Sloth

I. Introduction Today we're completing our final instalment in our sermon series looking at the Seven Deadly Sins, looking at the sin of sloth. Like, I imagine, most of us, I assumed that what was meant by sloth was just laziness. So I thought about just asking ChatGPT to write a sermon manuscript for me. But I discovered that the monks and popes who came up with the list of sins a long time ago meant something very different that what I supposed. It turns out that while slothful people may be lazy, the laziness isn't the main problem, but a symptom of the underlying problem. Let me tell you a story to help illustrate the point. Carmen started out her spiritual journey with tremendous joy and zest. She used to go to every bible study she could manage to get to. She used to volunteer at the soup kitchen and she played on the worship team at her church. But the initial enthusiasm she had for her faith cooled over time. She grew frustrated with the people at her church, and the seeming lack of impact they were having on the world. She felt disappointed when a ministry leader in her church acted in a petty and self-interested way. She became jaded by her experiences at the soup kitchen, because the people who used the service seemed stuck in a never-ending pattern of self-defeating behaviour. Being fervent with God seemed easy when she had thought she could change the world. But when things failed to live up to her expectations, she started to become complacent. Why put in all that effort? Nothing was really ever going to change. The world would go on as it had and any effort she put in would have a negligible effect on how things turned out. Carmen started her Christian journey with a set of expectations. When they weren't realized in the way or according to the timetable that she expected, sloth began to replace for former enthusiasm for her faith. II. What is Sloth? I hope the story helps you understand a little better what I mean by sloth, but let's go ahead an define it explicitly. Sloth is a spiritual apathy that dulls our heart towards God, the world and our neighbour. Sloth convinces us that nothing I do will matter or change anything. This robs us of the ability to embody God's hopeful presence in the world. We come to the conclusion that as long as I'm here, nothing is going to happen. When we feel this disempowered the work of spiritual engagement feels wearying. This creates a kind of soul-crushing weariness. This is why people often think sloth is the same thing as laziness. An example of this from the Bible would be Qoheleth, the teacher of Ecclesiastes. So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless. (Ecc. 2:17-23, NIV) Qoheleth starts out looking for meaning in work, pleasure and wisdom-good things-but they fall short in giving ultimate meaning. After all, he reasons, we're all going to end up dead and all the things we poured our lives into will ultimately come to nothing. For Qoheleth, who has lost sight of God's purposes, life becomes a toilsome slog. Qoheleth's perspective is profoundly shaped by his understanding of death. If death is the end of our story, then our stories all end in the same place no matter how wise or foolish we were during our lifetimes. Of course as Christians, we understand that death isn't the end of the story, that the promise of the resurrection means our lives can have ultimate meaning even if they are interrupted for a time by death. I point this out because it illustrates a point. The heart that despairs assumes it can see into the future and finds no hope there. But God's grace can work in ways that we could never hope or imagine. So when we are tempted to believe that we can see how it must end, we have failed to take seriously God's ability to do, as Paul says, more than we can ask or imagine (Ep. 3:20). When we feel like our efforts don't matter, we become profoundly discouraged. This is why sloth is often mistaken for laziness. If you're discouraged and feel powerless that will almost certainly sap your motivation. So people who experience sloth aren't necessarily lazy, they're uninspired. They don't have tired bodies, but tired souls. Imagine a gardener who is used to growing a prize-winning garden. She takes pride in her work, knowing she makes the community a more beautiful place by his efforts. That knowledge fills her with resolve to keep at it. Now imagine that she moves to a new house and plants her garden as usual and the first year that she's there, the flowers don't bloom. The gardener becomes deeply discouraged. All of that effort at cultivating the ground with no results. Perhaps she becomes convinced that garden will never grow plants, and the next spring, she doesn't even bother planting the seeds because she's convinced herself that the effort is wasted. Her conviction about the infertility of the soil might be true, but not necessarily. Maybe something happened that she didn't know about to ruin her work the previous year. In her discouragement, she becomes blind to the possibilities for her garden, not realizing that failure last year doesn't mean failure is inevitable this year. Her horticultural discouragement gets the last word. Sloth is what happens when our spiritual discouragement has the last word. We become closed-off to the possibilities of what God can do in and through us. III. What Causes Sloth? As with any form of discouragement, there are many things that can cause sloth, but I want to look at some of the most common reasons why we Christians might fall into it. A. An Anemic Gospel One possible cause is an anemic gospel that some of us have been taught. Over the last few centuries, the evangelical churches in particular began to articulate the good news in a way that left people feeling somewhat purposeless. I remember hearing many people say the good news was that "If you believe that Jesus died for your sins, you'll go to heaven when you die." First, I want to recognize that, for the most part, this communicates something of the Christian hope, but I would argue, it's too small a gospel. Because once I pray that prayer, my life's purpose becomes waiting to die, so I can go to heaven. We can say that Christians' job while they're here, then is to help in the saving of souls, so others can go to heaven. To be sure evangelism is an important thing the church does. But I would argue evangelism is about more than presenting people with the Gospel on PowerPoint. When we reduce the good news to an idea that we should spread, rather than a life we should live, we can lose sight of our purpose. If we