ABOUT SLOTH

FEBRUARY 29, 2008

Continuing our Lenten meditation on the roots of sin in our lives, let us consider sloth.

One would think that, in today’s fast-paced world, no one has time for sloth. The image of today is a complex, hectic, techno-metropolis where everyone is so busy fighting snarled traffic in the daily commute, working, making deals and meeting deadlines, shopping, eating fast food, taking care of kids, checking the daily news, paying bills, returning missed phone calls, and fulfilling social obligations, that at the end of the day there’s no time left to do anything but collapse from exhaustion and hope there’s enough energy to get up the next morning and do it all over again. Yet, sloth is commonplace in today’s world.

We might imagine that, while the lazy person may never do much good, he is harmless. Yet, sloth causes immense harm to oneself and to others, and is rightly numbered among the seven deadly sins.

The lesser forms of harm can be found perhaps in athletics, where one player not giving his best may cost his team a loss instead of a victory. Most of the time, however, sloth causes greater forms of harm, which often go unnoticed. Sloth in school leads to poor academic achievement, whose real harm comes years later, when underachievers discover they have trouble finding a job they can manage, and are unable to support themselves. Sloth in the workplace is an injustice to one’s employer, because an honest day’s pay calls for an honest day’s labor. Employee absenteeism and poor job performance are major problems for business, government, and industry. Sloth has led to a decline in American productivity and quality, and as a result, countless Americans today prefer to buy “more dependable, better performing” foreign products.

Sloth can manifest itself as physical lethargy, emotional dullness, or mental inertia. Today’s age of relativism and subjectivism, which excuses itself from an arduous search for the truth of things, is largely caused by intellectual sloth. It is easier to parrot what others say than to really think for oneself.

Spiritual sloth is the most harmful. Just as physical muscles, if unused, can atrophy, so can the soul, to the point that it loses all awareness and love of God. Perhaps of the Ten Commandments the one that is broken most is the third: Keep Holy the Lord’s Day. What keeps someone from going to church on Sunday, or from serious prayer and penance? Sloth.

In the beginning, the Lord gave stewardship over his creation to man and woman, to cultivate and perfect it (Gn 1:28-30). Sloth, then, amounts to going out on strike against God. Worse, sloth invites us to postpone the most urgent task of our lives, on which our eternal salvation depends – the task of turning away from sin.

In the parable of the ten talents, it is the steward who does nothing with the talent entrusted to him who earns the master’s wrath and condemnation (Mt 25:14-30). Perhaps the greatest evils are the result not of sins of commission – doing the wrong we shouldn’t do, but sins of omission – not doing the good we’re capable of. Edmund Burke, the famed British parliamentarian at the time of the French Revolution, wrote: “For evil to triumph, it is sufficient for good men to do nothing.”

St. Paul worked to support himself, although he could have easily justified depending on the support of others. Instructing others to imitate him, he wrote in his second letter to the Thessalonians (3:11): “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat. For we hear that some among you are... doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies.” There is always a temptation in the Church to want to feast on the blessings and riches that God bestows on his faithful, while leaving responsibility to others to do the work of the Church.

The common excuse for non-commitment today is, “I don’t have time. I’m so busy.” But busyness can be a great camouflage for sloth. Preoccupation with self-absorbing activities can be an excuse from doing what really matters in life.

Evil grows like weeds in us and in the world. The life of the Christian is a life of spiritual struggle. The choice before us is always to either cast off sloth and work to make our world a better place, or do nothing and allow evil to plunge us into darkness and depravity.

John Henry Newman wrote: "God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission... I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught... Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away... He does nothing in vain. He knows what he is about." The first step away from sloth is to make a commitment to God, in trust, that he believes in me, is counting on me, can use me to achieve his purposes wherever I am and in whatever circumstances I am. He gave me the power to do good. I will rely on that power in me, and I will do some good.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 11:13 sitemap