Out of all the seven deadly sins, we may think that sloth is the least concerning for us. But, as Ben Underwood shows, our busyness and toil is just evidence we’re caught within sloth’s grip.
At the outset of a sermon series on the seven deadly sins, I asked people to choose the two deadly sins they thought hampered them most. Of the seven—greed, anger, pride, gluttony, lust, sloth and envy—sloth came in dead last, receiving only one vote. Where I am, people don’t seem to have problem with sloth or ‘under-working’. They don’t believe there’s nothing like sitting in the sun on a Tuesday afternoon; rather, they think there’s nothing like working till 11pm on a Tuesday night, for that is what they often do.
Work has persuaded us that it holds the key to the good life. In work lies joy and satisfaction, or at least the money to pay for them. Hence the title of a recent book on the subject: Better Than Sex: How a Whole Generation Got Hooked on Work.1 For asegment of society, work is where you derive your identity, community, status and fulfilment. The rest of life is ancillary to that main game. For others, lots of work is necessary to finance their aspirations. Whatever the motivation, we work long and hard at our jobs. A report published two years ago states that countries like Japan, New Zealand, the US, the UK and Australia have a large minority of people working 50 hours or more per week, and many of those work outside regular hours (e.g. on weekends).2
We might add that evangelicals are activists, and often our leading lights are balls of energy, in ceaseless motion. Our churches are usually busy places. We share the cultural love of production, growth and the achievement of goals. Perhaps, therefore, we feel we are in danger of being driven, not slothful. You may be painfully and personally aware of this. Social commentary on the drawbacks of such a demanding working culture is growing.3 So is sloth our problem? I want to argue that sloth is a hazard for us, whether we are run off our feet or watching TV eight hours a day. I also want to argue that the remedy for sloth isn’t in activity or busyness, but rather in Jesus, our sloth-less mediator and generous master.
What is sloth?
When you think of sloth, you might picture the sluggard from Proverbs, who is so lazy, he can’t even lift his hand out of the food dish to feed himself (Prov 26:15). But sloth is also addressed elsewhere in Scripture. In Jesus’ parable of the talents (Matt 25:13-30; cf. Luke 19:11-27), the third servant to report back to his master is told, “You wicked and slothful servant!” (v. 26).
Firstly, notice that in the parable sloth manifests itself as a lack of faithful industry—failure to discharge one’s responsibilities. The master commissions his servants to multiply his wealth, and equips them to fulfil that commission. All the servants knew this. The first two get busy and present earnings. Even the sloth was aware of his master’s expectations; he later admits to his master, “I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed” (v. 24). In short, the servants had a job, and if they did not do that job, they were lazy. They might have been busy in their master’s absence—running, studying, blogging, renovating—or they might have been idle, spending their days sleeping on the beach. But either way, if they did not discharge their responsibilities faithfully, they were wicked and slothful.
Secondly, notice that sloth will bar us from salvation. When the master calls the slothful servant in, the servant tries to pass his sloth off as prudence, claiming he acted out of fear of his lord. But the master shows him up, pointing out that his story makes no sense:
You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. (vv. 26-27)
The master rewards the slothful servant by casting him into “the outer darkness” (v. 30).
Love, love, love
The question for us is what has our master given us to do? Jesus summarized it as “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt 22:37-39). The daily obligations you have in this world ultimately find their origin in your obligations to God. He gives you life, breath and everything else, and he explicitly says that you are to worship him by loving him “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). He put you in a family so that you will honour your parents, love your spouse and nurture your children (if you have them). He made you a neighbour to others so that you will live with them in love, being friendly and polite, doing your job with honesty and care, obeying the law and having mercy on others.
Jesus also commands us to love one another (John 13:34-35). We see what that requires where the New Testament speaks about the life Christians share together:
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. (Rom 12:9-13)
God cares about what we put into our weekly round, and he cares about what we leave out too. He cares about the fact that you and I don’t love as deeply, as consistently and as genuinely as we ought, and he cares about the fact that this lovelessness makes us neglect our deepest responsibilities to him and to others. Here lies the cold heart of sloth: it is lovelessness—apathy towards God, unresponsiveness to his call, indifference to others. Whenever we are negligent children, unloving spouses, prayer-less Christians, faithless friends or careless under-shepherds, we grieve God. Our sloth will become a matter of deep regret when Christ returns to see how industrious and faithful we have been in our responsibilities of love.
Sloth’s remedy
At this point, you may be saying, “Help! I thought sloth wasn’t my problem. Now I feel like it’s my biggest problem.” Like all sin, sloth’s cure lies in Jesus. He is the remedy for our sloth because he is our sloth-less mediator and generous master.
As mediator, Jesus takes upon himself all our sloth—our negligence, sins of omission and lovelessness. He bears it all in his death for us; he makes it right between us and God; he turns aside God’s wrath; he lifts the burden of guilt from our hearts, and lightens them with God’s joy of peace. As mediator, Jesus gives us his faithful industry. Jesus was no sloth; rather, animated by love, he left nothing undone—no responsibility unfulfilled. In him and through faith in him, we are counted sloth-less, just as he is. Therefore, we can repent with hope and joy, knowing that although we are dismayed by our sloth, God has brought us to himself through Jesus’ faithful industry on our behalf.
