Reruns; Punishment for dumb TV shows

Simply put, “sin” it is anything selfish and short-sighted that damages our relationship with God or others. It can be something that we do, or something that we should but don’t. It can be deliberate or it can be a mistake. It also happens to be a state of being, something that we are, that we can’t help. Basically it’s our defective human nature that separates us from God.

Okay, I guess that’s not so simple.

Way back in ancient times a Greek monk named Evagrius made up a list of sins that he felt were particularly harmful. (Of course, it seems like there was already a top ten list in Exodus, chapter 20.) Later on, in the 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great gave this list a catchy name that stuck. He called them “the Seven Deadly Sins.”

Back in the golden age of cheesy TV sit-coms, somebody came up with a great idea of adding a laugh-track to a story that could’ve been something that French Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre could’ve wrote.

Believe it or not, the characters of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ represent the Seven Deadly Sins. After their own personal Armageddon, the castaways are eternally damned to live in unceasing torment with each other.
Gluttony is an excessive desire to consume more than one needs. Most people simply assume that this sin was symbolized by the Skipper, because he’s the fat guy. My problem with this sin, is that everyone can tell I have a problem with it just by looking at me. All of the other 6 are sins you can hide.

Another view is that Mrs. “Lovey” Howell is certainly gluttonous with all of her clothes and luxuries. Who takes that much for a 3 hour tour? Is America a glutton? We make up only 6% of the world’s population, yet we possess 60% of it’s wealth.
Ginger, the movie star is pretty obvious, right. Hubba hubba. Lust is an inordinate craving for pleasure. There’s an urban legend that says that the average straight man has a sexual thought every 3 minutes (one version had it at 8 seconds). The Kinsey Report does claim that 54% of men think about sex everyday or several times a day. What do you do with that when Matthew 5:28 tells us that looking is the same as cheating? Can we help it? Is it God’s fault for making us this way?
Sin is like gravity. Galilleo discovered that in a vacuum, a feather and a stone dropped from a tower both drop at the same rate and will reach the ground at the time. So the straight guy who wants to see Ginger in a wet t-shirt contest at Hooters goes to Hell just as fast as the two guys who got married in San Francisco last year? Ouch.
If you had to be marooned on a deserted island with only one of the 7 castaways, who would you choose? Yeah, me too. Sorry Beth, I have to be honest. But what I don’t get is how’d she keep her makeup and sequined dresses looking so good after three years? Have you seen what those girls on ‘Survivor’ start looking like after 3 weeks? Sunburn, insect bites, no decent shampoo. Blech.

Envy or Covetousness is the longing for what other people have- and that’s not just their material positions, it also applies to their traits, status, abilities, or situation. Mary Ann was Envy. She wished that the guys would lust after her like Ginger. She wished she was as rich as the Howells. She wished she was as smart as the Professor. She wished Gilligan would go away. I gotta tell ya, I don’t know about you, but while people can see the results of my gluttony, they’ll never know how much of my life is wasted coveting.

It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Howell’s big sin was greed. Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the spiritual realm. Come on, who brings a steamer trunk full of cash on a 3 hour tour? Was he planning on some money laundering? A clandestine business deal like weapons or drugs? Do you love things and use people or love people and use things?

Anger was either the Skipper Mrs. Howell. I’d say Skipper, after all, he was always shouting and hitting Gilligan on the head with his hat.

Someone once told me that anger is depression turned inward. That’s one way to think about it. I think it’s a natural reaction to injustice. It’s also a natural, maybe even medical reaction to feeling like you don’t have any control or that you needs or wants aren’t being met. Think about it. When a baby needs to be fed or changed- scream time. When somebody cuts you off and almost kills you in traffic- whammo.

Yet it’s selfish. Look at the first four sins- if you’re frustrated by your gluttony, envy, lust or greed, doesn’t it tick you off? It does me.

Anger is when someone rejects love and opts instead for rage or wrath. When you think about love as it’s defined in the Bible, (1 Corinthians 13) you’re going to be pretty selfless, you’re going to be living out Jesus’ teachings in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). “God is love.”. ~1 John 4:16

Sloth is avoiding work, either physical or spiritual. It’s also a two-toed mammal that lives in trees and moves really slow. Gilligan is not a sloth. People who park it on the couch and watch a ‘Gilligan’s Island’ marathon all day on ‘TV Land’ are sloths.

The Professor was very proud. I would be too, if I could create a working short wave radio using only a few wires and coconuts. Pride is when your own abilities, that prevents you from recognizing God’s grace. It’s been called the sin which all others sprout from. “Pride goeth before a fall” ~Proverbs 29:23

In the show, it’s almost always Gilligan who unintentionally sabotages the castaways' attempts to be rescued. This has led many scholars to speculate that rather than representing sloth, Gilligan actually represents Satan. Hmmmm.

Pope Gregory ranked the sins in order of how bad they were. Gluttony was the least abhorrent to God, and pride was the worst. That would be a relief to me, but I think that anybody who calls themselves Gregory “the Great” should be nervous.

The truth is that all sin is equal. ”For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” ~James 2:8-10. Ouch again. I’m just as doomed as Charlie Manson? Exactly.

But we’re in good company because, none of us is perfect. We’re all selfish and short sighted and we all make ourselves out to be our own god. Me, you, Mother Theresa, Jerry Falwell, Bob Denver, everybody. But thank God, he sent His Son to forgive our sins.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” ~Romans 3:23-24

Be that as it may, I personally think that God ought to prepare a special place in Hell for whoever created the Gilligan’s Island show. And if God takes suggestions, I think that a fitting torture would be for them to have to spend eternity locked in a room with a TV, watching all 98 episodes over and over again.