My church is presently in a sermon series entitled
"Seven Sins That Will Kill You Dead", where each week we are hearing a discussion of one of what are commonly known as the seven deadly sins. Pride, anger, envy, sloth, lust, gluttony, and greed. An important part of the sermons is a discussion of how to recognize and combat each of these sins in our lives. My pastor explained that the original design of preparing this list of sins, which actually are not called the seven deadly sins in scripture, was twofold:
- To help people learn the Bible
- To help people become introspective
Just after the series began, something happened that I knew was not a coincide, namely, Russell Johnson died. For those who are so young as to make me physically ill, Mr. Johnson played the "Professor" on Gilligan's Island. He was the one who came up with the ideas to get the shipwreck survivors off the uncharted desert isle through the use of coconuts and shards of bamboo, only to have Gilligan mess everything up. Then the Skipper hit Gilligan with his cap playfully and the whole cycle started anew. In a news piece I learned that the creator of Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwartz (who also created The Brady Bunch), purposefully crafted the characters of the seven stranded castaways such that each had a direct relationship to one of the seven deadly sins. I had a bit of trouble finding a unique assignment of sin to castaway, but what I came up with looks like:
- The Professor - Pride
- Mary Ann - Envy
- Ginger - Lust
- Mr. Howell - Gluttony
- Mrs. Howell - Greed
- Skipper - Anger
- Gilligan - Sloth
I felt certain after I had spent several weeks doing this research on the folks aboard the S.S. Minnow and watching countless reruns of the old episodes on TV Land, that this was really the goal of my pastor all along. Also, to be clear, I do not have any evidence to link this sermon series to the death of Russell Johnson.
