It was when I read this sentence in Peter Jones’ book, on page 27, that I decided I needed to review it here. “Tinder thrives on lust, Yelp on gluttony, LinkedIn on greed, Netflix on sloth, Twitter on anger, Facebook on envy and Instagram on pride.” This author is onto something.
Jones is a scholar of medieval history with an interesting record of teaching in places as diverse as New York City, Siberia, and Spain. This is not an academic book. It is absolutely approachable for ordinary readers interested in how the medieval worldview of the classic “seven deadly sins” might teach us something in the 21st century. Jones shows that they do, in chapters devoted to each sin: Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust.
There are plenty of stories about, and quotations from, medieval mystics and poets including Bernard of Clairvaux and Hadewijch along the way.
Above all, Jones concludes, with a lot of his personal story used for examples: “If there’s one thing I learned from studying the sins in the Middle Ages, it’s that we need to learn to forgive ourselves.” And why is that? Because “These seven are the habits that make us who we are.”
This is a self-help book — as the title says — because, as the author explains, the psychological and spiritual reality is that “we have no choice but to live with them.” Even so, there is plenty of advice here about how to overcome them as best we can, for the benefit of the world. (See the excerpt accompanying this review for how the seven deadly sins “alienate us from our environment.”)
