SLOTH
Text: Proverbs 12:27; 24:30-31; Matthew 5:6, 13-15

Last week I began a series on the Seven Deadly Sins with a sermon on Pride. I call the sins Compulsions of the False Self.

The idea of the true self and false self is helpful to me. We were created in the image of God with a true self. Arising from the true self are true desires. We sang today of God “who made all things well.” That means you, too!

But we also have a false self shaped by the world around us and constructed by us in our response to the world and our experiences in it. From the false self arise false desires, or the distortion of desire.

Take pride. There is a proper and worthy pride which arises from the true self. It is pride as self-worth, the pride you feel when you are true to your best self, or when have accomplished an important goal.

But there’s the form of pride which is deadly sin. It presumes Godlike power, wisdom or goodness. It is egotistical and bullying.

One more introductory word. Many times the Seven Deadly Sins are categories we use to aim at someone else in order to feel superior to them. For example, we aim Pride at people we want to keep in their place. Or we project our Pride upon them. If you’ve been taught to have little self-worth, Pride is not your main problem. It may be a virtue to be developed.

So some use the sins for target practice and you’re the bull’s-eye. Don’t let anyone impose false guilt upon you. Including me. Only you can discern where a particular sin is causing you harm or misery.

So now onto Sloth, the sin du jour.

I

Sloth is normally associated with laziness. The Oxford English Dictionary traces its English usage to the Middle English word for "slow." Webster's defines it as the "disinclination to action or labor." An animal is easy to identify: The sloth, the furry animal from South America normally pictured hanging upside down from a tree branch. Doug Dickens was preaching a series on the Seven Deadly Sins. When he got to Sloth he considered not showing up that Sunday morning and going fishing instead. His wife Patsy, urging the virtue of Prudence, changed his mind.

From infancy we have been warned against laziness. It was a sin not just against God and the Puritan work ethic but also against the American way of life. So we learned the stories about the Little Red Hen and the Ant and the Grasshopper. (See Proverbs 6:6-11.) Do we still tell them?
One might argue that this work-mania and laziness-phobia have produced a nation of "workaholics," to use the word coined by Wayne Oates, and that we could use a little Sloth. The Italians have a phrase, dolce far niente, the sweet of doing nothing. We could all use a little of that.

Identifying Sloth with laziness may be a peculiarly American slant on the subject. It also trivializes the subject. For Sloth is a deadly spiritual malaise.

II

We first should look back at the original words of this sin: In the Greek akedia and in the Latin accidia. The literal meaning is no - caring, closer to our word apathy. Color it colorless, a "drizzle of ashes." The French have a word which gets close: Ennui, the feeling of boredom, a kind of soul-weariness and dissatisfaction with life.

French novelist George Bernanos in his classic The Diary of a Country Priest has his priest observe:

The world is eaten up by boredom . . ..
You can't see it all at once. It is like
dust. You go about and never notice, you
breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is
sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on
your teeth. But stand still for an instant
and there it is, coating your face and hands.
To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must
be forever on the go. And so people are
always "on the go." Perhaps the answer
would be that the world has long been familiar
with boredom, that such is the true condition
of man . . . but I wonder if man has ever
before experienced this contagion, this
leprosy of boredom: an aborted despair, a
shameful form of despair in some way like
the fermentation of a Christianity in decay.1

When we speak of Sloth we speak of a spiritual malaise akin to despair.

We must proceed cautiously. Today we speak often of depression. Is depression the same as the sin of Sloth? I would answer a careful no. There is the depression we experience when we suffer significant personal loss. This situational depression cannot be called sin. There is depression caused by deep-seated personal trauma and inner conflict. The victim of childhood abuse is apt to feel responsible for the abuse, a guilt leading to chronic depression. This is no sin but rather a call to learning and healing. There is major clinical depression when body chemistry is significantly altered. The neuro-transmitters in the brain are compromised. The physiological side of the depression needs medical treatment. A person may have genetic and physiological weakness toward depressive illness. In earlier days they would be said to suffer melancholia. Psycho-pharmacology and psychotherapy may be needed to help a person find relief and healing. It would be cruel to label these forms of depression sin.

But having said this we need to consider the sin of Sloth that gives in to the feelings of despondency, despair and no - caring. You may have a natural inclination toward despondency. Winston Churchill called his chronic visitation of depression his "old black dog." But we are given by God the spiritual capacity to transcend what the mystics called “the dark night of the soul.” As we face it with the grace of God, spiritual clarity can come, and a deepened humanity.

