What first comes to your mind when you think of sloth? Binge watching some series on Netflix or Hulu? That person at work who does all they can to avoid, you know, actually working? Or maybe the three-toed sloth, the slowest moving mammal on the planet?
For years, I thought sloth was just a fancy word for laziness. Sloth can be manifested in laziness, but in the Christian tradition it is much more than that. In fact, we can exhibit the vice of sloth even if we are very busy and productive.
How can that be?
What is Sloth?
In my reading of Glittering Vices, and another more academic book, Fallenness and Flourishing, I’ve come to see that sloth is a more all-encompassing vice. It can be defined as resistance to the transformative demands of love. Sloth is an indifference to the needs of others, to our obligations to them, and to how meeting these obligations requires us to change. This resistance to love’s demands can show up as a kind of laziness. So binge watching a show on your favorite streaming service can be an instance of sloth, if we do that instead of doing something for a friend or loved one that needs to be done.
But sloth can also manifest itself as a restless busyness. The workaholic who avoids the demands of love at work, at home, or with friends, is actually being slothful. The person who scrolls through social media for hours fits here as well. They are doing something, but it’s a pretty safe bet that it has little to do with the demands of love. Like many of us, I would guess, I can be slothful in both ways. There are times where I choose to do little or nothing, when I have important responsibilities to fulfill. There are times where I definitely engage in a restless busyness, but it is more of a manifestation of anxiety, or avoiding the demands of love, rather than trying to serve God and others.
A couple of clarifications are needed.
First, human beings need to rest. Rest is not slothful, nor lazy, if that is what we need. And my guess is that most of us need more rest, or what used to be called leisure. We need time that is set aside for rest, recreation, and renewal in our relationships with God and others. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with the occasional binge watching of a show we like, within reason.
Second, working hard doesn’t entail you are engaged in sloth, or a restless busyness, either. Just like rest, hard work is good. But our motives matter. If we are allowing our work to keep us from what God might want to do in and through us, from loving him and others, then it is a barrier to spiritual growth and our moral development.
How do we know if sloth is a problem? Some of its symptoms include escapism, restlessness, and self-indulgence. So do we run to tv shows, movies, books, food, alcohol, or something else to escape our responsibilities in life? If so, then there’s a good chance that sloth is at work, so to speak. We can use these things as ways to escape our responsibilities, to indulge our more selfish desires, to avoid or resist the demands of love. We can even avoid the demands of love using religious activity as an escape. Think of the strained marriage where one or both spouses spends increasing amounts of time at serving at church, rather than working at reparing and renewing their relationship, as one of many possible examples.
Let’s say we have identified that sloth is at least somewhat of a problem. What can we do about it?
Remedies for Sloth
Focus on perseverance. This virtue often looks like a thousand little deaths, daily, to our selfishness. In our relationships, it is often the small but meaningful little choices we make that can make all the difference, in the relationship as well as our character. As Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung puts it, our love for a spouse or a good friend, and our love for God “must be lived out over and over, day after day” (92). Words from James 1:2-4 are helpful here as well: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Stability of place. This might be a physical place, or a place of one’s calling and vocation, or both. For a few years after moving to Kentucky, we wanted to get out. It was culture shock, moving from Southern California, to Boulder, Colorado, and then to a small town in Kentucky. But we stayed, first by necessity, and then by choice. At other times, as human beings we want flee our responsibilities, our relationships, our jobs, or our churches. But it is better to stay. Stay committed to your town, to your church, to those you love. There are exceptions, of course. We must be wise and flee when there is unchecked spiritual abuse in a church, or any kind of abuse in a marriage or friendship. But in other scenarios, we can undermine sloth by simply choosing to stay.
There are many other things one can do to push back against sloth, and many of the spiritual disciplines can be helpful here: prayer, fasting, and service, to name a few. We can also simply open our hearts and minds to God, respond to his transforming love in our lives, and to his call upon us to love others with the same self-giving love he offers to us all.
YouTube Discussion of Cultivating Character
I recently did a 30 minute interview with Professor Christian Miller, who has done a lot of excellent work on character. We discuss some ways to cultivate character, with a special focus on honesty at the end. If you’re interested, check it out! I’ll be doing more of these in the coming months, too.