The Theologically Coded Vocabulary of a Wounded Heart

Posted September 1Sep 1

It’s common to speak of sin as if it were a scarlet stain, something dark that must be washed out, punished, or excised. But what if, beneath every so-called sin, there was not wickedness, but wounding? Not corruption, but confusion?

What if the “seven deadly sins” were not verdicts, but voices; each one a skin the soul wears when it is trying, in the only language it knows, to ask for love?

Pride

Pride is often condemned as the most treacherous, the root from which all other sins unfurl. But look closer: pride is not vanity in bloom, it is invisibility in mourning. The proud one is not intoxicated with their own greatness, but terrified it might never be recognized. Behind every boast is the whisper:

Do I matter?

Can you see me?

Will you please remember I was here?

What masquerades as arrogance is often a defense against erasure. This skin of the soul forms when a person has learned painfully that silence means being forgotten. What they truly need is not humiliation, but to be held in honest acknowledgment, to be seen without the need to shout.

Envy

Envy, too, is not malice but longing poorly dressed. It is not the wish to steal joy but the ache to be permitted one’s own. Envy arises when someone sees, in another, something they deeply wish to become, but they have not yet found the path, or have been told they are unworthy of it. It is a confused reverence, turned bitter by shame. The envious one is not inherently cruel; they are mapless, lost in the forest of comparison, aching for direction back to their own destiny. Envy should not be scorned. It should be translated.

What do you desire so deeply that its absence wounds you?

And who told you it wasn’t yours to have?

Wrath

Wrath, that ferocious fire, is not always a declaration of evil, but a confession of pain. Anger is the sound pain makes when it cannot find language. The wrathful are often the wounded, lashing out not because they love harm, but because they were never taught how to be heard without burning something down. Rage erupts where tenderness was once denied. In its rawest form, wrath is the child inside us pounding its fists on the locked door of safety, crying out:

See me.

Stop hurting me.

Let me matter.

Instead of recoiling from anger, we must learn to say, “Tell me where it hurts,” and remain long enough to listen.

Gluttony

Gluttony is not simply the overindulgence of food or drink — it is the desperate reaching for something to fill an emptiness that should never have existed in the first place. The glutton does not want more; they want enough, but enough of what? Often, it is love. Security. Warmth. The deep sigh of being held in a world that feels cold and indifferent. When we consume compulsively, it is rarely because our stomachs are hungry. It is because our hearts are starved. That second helping, that midnight snack, or that numbing drink.

These are often placeholders for the touch, the gentleness, the “I’m glad you’re here” that never came. We heal gluttony not with shame, but by feeding the hunger that food and other indulgences can’t reach.

Lust

Lust has been branded with fire for centuries, as though desire were a disease. But lust, when you strip away the moralism, is simply the pursuit of connection through the body. It is not always lewdness or perversity. It can be a cry for belonging, an attempt to translate loneliness into touch. The lustful are often the unloved. Or rather, they were perhaps loved incorrectly. Sex becomes their grammar for affection, a substitute language when the original one was never taught. They chase intimacy through skin because no one taught them how to receive it through stillness. Lust is not always about conquest. It can be a search for closeness in a world of locked doors. Instead of chastising lust, we should ask:

What kind of love do you truly yearn for?

And, how have you been told you must earn it?

Sloth

Sloth, often dismissed as mere laziness, is far more insidious and misunderstood. What appears as apathy is frequently paralysis. The slothful are not as often unwilling as they are afraid. Afraid that if they try, they will fail. That their effort will not be enough. That their value hinges entirely on output. Sloth is the armor worn by the perfectionist too terrified to begin. Beneath the stillness is often a storm of catastrophizing thoughts, a fear of being exposed as inadequate, a dread of being laughed at, or the terror of being dismissed.

To heal sloth, we do not need discipline so much as give permission to start small, to be imperfect, to matter even before we succeed.

Greed

Greed, that relentless appetite for more, is rarely about gold or status in its core. It is about safety. It is about building a fortress against a world that once felt perilously unstable. The greedy are not hoarders of wealth; they are collectors of control. They gather because once, they were empty. They accumulate because they once had nothing. It’s a kind of existential debt, not just materially, but emotionally. Greed is an attempt to feel full in a world that has too often made them feel starved. We don’t cure greed by shaming abundance. We soothe it by addressing the fear that there will never be enough.

When someone no longer feels they must fight for their right to exist, their hands loosen. They give because they no longer believe they have to grab.

And so, the sins are not poisons in the blood, but bruises on the heart.

They are the theologically coded vocabulary of the wounded. These seven disguises, pride, envy, wrath, gluttony, lust, sloth, and greed, are not the bullseyes missed on a moral target, but roadmaps to our most vulnerable and intimate longings. They are the unsent letters from our innermost selves, asking not to be exiled, but to be embraced.

To meet these sins with compassion is not to excuse harm, but to understand its origin. And in understanding, we offer something far more powerful than punishment: the possibility of healing.

The transformation we crave does not begin in fire and brimstone. It begins in the softness of being seen. It begins with the kind of love that says, You are not wicked. You are wounded.

Let’s begin there.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.