One of the most penetrating insights into sin comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy. It can be found in the “Purgatory” portion, where Dante portrays himself climbing the mountain out of purgatory accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil. Slowly moving up the mountain, he is purged in turn by each of the seven deadly sins. Virgil makes the observation that love is the basic driving force of all virtue, and at the root of all sin is love-gone-wrong. Love is the highest good, but when it is diverted from a true aim and perverted into a false form, it becomes sin.
“To say the right thing at the right time, keep still most of the time.” John W. Roper Those who get in trouble most often are those cannot seem to keep still, remain silent. Life teaches many lessons. Among the best lessons of life is one my father taught me at an early age was, “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing.” The contributions we make to life via our mouth are many and varied. Most of the time, I reckon, they are not contributions at all, but things that diminish the richness of life.
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