III

Where did Sloth begin? Imagine another scene from the Garden of Eden. Picture two new characters, Adam and Eve's younger brother and sister, George and Martha. They were at work in another part of the garden when the serpent slithered up to George (sensing him to be the weaker of the two) and said: “How would you like to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?”

George replied, "Are you kidding? Every time I learn something, there's more to do. We've got enough on our hands. Naming the animals. Ever tried to spell orangutan?! Tilling the ground, pruning the trees, taking care of the livestock. Thanks but no thanks."

The wily serpent drew back, paused, wiped his brow with his kerchief and said, “You're absolutely right, George. God's expecting too much of you already. His demands are unreasonable. What about overtime? No overtime? How much vacation? Is that all? Listen, I've got a better idea. Why don't you come with me and quit this place? You deserve a break today. Weekends were made for Michelob. You need to be more laid back, George. Que sera sera. Go find Martha and we'll leave this joint and go get mellow.”

So, giving up their calling to be sons and daughters of God, George and Martha left the garden and became children of Sloth.

IV

Pride and Sloth represent two opposite but equal errors. Pride is thinking too highly of oneself, Sloth too lowly. Pride is the attempt to be more than human, Sloth is the desire to be less than human. Pride seeks God's throne, Sloth flees human responsibility. Pride is into control and turns us into control freaks. Sloth gives up all control and seeks sweet oblivion.

If Pride is the idolatry of the self, Sloth is the abdication of the self, the losing of the self -- not in something higher but in something lesser. Reinhold Niebuhr divided all sin into two groups, the sin of pride and the sin of sensuality. The sin of pride is in the assertion of the self over and against others. The sin of sensuality is the loss of self to some impulse or vitality, or even to nothingness itself.2

I think we individually tend to be more vulnerable to one set of sins or the other. Both are distortions of the good. Pride is the distortion of healthy strong selfhood. Sloth is the distortion of the dream of self-transcendence, the giving up of the self to God.

The Bible pictures for us how Pride and Sloth each end up destroying the vineyard God gave us. In Isaiah 5 God sings of giving to us, his beloved, a vineyard and providing us everything we need. But our pride has turned the garden into a place of violence and injustice. "I looked for sweet grapes," God said, "but all I found were sour grapes. I looked for justice but heard only a cry of distress."

Proverbs 24 tells the story of Sloth. The vineyard is now overgrown with thorns and nettles. The stone fence is broken down. Neglect has destroyed the garden.
Are you getting the picture?

V

Last week I spoke of the three main branches of Pride: Pride of power, knowledge and goodness. There are also three main branches of Sloth.

Sloth refuses the proper exercise and uses of power. It denies the gifts and talents God has given us. Too much is demanded. We are afraid of failure. Where we refuse the right exercise of power, however, we open the door for others to exercise power in malevolent ways. Nature abhors a vacuum, and as Edmund Burke said,

The only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Reinhold Niebuhr, who warned against the pride of nations that presumes Godlike power, wisdom and goodness, also warned against the sloth of nations: When we refuse the just exercise of power in the face of monstrous human evil.

If there is intellectual pride, pride of knowledge, there is also intellectual sloth. We take the Cliff Notes approach to all learning. We hanker after short cuts to truth. Truth today in America is reduced to slogans -- ten-second sound bites and phrases you can fit on a bumper sticker. What we call intellectual debate today is no more than a collision of bumper stickers.

Anti-intellectualism has been a powerful strain in American life all through our history. It parades as populism. And what makes it a special problem in America is that we take pride in our anti-intellectualism. How is that for a combination of deadlies: We take pride in our sloth.

If there is pride in our goodness, spiritual pride, there is also spiritual sloth. We think we can become instant saints. The bookstores are full of self-help books promising personal transformation in a matter of weeks, what one has called "Do-It-Yourself-God-Kits." I've got a title for the next sure-fire religious best-seller: "Ten Easy Steps to the Devout and Holy Life."

