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HOLLENBECK: Big seven sins -- try naming them all |
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Monday, 12 March 2007 |
 Lynda Hollenbeck
“Well, the topic is ‘The Empty House,’ but the sermon is really about the seven deadly sins,” he replied.
This wasn’t what I expected from the gentle, never-ever-give-’em-hell-and-damnation minister. He’s an encourager, not a shame-on-you sort of preacher.
As it turned out, the Big 7 sins were sort of a sidebar to the central message, which was that in order to eliminate a sin, it’s necessary to replace it with a good trait. In other words, you replace sins with virtues, or, put even more simply, you substitute good for bad.
Working on the sermon while seated at the kitchen table, Ed told me he was having trouble remembering all of the super sins.
“That’s hard to believe,” his helpful wife told him. “Surely you didn’t forget about ‘SCALPEG.’”
That “word” got his attention. While it won’t mean much to anyone else, it’s highly significant in our family. It’s an acronym that Ed’s brother coined during a hospital waiting room in 1994 when Ed was having surgery. In an effort to soothe my anxiety, George brought up the seven deadly sins and said he had come up with a foolproof way to remember all of them.
“You do it with an acronym, SCALPEG,” he announced proudly in that otherwise tense setting.
My spouse, who had been extremely ill, was undergoing a third operation necessitated by complications that developed during the first surgery and were unsuccessfully addressed during a second one.
My brother-in-law, a psychologist, businessman and author, is a big talker and a big tease, but on this day was using his trade tricks to lighten the moment for me.
In talking about the seven big transgressions, George said he found it interesting that most people can’t name them all.
Sloth is the one most people tend to forget, he said, but added that there is one no one forgets: Lust.
Tell that to folks and it’ll break the ice in just about any anxious situation.
Anyway, in the 1994 hospital therapy session, George informed me about his system for recalling every last one of those bad little traits and it’s stuck with me.
Letter by letter, the sins, according to George Hollenbeck’s formula, are:
•S-Sloth.
•C-Covetousness (listed as greed in some versions but which can’t form SCALPEG, so you have to go with the hard-to-say, longer word.).
•A-Anger.
•L-Lust.
•P-Pride.
•E-Envy.
•G-Gluttony.
If you remember SCALPEG, there’s no way you can forget all of the sins. Some may be recalled more slowly than others, but the others will come eventually.
On an NPR broadcast, I heard an interview with an author who had been given the task of writing a piece on one of the seven lethal sins. By the luck of the draw, he got envy.
At the time I tuned in, he was explaining the basic difference between jealousy and envy which, he contended, many people confuse.
According to the phantom man, one can be jealous of what one has, such as a child or spouse. Envy comes into play, he explained, when one desires something that belongs to another.
It was an interesting concept. The unnamed writer ranked envy as the worst of the seven big sins and — get this — the only one that gives no pleasure to the person who experiences it.
Think about that one.
In his discourse he went down the sin roster one by one, but concluded with his original point that envy is the worst of the lot.
Looking back on the day George shared the SCALPEG pattern, I’m a little surprised that he didn’t rank the seven according to what he perceived to be their degree of badness.
I later told him that I thought the number should be increased to eight and that ironing should take the new spot. And if it can’t be the eighth big sin, I suggested an alternative plan: Tack it on as an addendum to the Ten Commandments.
It doesn’t stretch my imagination to envision Moses chiseling “Thou shalt not iron.”
Women, living and dead, would line up in gratitude. And I gladly would lead the pack.
Let us all go and sin no more.
Lynda Hollenbeck is associate editor of the Benton Courier. She receives e-mail at
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