted Eytan via Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.

As far as I know, only “pride” has a flag designed specifically to celebrate its practice. However, the pride flag encompasses not only pride, but also “lust”—even though you can attach the spirit of pride to any of the other bad behaviors found on the infamous List.

Of course, the Ten Commandments outline the evil of all these sins and warn of the danger of being controlled by them. In other words, being prideful and celebrating anything destructive to oneself or others is hazardous spiritually—and oftentimes both psychologically and physically, as well.

Flags, of course, are symbolic and used to unite those with similar viewpoints and allegiance. But we are aware that they can also rally people to lethal ends.

Simply put, “Evil has become good, and good evil.” (Isaiah 5:20)

This distortion of “God and Nature” would be comedy-to-the-max if it weren’t so pathetic and dangerous.

A Bit of Lampooning

At the risk of making light of this very serious practice of our downward-sliding nation, might I suggest decadent flags for several of the remaining sins?

The flag for “greed” would definitely be filled with dollar signs, and for “sloth,” why not a giant snail? We could pick any of the remaining eleven months that don’t have “official” flags and send one of these beauties up the flagpole.

I had a couple of ideas for the “gluttony” flag, which I would like to suggest could fly through the entire month of November. (Why November? Well, for one thing, we all know what happens on Thanksgiving Day.)

And the official flag for gluttony? Might I offer this colorful, eye-catching beauty?

Or perhaps even this tempting array of hot dogs?

The official gluttony flag could flap in the breeze with (dare I say) pride all November long, all the way up to December. (Heck, you might even want to keep it flying all through the Christmas holiday season and into Super Bowl Sunday, for that matter!)

Meanwhile, back to reality…

As a nation, we need to turn from our dangerous obsession with coddling a variety of evil ways. At a minimum, “speaking the truth in love” is suggested by St. Paul (Ephesians 14:5). It is obvious, though, that we must keep in mind that certain bad habits and practices have become ingrained in our culture, and pushing back against them, even gently, could have unintended consequences.

However, we need not, simply by our silence, encourage an ever-expanding drift into decadence. After all, if it is indeed true that “pride goes before the fall,” we are very near the precipice. We must begin — and continue — to pull back.

Certainly, that serious effort begins with prayer to see where the Spirit of our Loving God leads.

And, hey, there’s even a flag for that…

…which we can fly every single month of the year.

Albin Sadar is the author of Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It, as well as the children’s book collection, Hamster Holmes: Box of Mysteries. Albin was formerly the producer of “The Eric Metaxas Show.”

All images other than the Pride flag courtesy of Albin Sadar.