As we approach the Iowa caucuses the fight is heating up about which Republican candidate deserves the support of committed Christians. A core of long-time Evangelical activists has strongly endorsed Ted Cruz — and been answered by fervent counterblasts. In the New York Times, David Brooks claimed that Cruz is a vindictive Pharisee, possessed of a pagan “brutalism,” a charge ably answered by The Stream’s own Jay Richards, and by Hunter Baker over at The Federalist, who delves into Brooks’ own recent book to show how Brooks misreads Cruz’s character. Again at The Federalist, Paul David Miller (a Rubio supporter) accuses Cruz of reducing Christian witness to a form of “identity politics,” a question I’ll address in depth in my next column.

We can differ on many issues, on prudential questions such as whether it’s more authentically Christian to favor installing democracy in majority Muslim nations such as Syria, or whether that will end up (as it did in Iraq) enabling genocidal Islamists. (For my take, see the recent column “49% Vegetarian, 51% Cannibal: Democracy Is Not Good.”) But when we choose a candidate, we aren’t just ticking off issues. We are also weighing character, and asking ourselves whether this person is someone we trust with the ultimate earthly power, the “Sword of Caesar.” So let’s step back for a moment and think about character in the classical Christian fashion, using the categories that arose in the early church and have shaped our moral discourse ever since: the Seven Deadly Sins. At the end, I will leave it to you to apply these tests to the candidates, since The Stream offers no endorsements.

As I learned while researching The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Seven Deadly Sins, the worst of those vices is envy. It’s the sin that stirred in Satan while he spied on Adam and Eve, as Milton painted so powerfully in Paradise Lost. It’s that ache we might feel when we see someone enjoying good things that are out of our reach, but we don’t merely want to gain the same thing for ourselves. (That’s simple jealousy.) What really scratches our itch is to smash what the person has, then gloat over them in the ruins — as Satan did, at the whole human race, until Christ opened heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas set Envy as the lowest and darkest sin, since it does not even aim at anything good — but at the suffering of others. It’s Envy that drives us to take delight when gorgeous celebrities have ugly divorces, get bad plastic surgery, or go to prison. Roughly half of the “click-bait” on the Internet traffics in Envy; the other half is bikini pics.

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Source: John Zmirak, https://stream.org