But en route my wife mentioned to the kids what was a sin. She said, for example, that pride is a sin.

Whoa, stop the car and open the windows. Pride is a sin? Yeah, sven deadly sins and all that but didn't we tell the kids that we were proud of their achievements just hours ago? That made them feel good and we are proud of them so how could it be a sin?

As usual, I subjected the topic to the infamous Little Mr Mahatma patented in-depth analysis for a brain-numbing five minutes and came up with:

Like most other human judgements, pride is relative and can vary from safe to sinful depending on whom is doing the judging. I would contend that if the "proud" statement is about a personal achievement and simply refers to the person then it's safe. For example, "we're proud that you won the gold medal" or "we're proud that you got your Doctorate". The individual has accomplished something. Nothing sinful there.

But if the statement is a comparison against another person and could hurt that person by the comparison, then - yeah - pride could be labelled as sinful. "You won the gold and dingus didn't." "Our team beat your team!" Here, pride can easily dissolve into teasing or arrogance. The achievement is at the expense of someone else. Your Pride means someone else's sorrow, especially if you rub it in. Arguably this makes statements of pride difficult when the basis is competitions against other people or teams, such as "I'm proud that the UCLA Bruins beat the suckass USC Trojans." But is the sin so great as compared to, say, murder? If pride in this case didn't feel so damn good we probably wouldn't have team sports.

In short, I won't go casting off sins in a global sense but instead cast off that which is hurtful to others, with a few exceptions involving the Bruins and Lakers. I wonder if eating the cheerios counts as a sin...