The Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth
To Care and Not To Care
When you hear the word “sloth,” maybe the first thing that comes into your mind is Sid the Sloth, famous for his role in the “Ice Age” movies:
Or maybe you think about the Geico commercial that features a sloth taking part in a game of “Pictionary.” (play video) The tag line is, “As long as sloths are slow, you can count on Geico to save you money.”
What is a sloth, anyway? It is the slowest mammal on earth. It lives in trees in the rainforests of Central and South America, spending most of its time hanging upside down. It hardly ever comes down to the ground and very seldom walks in an upright position. It sleeps an astonishing 15-18 hours a day. Most of the time you would never even know a sloth was there. It blends into the leaves of the trees, even growing algae on its fur which helps to camouflage it from its predators.
But “sloth” is also one of the seven deadly sins. So what is that kind of sloth? It might be called spiritual apathy. Thomas Aquinas wrote that sloth is “sluggishness of the mind which … so oppresses a man as to draw him away entirely from good deeds.” He went on to say that it is “an oppressing sorrow, which so weighs upon man’s mind, that he wants to do nothing.” And the Roman Catholic Catechism defines sloth as “the desire for ease, even at the expense of doing the known will of God … The slothful person is unwilling to do what God wants because of the effort it takes to do it.”
But deeper than just being lazy, sloth has to do with attitude. It comes from the Greek root acedia, which literally translates “no care.” Sloth means not caring. Will Willimon writes in Sinning Like a Christian,
Sloth is that couch-potato dullness where the eyes glaze over and the heartbeat slows to a thud, and the creative human made in the image of God becomes indistinguishable from the slug.
British theologian Dorothy L. Sayers wrote,
It is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for.
This is a serious spiritual condition, a deadly sin, because it causes people to just stop caring about anything or anyone. Willimon writes,
Sloth is that sin that enables us to walk by the poor person with the outstretched hand, and no longer feel a turning of conscience, no longer even see the empty hand reaching out to us in need, unable to consider the possibility that the man asking us for a handout is an invitation to get close to God.
That was the sin of the priest and the Levite in the parable of the good Samaritan. They saw the man lying in the ditch, but just walked on past. It wasn’t that they were lazy; they just didn’t care. But the Samaritan came along and was moved with pity. He saw the man in the ditch and he cared about him. That caring meant “relinquishing the sin of indifference,” as stated by Karl Menninger, in his book, Whatever Became of Sin? The Samaritan did a lot of what we might call “active caring.” He went to the man, bandaged his wounds, poured oil and wine on them, put the man on his donkey, took him to an inn, and paid the innkeeper to take care of him. As James Harnish writes in Strength for the Broken Places,
Followers of Jesus are people who care and who put that caring into action … The one thing a follower of Christ cannot say is, ‘I just don’t care.’
As United Methodists, we come from a long tradition of putting our caring into action. Early Methodists visited those in prison, fed the hungry, and served the poor, and Methodists today are engaged in the same kinds of ministry. In a prayer, John Wesley said,
Deliver me, O God, from a slothful mind, from all lukewarmness, and all dejection of spirit. I know these cannot but deaden my love to you; mercifully free my heart from them, and give me a lively, zealous, active, and cheerful spirit, that I may vigorously perform whatever you command, thankfully suffer whatever you choose for me, and be ardent to obey in all things your holy love.
Being ardent, zealous, lively – those things are far from apathy or failing to care. They are born out of passion and enthusiasm and compassion; from the depths of the caring we have in our hearts for others. Those who live that way are more likely to be guilty of the sin of becoming workaholics than of becoming sloths. They need to take care not to become worn out with doing good; after all, there are so many people with so many needs to be met. Maybe that is why Luke follows the story of the good Samaritan with a story about Mary and Martha.
We know how it goes. Jesus and his disciples arrive at the home of his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Martha immediately gets to work in the kitchen, cooking up a big dinner for her guests. But Mary chooses to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to him teach. Martha gets impatient and upset that Mary has left her to do all the work, so she complains to Jesus about it. But Jesus tells her, “Come here, sit down, cool your heels; get in touch with the things that really matter.”
This type-A, high-achiever behavior is not restricted to the 1st century, or to the 21st century. In the 4th century, church father Athanasius said that people are like mad charioteers who run with more speed than direction. We race off in all directions, but lose sight of the finish line. We can end up running all over the place without ever having any sense of direction or priorities.
In the stories of Luke 10, we see contrasting pictures of what it means to follow Jesus. With the good Samaritan, there is the example of active caring, doing the work that needs to be done. With Mary, there is the example of sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to his teaching. How do we make sense of this contrast? Which picture is the correct one, the best one?
Eddie Fox was the director of World Evangelism for the World Methodist Council. He traveled all around the world as he did his job of sharing the gospel. Sometimes people would ask him which is more important: personal piety or social action? Is it more important to spend time in prayer and meditation, or to be actively engaged in meeting human need? Fox answered that it is like breathing; just as we inhale and we exhale, breathe in and breathe out, so we need to do both practicing piety and doing good. It is a matter of keeping thing in proper balance.
In his poem, “Ash Wednesday,” T. S. Eliot writes, “Teach us to care and not to care.” James Harnish expounds on this.
There is a time to care and a time not to care; a time for activity and a time for silence; a time to get off our duff and get to work, and a time to get down on our knees and pray. The sin is in saying we just don’t care. The grace comes in knowing the difference.
In his painting, “Sloth,” painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) pictures sloth as a man sitting comfortably in a stuffed chair in front of a warm fire, with his dog curled up at his feet. While a nun holds out a rosary and prayer beads to him, the man just sleeps.
Will you choose to sleep on in blissful ignorance, not caring for anyone or anything but yourself? Will you turn away from those in need and allow spiritual apathy to take root in your heart? Or will you choose to care and to put that care into action? That is how you can defeat the deadly sin of sloth.