feel that the church is merely heaven's waiting room, eventually that's going to become wearying because God has designed us to reach out in love, but if loving our neighbour isn't understood as important, we can become discouraged. B. Cynicism over Failures Another cause of sloth can be that we become jaded and cynical after seeing the failures of other Christians. Maybe it's the long list of scandals involving celebrity pastors. Maybe ministry leaders or pastors you've had first-hand experience with have failed you. Maybe it's that you see other Christians around you failing to take up the Christian vocation as you understand it. It's easy to maintain hope in the good news when the people around you are being transformed in obvious and positive ways. But when you see the failings of other Christians up close and personal, we can begin to think that God's grace makes no practical difference. Or the failures can be our own. We come to faith hoping that God will set us free from the things that bother us the most, but God, it seems has other priorities. A story I've heard helps illustrate the point. A blind man, a leper and and lame man are at the pool of Bethesda (the one mentioned in John 5) where the first person into the pool after the waters are disturbed by an angel gets healed. On the first day, the blind man heard the sound of the water's disturbance. He jumped into the pool and came out, and he was able to see. He leaves shouting and praising God. The second day, the leper sees the water disturbed and he jumps in first. He comes out with his skin restored, and shouts and praises God, "I'm clean!". The next day the disturbance doesn't come until the middle of the night. The crowd gathered around the pool are all asleep, except the lame man, he's been kept up by the discomfort of his wheelchair. But with everyone else sleeping, he sees his chance. He manages to get a rolling start and it and drives right into the pool, wheelchair and all. And when he comes up from the pool, he discovers that his wheelchair is as good as new. While a new wheelchair would be a blessing, the man found that his priorities and God's weren't necessarily the same. Maybe we think God should be curing one of my problems (usually the one I'm most embarrassed by) but God may be at work on something else, because in his wisdom, he prioritizes things differently. But when God doesn't do what I think he should, I mistakenly come to the conclusion that God's not doing anything at all. C. Disordered Attachments A third reason why we might become slothful has to do with disordered attachments. As we've seen over the last six weeks, many of the deadly sins are rooted in trying to find ultimate meaning in things that can't bear the weight of our expectations. Possessions, sex, food and drink, can be good things, if enjoyed within the boundaries that God sets. But if we make them too important in our lives, they cause problems. One of the problems we face is that we become discouraged. If we don't recognize these places of idolatry for what they are, when the things we idolize fail to satisfy us, we might feel like God is failing us. So someone might blame God for not giving them the house, the car and the lifestyle they want, or maybe they blame God, because after saving themselves for marriage, they haven't experienced a marriage completely devoid of challenges. When a relationship with God simply becomes a delivery mechanism for the blessings I want, rather than an end worth pursuing above all others, the failure of God's gifts to give us a sense of ultimate satisfaction, can leave us spiritually apathetic. D. The Tyranny of Choice Another problem, that may seem a bit paradoxical, is the tyranny of choice. Having more choices feels like a great thing, but when our options are too expansive, we can experience something called option paralysis. We second-guess our choices and so we struggle to make firm commitments when necessary. In our Spiritual life, this can mean that we hop from one thing to the next, unable to settle down and work at something meaningful. This could manifest in the person who hops churches. I've heard the worship music is better over there, so off they go. That church just got a neat new building, so off they go. This church got a new pastor who is so much more charismatic than my old pastor, and off they go. Finding belonging and meaning and making a difference all require sustained effort over time. If we flit from one thing to the next in pursuit of something novel, we won't put the time and effort into any one thing to achieve results. It's not just people who change churches, it can also be people who constantly change their spiritual practices based on fads. It might be people who read a book that shows them a new approach to prayer. They start praying that way, and then, while reading the next book, they see a new approach to prayer. They abandon the first and start on the second. Admittedly, not every approach to prayer is created equal, but one you stick to is almost always going to be more effective than a series of approaches that you never practice long enough for them to become natural. So if we treat our spiritual lives as an all-you-can-eat buffet of spiritual options, rather than as an invitation to discipline, then we're probably going to feel disappointed with the results and more prone to sloth as a result. E. Turning Away From the World's Pain Another cause of sloth is that we cut ourselves off from the neediness of people around us. It's a natural impulse to keep suffering at arms length, especially suffering that we can't comprehend. It reminds us that the blessedness in our lives is more fragile than we would care to admit to ourselves. An example of this would be Job's friends. When Job's world fall apart, they come and sit with him in silence. They're good friends...until Job voices his belief that he hasn't done anything wrong. The friends can't believe it. They won't believe it. Because if Job is innocent and all of this has happened to him, then they would have to question their assumption that their righteousness assures them of uninterrupted blessing. They don't want to live in that world, so they flush the friendship down the toilet, accusing Job of misconduct in order to protect their self-delusion of absolute safety. We can be guilty of the same sort of thinking, imagining that everything will sort itself out in satisfactory ways if we're good Christians. When we engage with others, when we understand their stories, we come to see that suffering doesn't always make