Jesus is also our master. Knowing the kind of master he is helps us shake off sloth. If, like the slothful servant, we believe that Jesus is harsh, we won’t want to serve him; we will only want to escape. But he isn’t harsh; the parable of the talents suggests otherwise, and shows us that he is someone who welcomes more than he casts away, who rewards even the smallest step of faithful industry lavishly and who can be pleased. Jesus could have made the contrast between the faithful and slothful servants by telling a story with only two servants (cf. Matt 24:45-51). Instead, he includes three—two of whom are commended and welcomed. More are welcomed than cast away. If as many were cast away as were welcomed, we might wonder if that reflects our chances of pleasing Jesus (i.e. fifty-fifty!) But when two are welcomed and only one is cast away, it encourages our spirits without encouraging presumption.
Furthermore, the welcome and reward is reiterated twice so that we can see that each faithful servant, regardless of whether he produced more or less, receives the same commendation, the same promotion and the same invitation to share in the master’s joy (Matt 25:21, 23). This is more—much more—than a faithful servant is owed: Christ will lavishly reward faithful industry: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance” (Matt 25:29).
In addition, Jesus doesn’t seek quantity, but quality—faithful industry. Even the third servant could have pleased his master with minimum commitment to the task; the master would have been happy to receive just the interest from a bank deposit (Matt 25:27). Christ will lavishly reward even the smallest step of faithful industry. He is keen to reward us. We don’t earn or deserve it, but he offers it to encourage us to faithful industry all the more. Jesus is a master you can please, even on a small scale. No special acumen or luck is needed.
What to do
In Jesus, then, we have pardon for our sloth and the inspiration to leave it behind in order to embrace faithful industry in his service. So what should we do? Firstly, since Jesus is the sloth-less mediator who bears our sloth away, we need to go to him for the remedy he offers. As you become conscious of your sloth and sins of omission, bring them to Jesus, seeking mercy, rather than pretending to be virtuous like the slothful servant (Matt 25:24-25). Seeking mercy brings forgiveness and peace, and it gives us a reason to love Christ. In contrast, pretending to be virtuous brings humiliation and loss.
Secondly, knowing that Jesus is a generous master who will reward the smallest step of faithful industry gives us further reason to love and serve him with confidence and energy. This means attending, year by year, day by day, to the responsibilities Christ has given us. The world is full of busy, energetic people who make time for their own ambitions and manage others’ expectations, but who are not motivated by Christ. Let’s be different.
Thirdly, Jesus tells us to love God. This love finds its expression in wholehearted service of him, and this service involves two things: the inward task of repentance—putting off the old self and putting on the new—and the outward tasks of loving our fellow Christians and non-Christian neighbours. To live repentantly, we must live by the Spirit, not gratifying the flesh (Gal 5:16); seek God’s forgiveness; offer restitution to those we have hurt; and forgive those who sin against us. This is hard work, but it cannot be shirked, because it’s what our master has given to us to do. Furthermore, he has given us the means to do it, and the business will be profitable if we engage in it diligently. To love others, we must invest ourselves and our talents in serving our fellow Christians and neighbours. (The local church is the premier forum for doing the former.) This may mean acting courteously, showing yourself to be dependable, toiling honestly in the workplace to support yourself and your family, forging and guarding the intimacy you have with your spouse (if you have one), giving aid to those in need, being faithful in prayer, and encouraging others to commit to Christ and persevere in the faith.
Fourthly, if Christ expects this of us, then let’s not allow others’ expectations to override his expectations. Christians need to take control of their lives. If we let an employer, parent, spouse, child, friend, teacher or hero set our agenda, we will become their servant, not Christ’s. While we may be busy in their service, we will be slack and hopeless in Christ’s. Note that it may take courage and initiative to refuse others’ expectations in order to meet Christ’s.
Fifthly and finally, if Christ is truly our beloved master, let us prevent our own ambitions and self-importance from enticing us to serve ourselves. Christians need to give up control of their lives. Ambition and competition are driving passions in our society, and the competitive and ambitious are usually self-serving. No matter how respectable it might seem to chase your own dreams, focus on your own progress and make yourself the centre of all your action and effort, it is not Christianly. Instead, out of love for Jesus, chase his dreams for you, realize his ambitions for you and make him the centre of all your action and effort. Christ is less concerned about how high you rise and how many heads you turn than about whom you love and how. The busier we are in our own service, the slacker we will be in Christ’s, the more damning the testimony will be to the fact that, like the slothful servant, we neither know Jesus, nor wish to serve him.
If we repent of our sloth and live as though Christ is our master, somewhat paradoxically, we may become less busy and more full of peace and joy, even as our busy world finds itself trapped more tightly in sloth’s grip. Seeking to serve one master well instead of juggling the competing demands of two or three masters will free us from the fatal problem of neglecting the one who really counts. May God stir and fire our slothful hearts to love and serve Christ our generous Lord.
Endnotes
1. Helen Trinca and Catherine Fox, Random House, North Sydney, Australia, 2004.↩
2. Relationships Forum Australia, ‘An Unexpected Tragedy: Evidence for the connection between working patterns and family breakdown in Australia’, 2007, p. 21. Downloaded 17 June 2009 from http://www.relationshipsforum.org.au/report/.↩
3. In addition to the works already cited, see chapter 6, ‘Overwork’, in Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, Affluenza, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2005.↩
