Sloth, or Whatever

INTRODUCTION
Sloth has historically been listed among the ?deadly sins,?Ealong with wrath, envy, lust, and the like. The Bible gives strong support to this description of sloth. It is indeed a deadly sin, an enemy of life in the widest sense.

PORTRAIT OF A SLUGGARD
Proverbs provides a vivid portrait of the sluggard, his laziness, and the sins that characteristically accompany laziness. Proverbs 6:6-11 draws a comparison between the ant and the sluggard, and the ant comes off the better of the two. Unlike the sluggard, the ant needs no chief, officer, or ruler to direct him; though it is not said, the implication is that the sluggard will work only under duress, only if he is forced to by a foreman. Further, the ant has foresight that the sluggard lacks. The ant gathers in summer and harvest, while the sluggard does not think beyond the moment; he looks ahead only to the next meal or the next bedtime, when he can return to his favorite activity, sleep. Finally, the sluggard ends badly. He does not get rich, but worse, poverty is like a bandit waiting to attack him. That the sluggard is poor does not come as a surprise to anyone, except the sluggard.

Proverbs 12:24 observes the balance of power between the sluggard and the diligent. ?Hands?Ein Scripture are organs of action; when Solomon prays at the temple dedication, he asks that Yahweh?s ?hand?Ewould do as His ?mouth?Epromised. Hands are also instruments of dominion and rule, as in the phrase ?Solomon?s kingdom was established firmly in his hand?E(1 Kings 2:46). The diligent, those who use their hands actively, will receive authority; those who use their hands diligently will find power place in their hands. The diligent are the new Adams who have dominion. The idle, those whose hands are slack, are destined for a life of slavery.

Proverbs 13:4 makes a related point by showing that the sluggard is destined for a life of frustrated desire. The fact that he?s a sluggard does not keep him from craving. His soul craves the same things that others crave. But he is not willing to pursue them, and he ends empty-handed. He gets none of his desires. Meanwhile, the soul of the diligent is ?made fat,?Eachieving all his desires. Because his desires are frustrated, the sluggard is also often an angry man. Sloth thus creates a rift between our internal desires and our external actions. Thomas Aquinas defined sloth as ?a kind of sadness, whereby a man becomes sluggish in spiritual exercises because they weary the body.?E Sloth turns us into practical Gnostics.

Sluggards are faced with constant obstacles and difficulties. Everywhere they turn, they seem to face an insurmountable hedge of thorns (Proverbs 15:19). Thorns and thistles are part of the curse, and the sluggard finds that the curse dogs him at every turn. Nothing goes right, nothing goes smoothly ?Ebecause he does not look ahead, does not work ahead, does not plan. By contrast, the path of the upright is smooth as a highway. It is not that the upright face no thorn hedges; they simply take care of them before they become an obstacle.

Sluggards are cowards. In fact, sluggards are worse than cowards. Cowards might shrink back in fear of real dangers. Sluggards invent dangers that are not there, and then justify their inaction by pointing to the dangers that face them: ?There is a lion outside; I shall be slain in the streets!?E(Proverbs 22:13). Sluggards are great excuse-makers; and great excuse-makers are sluggards. Excuse-making is a form of cowardice.

In spite of all his failings and flaws, the sluggard is cocky; he thinks he has insight into things that others lack (Proverbs 26:16). In fact, the sluggard is a fool. This is necessarily the case, since gaining wisdom requires hard work, diligence, perseverance, sacrifice, and the sluggard is unwilling to expend himself to do what?s necessary to gain wisdom.

Sloth is an enemy of life: A sluggard is a poor slave, who never achieves what he wants, whose life is full of unnecessary struggle; he is a coward and a fool. The sluggard cannot be victorious, wealthy, joyful, confident, and wise. His sloth is evident to all, in the condition of his fields and vineyards, and in the creaking of the springs under his mattress. Those who are indulging slothful habits may think you?re ?living it up?E you are not living at all.

WAR ON FAITH, HOPE, LOVE
Actually, it?s even worse than that. Sloth, contrary to what we might imagine, is not a ?victimless?Esin. As Karl Barth pointed out in one of the great modern discussions of the sloth, sloth makes us inhuman because it means that we keep our distance from others to avoid the difficulty and hard work of actually serving our neighbor. Jesus is God made man to be for man, and in the gospel, we are called (Barth says) to ?participate, as thankful recipients of His grace, in the humanity actualized in Him, to share this humanity with a concrete orientation on the fellow-man, the neighbor, the brother. To receive His Holy Spirit is to receive this direction and accept this summons.?E Yet, in our sloth we reject this summons: We will ?to be man without and even in opposition to his fellow-man.?E Sloth is the root of all sins of omission, all failures to do good to one others. Sloth is a rejection of love, disobedience to Paul?s exhortation to ?be devoted to one another in brotherly love . . . not sluggish in diligence?E(Romans 12:10-11).