VI

Sloth has many forms. Perhaps one of the most emblematic in our culture is the American Couch Potato, the human creature glued to the couch in front of the TV, remote control in hand. The National Enquirer, itself an icon of Sloth, announced the winner of their King of Spuds contest. The winner of the top Couch Potato in the United States was a thirty-five-year-old bachelor who keeps three TV sets blaring twenty-four hours a day in his home and watches a fourth at work. He said,

All I do is watch television and work . . ..
There's nothing I like more than sitting
around with a six pack of beer, some chips
and a remote control . . .. The TV station
even featured me in a town parade. They . . .
got my couch and put it on a float. I got on
the couch in my bathrobe and rode in the
parade.3

The sin of Sloth may masquerade as a fashionable form of despair, a luxury of the elite. Kafka's character, the Hunger Artist, "starves to death, too finicky to eat the common food of humanity."4 Some rock music romanticizes despair and flirts with suicide. Dangerous stuff.

Sloth takes the form of a carefully cultivated cynicism. Such cynicism doesn’t demand much. It doesn’t demand anything.

Sloth is the loss of passion for life, for goodness, for God. Dorothy Sayer has described Sloth in the most riveting way I've ever heard:

In the world it calls itself Tolerance,
but in hell it is called Despair. It is
the accomplice of other sins and their
worst punishment. It is the sin which
believes in nothing, cares for nothing,
enjoys nothing, seeks to know nothing,
interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing,
loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose
in nothing, lives for nothing, and only
remains alive because there is nothing it
would die for.5

Sloth is a form of grief, but it is different from true grief at a crucial point. In true grief one is sad at the loss of a loved one. In Sloth one grieves in the presence of a loved one. You get bored with the beloved. Your spouse is no longer bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh; he or she is, in the words of Helmut Thielicke, "boredom of your boredom and lovelessness of your lovelessness."6

Sloth has lost its taste for life in the midst of life. So Proverbs 12:27 in the King James Version describes the slothful man as one who "roasteth not that which he took in hunting." We take no joy in what we have.

Sloth is the loss of appetite for life, for God, for the good. There is what Wendell Berry calls the “bad work of pride.” But there is also the “bad work of despair - - done poorly out of the failure of hope or vision.”7 Such work no longer cares whether it is done well or not. It no longer believes it can make a difference.

June Carter Cash once said, “I’m just trying to matter.” Sloth no longer believes it can matter.

VII

What does the gospel have to say to Sloth? Jesus comes to us in our Sloth, too, to free us from its deadening power. He came to the “bent-over” woman and healed her. And he comes to us bent-over ones, slumped in despondency and despair. He whom the Gospels describe as one who will not “break a bruised reed or extinguish a flickering wick” (Matthew 12:20), comes to strengthen us not to break us when we are weak.

Grace comes to give us a new appetite for life, for God, for goodness.

So Jesus’ beatitude is also a promise, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, for they will be filled.”

The slothful person may appear to have an enormous appetite and be extremely busy. But the compulsive consumption and busyness are covers for despair. I think T.S. Eliot was describing Sloth in this famous poem:

We are the hollow men.
We are the stuffed men.
And what is their end, our end?
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.8

Recovery from Sloth is in the recovery of our appetite for God, our hunger and thirst for righteousness. After so long a time, you get your appetite back. False desire fills you with things that only mask the emptiness. True desire goes to God and asks for life. And to all who ask, seek, knock, God gives and gives and gives, what God alone can give: Life, miraculous, exuberant, connected, gracious life.

Here is the gospel: You are a child of God created as the crown of God's creation and the apple of God's eye. (Genesis 1; Psalm 17:8)

You are the light of the world. Let it shine so the world will see your good works and glorify God in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16)

You are God's poiema, God's poem, God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus for good works. (Ephesians 2:10)

“Fear not, little flock! For it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)
The grace which comes to deliver us from Sloth sets a table before us, the feast of life, of love, of justice, of God, and says, “O taste and see that God is good!”

Bon Appetit.


_______________________
1 George Bernanos, The Diary of A Country Priest (New York, Carrol & Graf Publishers, 1965), pp. #2-3.

2 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, (New York: Charles Scribner's & Sons, 1964), Vol1, pp. #228ff.

3 In Thomas Pynchon, “Sloth: Nearer My Couch To Thee” in New York Times Book Review, June 6, 1993, p. #3.

4 Joyce Carol Oates, "Despair: The One Unforgivable Sin," New York Times Book Review, July 25, 1993, p. #25.

5 Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Other Six Deadly Sins," Creed or Chaos (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1994), p. #81.

6 Helmut Thielicke, How the World Began (Philadelphia: Muhlenburg Press, 1961), p. #99.

7 Wendell Berry, “Healing, What Are People For?” (New York: North Point Press, 1997), p. #10.

8 T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1971), pp. #56 & #59. Ibid., p. #163.