sense. We can choose to live in that world, understanding what it does to our own sense of safety and certainty, or we can disengage from the suffering of others, and keep our comfortable illusion. But when we cut ourselves off from the suffering of others, we leave behind the places where we often see God readily at work, as the Psalmist says, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit" (Ps.34:18). When we embrace aloofness to protect ourselves from pain, it blinds us to God's transforming work in others. What's more, it's as we engage with others in their places of brokenness and pain that God transforms us. We learn to humble ourselves and serve those the world sees as 'beneath us.' We see in the lives of others the real-world consequences of continuing down a path of sin we're excusing for ourselves (maybe unforgiveness or substance abuse) we might be motivated to repent. Keeping ourselves apart from the places of brokenness and pain in the world may make us more comfortable in the short-term, but it cuts us off from places where God transforms, and this eventually leads us to a place of spiritual apathy. We close our eyes to the places where God is at work and despair because we never see God at work. IV. Countering Sloth Sloth is really caused by inattentiveness, so it shouldn't be a surprise, then, that the solution involves cultivating attentiveness. A. Attend to God's Gifts First, we need to be attentive to the good things that God blesses us with. When we catalogue these things, it often gives us a different perspective on what God is doing. Paul gives us some very practical advice here: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things" (Ph. 4:8, NIV). When we look at the world around us with expectant eyes, we're far more likely to see God at work, than if we get caught up in endless introspection. Focusing on the good moves us into a posture of thanksgiving. This is a spiritual discipline. Through it we train the eyes of our hearts to see the ways God is at work for the good in the world around us. Our gratitude reawakens hope. B. Attend to the Good Works God Has Given You We must also be attentive to the good works God has given us to do. For many Christians, the idea that we need to do good seems like a form of 'works righteousness.' After all, Paul tells us we're saved by grace, not works. But if we give Paul a thorough reading, we can see that while works don't save us, they are meant to naturally flow from the person who has been saved. Consider this famous verse and the far less famous verse that immediately follows it: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ep. 2:8-10, NIV). God intends for each of us to do good works. He's set the stage for our good works, and our job is to discern what good works we have been equipped to do and to do them. These don't have to be flashy. Anything that expresses God's love and care for creation (especially the people part of creation) is a good work that honours God. When we understand that good works is a divine commission, we can understand that even a small acts of mercy ,that may seem inconsequential in the moment, is a part of God's great plan of redemption. So when you offer to watch the neighbour's kids when they're in a pinch, or when you give someone someone a needed ride somewhere, or when you take a freezer meal to someone you know is going through a difficult time, you're doing your small part in winning the battle against sin and death in the world. Admittedly, you may have a hard time seeing your small action within the far larger context of that cosmic struggle, but you can trust, that it makes a contribution. Consider a soldier in a global war. During WWI, a soldier might be given orders to guard this checkpoint or drive this truck full of food over onto that transport plain. From their perspective, it certainly won't feel like they're making a meaningful contribution to the war, but it's the collection of a whole bunch of small people doing small tasks that is the difference between victory and defeat. Of course in the war analogy, the generals who give order, even the ones on the victorious side, are finite human beings who sometimes make terrible mistakes. God sees the end from the beginning, so when he commissions you to do good works, you can accept by faith that it makes a difference. When we serve, in faith that God is working through us, we'll find it rekindles hope. C. Attend to God's Presence The final and most important way we counter-act the power of sloth is by attending to God's presence in our lives. In the midst of busyness, it's easy for us to neglect spending time on a relationship with God. So, just like in a marriage where one partner is constantly absent and doesn't take the time to reconnect when they're present, it is hard to remain relationally close. So when we're feeling weary, it can be a sign that we need to spend more time on our relationship with God. We do this through Spiritual disciplines. To be clear, spiritual disciplines are not a guarantee that we'll get what we want from God. If you spend time reading the bible or praying, you can't say God owes you, and you can't control what God will do in the relationship. Spiritual disciplines don't obligate God to respond in a way we'd like, but what they do do is to put us into a posture of openness to what God will do. So being disciplined doesn't guarantee an immediate sense of closeness, but neglecting the disciplines for a long time will pretty much guarantee a sense of distance from God. The best way to approach spiritual disciplines, like any discipline is to schedule them and keep to the schedule as much as possible. Maybe you wake up a bit earlier to spend time in prayer and bible reading. Maybe you do it when the kids go down to bed. Maybe it's something you do on your lunch break. The time of day isn't important, but consistency is. As we spend the time being attentive to God's presence we'll find ourselves energized in ways that we won't experience otherwise. V. Conclusion Sloth is the temptation to disengage - to shrink back, to say, "Nothing will change." But God invites us into hope, joy, and purposeful presence. As Paul says: "Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1 Co.15:58, NIV). The world is full of pain, yes - but also full of purpose, and full of God. Step back into the story. Engage again. God is already at work.C Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth | Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth By Peter Law | Crossings Community Church | November 30, 2025