Traditionally, sloth has also been seen in opposition to faith and hope. The Latin word ?acedia?E(lack of concern, lack of care) has been used to describe these dimensions of sloth. In an essay entitled ?The Other Six Deadly Sins,?EDorothy Sayers defined acedia as ?the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin which 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 only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for.?E Sloth is a lack of faith in God?s providence and care, and a lack of hope that God will keep His promises. The sluggard shrinks back from acting because of the potential pain it might cause. In the gospel, God calls the elect to be slaves of righteousness, to be more than conquerors through Christ, and promises to fulfill His purposes in them. The sluggard?s lack of spiritual ambition is not a product of humility, but grows out of a lack of faith and hope in God.

Sloth runs contrary to all the ?theological virtues?E?Efaith, hope, and love. The sluggard does not live in the courage of faith and hope, and is not willing to accept the responsibility or endure the challenges of loving others. It?s no wonder that the one time Jesus describes a man as ?lazy,?Ehe immediately says that he is going to be thrown into ?outer darkness?E(Matthew 25:26, 30).

CULTURE OF WHATEVER
Today, acedia is not merely an individual sin, but is a widely accepted cultural norm, and has been institutionalized in education and in our sexual mores. To show how this is so, let me cite Sayers once again, this time from her notes on Dante?s Purgatorio , Canto 18: ?The sin which in English is commonly called Sloth, and in Latin accidia (or more correctly acedia), is insidious, and assumes such Protean shapes that it is rather difficult to define. It is not merely idleness of mind and laziness of body: it is that whole poisoning of the will which, beginning with indifference and an attitude of ?I couldn?t care less,?Eextends to the deliberate refusal of joy and culminates in morbid introspection and despair. One form of it which appeals very strongly to some modern minds is that acquiescence in evil and error which readily disguises itself as ?Tolerance?E another is that refusal to be moved by the contemplation of the good and beautiful which is known as ?Disillusionment,?Eand sometimes as ?knowledge of the world?E yet another is that withdrawal into an ?ivory tower?Eof Isolation which is the peculiar temptation of the artist and the contemplative, and is popularly called ?Escapism.??

Sayers also helps to explain how acedia or sloth can coexist with frantic activity (this again from ?The Other Six Deadly Sins?E: ?it is one of the favorite tricks of this Sin to dissemble itself under cover of a whiffling activity of body. We think that if we are busily rushing about and doing things, we cannot be suffering from Sloth. And besides, violent activity seems to offer an escape from the horrors of Sloth.?E Our culture is a frenetic 24/7 culture precisely as a way of masking the emptiness of it all. It is simply a disguise, Sayers says, ?for the empty heart and the empty brain and the empty soul of Acedia.?E

Let me illustrate the widespread disease of acedia in two areas: First, intellectually, in the practices of modern scholarship and in the ironic stance of postmodernism; second, in sexuality, especially among teenagers and college students.

POSTMODERN ACEDIA
No one has analyzed the intellectual and education dimensions of contemporary acedia more profoundly than R. R. Reno. One of the educational and intellectual cornerstones of modernity is the exaltation of ?critical thinking.?E In order to be objective and responsible in our intellectual endeavors, we have to stand at some distance from our own prejudices and context. This undermines ?confidence that any moral or cultural system should properly command our full loyalty.?E Respectful tolerance of all possibilities and options becomes the norm, and the price is that we leave all passionately held convictions at the classroom door. Thus, ?the very sentiments that the classical Christian authors feared are precisely the virtues modern educators seek to instill in their students. The lento amore , the slow love that Dante thinks must be purged from our souls, is the dispassionate heart that establishes critical distance and waits for compelling evidence.?E

Postmodernism manifests acedia in a different and perhaps more direct manner. Reno notes that modernity manifests a Promethean humanism, the pride of Milton?s Satan or the Emersonian hubris of ?self-reliance.?E This Promethean humanism, however, has given way to postmodern irony and relativism. The detachment that is required of the student in the classroom turns into a stance toward life as a whole. Reno cites the Roman satirist Petronius as the ?patron saint?Eof our era; his relaxed and bemused amoralism has become the cultural norm: ?We cultivate a cynicism that does not despair, because it serves to destroy the charms of truth and beauty that might corrupt our inner peace. We enjoy an irony that does not seek resolution, because it supports our desire to be invulnerable observers rather than participants at risk. We are spectators of our own lives, free from the strain of drama and the uncertainty of a story in which our souls are at stake. We conform because nothing finally matters except the superiority of knowing it to be so.?E

