Seven: Sloth
Sloth is the ancients' word for the seventh deadly sin in our line-up of root sins (1 Timothy 6.10). But if you think it's just laziness, you're in for a surprise.
In the Bible, sloth sometimes shows its beginnings as laziness or sluggishness. Solomon shared his observations of laziness or sluggishness when he wrote, "I went past the field of the sluggard, past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment; thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins. I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw: A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest-and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man." This is an "I'll do it tomorrow" mentality. Dante consigned the slothful to the middle level of hell-halfway up and halfway down-working night and day, doing double shifts to make up for what they neglected in life. It was just too much trouble for them to have been better or worse.
The early Christians who formed communities in the deserts of Egypt described sloth as an oppressive sorrow, akin to depression. Sloth can progress into a sense of uselessness, apathy, or faithlessness, even if illogical. "The sluggard," Solomon wrote, "says, 'There is a lion outside!' or 'I will be murdered in the street.'" In Ecclesiastes, Solomon said, "All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes…" The writer to the Hebrews is fighting an infestation of sloth among his readers when he warns them not to shrink back from their earlier lives of faith.
Sloth, William Willimon says, "eats away at the soul, extinguishes faithful fire, and thus takes its toil, wearing down the soul by slow degrees." It is a losing of the heart, the poison of pointlessness that kills hope, excitement, effort, and joy. Sloth breeds laziness, but it also breeds despair, apathy, depression, cynicism, hopelessness, agnosticism, and apostasy. William May wrote that a slothful man was the least human of all-the other sins still had some passion or desire involved though wrongly turned. "The slothful man…is a dead man; an arid waste…his desire itself has dried up."
It is strange that Americans, of all people, would ever suffer from the sin of sloth. We are the land of opportunity. When looking for a pick-up truck I met a man who had emigrated here from Belorussia. He runs his own landscaping business. He's been here for ten years and is pretty successful. I asked him what he thought of America and he said he loved it. "I have all kinds of opportunities here I didn't have in Belorussia," he said. It is American hard work and ingenuity, as well as its rich resources, which have accomplished so many great things in the world. And yet Willimon, who teaches at Duke University, says that a full third of the college students that pass through his classroom are apathetic and depressed in spite of their privileges, opportunities, and resources.
Sloth, at its heart, is a sin because it is a lack of faith that God is love, and that He loves me and is working for my good. Therefore, nothing we do really matters or makes a difference. And if nothing really matters or really makes a difference, then why try to do anything? Why care about anything? It will only make you feel worse. It's too hard to believe; it's too hard to try. This is why sloth is so much more than being lazy.
To fight sloth, one must nourish faith. Faith requires daily decisions and engagement with God, as well as a willingness to be transformed. Sloth is not countered by activity alone. It is countered by purposeful activity, activity done as a life lived before and for God. It is countered by the constant monitoring of my life direction, and the changing of behaviors and attitudes that are inconsistent with or harmful to a life of faith. It is countered by a belief that every thing I do matters and can serve some purpose for God or be one of His transforming experiences within myself. If God is concerned about the happenings in the life of the lowliest sparrow, then what deed might we do that would not be worth His notice?

The Elders