In the postmodern context, relativism is, Reno suggests, less a conclusion than a presupposition, and a presupposition whose purpose is to insulate us from the need for commitment, decision, and passion. Observing his students knee-jerk relativism, Reno concludes that ?relativism is not a philosophical theory. It is a spiritual truth, a protective dogma designed to fend off any power that might claim our loyalty. It is a habit of mind that insulates postmodern life from the sober potency of arguments and the force of evidence, from the rightful claims of reason and the wisdom of the past.?E This is all done to ?protect the soul from all demands, rational or otherwise.?E If truth is out there, and if we can know it, then we might be forced to take a stand on truth. Truth might claim us, and demand something from us, perhaps something very difficult. But if we know before the game begins that there will be no winner, we don?t have to join a team.

Postmodernism is a sophisticated rationalization of sloth.

ACEDIA AND SEX
A few years ago, Wolfe published a collection of journalistic pieces entitled Hooking Up . In the title piece of that collection, Wolfe examined, among other things, the sexual practices of teenagers. He wrote, ??Hooking up?Ewas a term known in the year 2000 to almost every American child over the age of nine, but to only a relatively small percentage of their parents, who, even if they heard it, thought it was being used in the old sense of ?meeting?Esomeone. Among the children, hooking up was always a sexual experience, but the nature and extent of what they did could vary widely. Back in the twentieth century, American girls had used baseball terminology. ?First base?Ereferred to embracing and kissing; ?second base?Ereferred to groping and fondling and deep, or ?French?Ekissing, commonly known as ?heavy petting?E ?third base?Ereferred to fellatio, usually known in polite conversation by the ambiguous term ?oral sex?E and ?home plate?Emeant conception-mode intercourse, known familiarly as ?going all the way.?E In the year 2000, in the era of hooking up, ?first base?Emeant deep kissing (?tonsil hockey?E, groping, and fondling; ?second base?Emeant oral sex; ?third base?Emeant going all the way; and ?home plate?Emeant learning each other?s names.?E
(Wolfe has just published a novel that covers some of the same territory, I Am Charlotte Simmons , which focuses on contemporary college life ?Esports, racial and class tensions, and sex.)

A less colorful article on hooking up was recently published in Newsweek . Daniel McGinn defined ?hooking up?Eas ?one-time sexual encounters ?Eanything from kissing to intercourse ?Ebetween acquaintance who?ve no plans to even talk afterward, let alone repeat the experience.?E McGinn reported on the work of Elizabeth Paul, a College of New Jersey psychologist who is studying the phenomenon. Her findings: ?Her survey of 555 undergrads found that 78 percent of students had hooked up, that they usually did so after consuming alcohol and that the average student had accumulated 10.8 hookup partners during college. Studies on other campuses produced similar numbers.?E Paul and other researchers believe that hooking up is new: ?Now it?s the campus norm,?Eshe said. Explaining why hooking up has taken the place of longer-term relationships, one professor says ?College is just a layover ?EI don?t want to be tied down and committed.?E Sex without commitment, sex without responsibilities ?Ethat is an almost pure example of acedia in practice.

Reno argues that in these circumstances, maintaining the rigid prohibitions of Christian sexual morality is an essential evangelistic and apologetic strategy. For ?Petronian humanists,?Esexual freedom ?is the most cherished, the most morally sanctified, the most Petronian moral commitment of the postmodern age.?E Sloth avoids discipline and pain; controlling lust is painful and difficult; and as a result slothful postmodernism ?insists that we should do absolutely nothing to alter the immediate demands of our lust.?E Again, this resistance to sexual discipline is self-protective. The slogan of sexual freedom is a way of insulating us from hard demands: ?we defend ourselves against chastity not because we are prideful and self-confident hedonists, not because we find great joy in the confusing labyrinths of sexual desire and satisfaction, but because we are fearful that once the invasion of grace begins it will not relent until the capitol falls. We embrace sexual freedom because it is a crucial line of defense against spiritual and transformative demands.?E Sexual discipline frightens the slothful because ?it is so insanely ambitious, so hopelessly impossible, so ruthlessly physical and personal.?E If we want to get under the skin of postmodernism, especially the postmodern university student, arguments are going to be less effective than a clear message, and consistent practice, of sexual chastity.