Sloth Series

7 Deadly Sins Series

July 6, 2008

Sloth

You know those days where you dont really feel like doing anything? You know those overcast days where its dreary out all day long and all you really want to do is call off work, lay around the house and watch a movie? You ever have days like that? I am going to tell you two stories. Then I am going to ask you a question. Frank is 32 years old. He lives in his parents basement. He works part time at a restaurant just down the road. His parents pay all of his bills. They provide all of his meals. Frank sits around all the time. He doesnt have lots of friends and he doesnt go out very much. He spends the majority of his time sitting or laying around watching movies, playing video games, and watching funny videos on the internet. Frank spends more of his life in the artificial world of entertainment than he does in the real world.

Then there is Hank. Hank manages a large business. His work keeps him constantly busy. He is always doing something. He often travels to work on business deals with clients but no matter where he is Hank is working. On a light week Hank averages about 12 hours a day at work. He has a little social life, gets enough sleep to get by and then goes back to work. In addition to his job Hank is in school working on his masters. Hank stays really busy and never has the time to just sit down. There are some thing he would like to do if he had more time but right now all he really does is work, school, and sleep. Hank is basically the exact opposite of Frank.

So the question is which one of these two people has a problem with sloth? Which of these two men do you think is lazy, sluggish, slothful? How many of you think Frank our video game playing, living with his parents 32 year old man is the one with the sloth problem? How many of you think that Hank, our business man/student/I have no free time at all has a sloth problem? Now how many of you think that by the nature the question being asked neither of those answers are right?

This week we are looking at the sin of sloth. Before we deal with what sloth is we have to break down the misconceptions and see what sloth is not. Our general picture of what sloth is seems to come from the choicely named animal that spends most of its day lying upside down from a tree. Sloth to us is a person who doesnt really do anything. We see sloth as a synonym for physical laziness. Sloth is an avoidance of work a sort of sluggishness. When most of us picture the idea of sloth we picture someone like Frank. We picture someone who just doesnt do much. We picture someone from Proverbs 6

Pr 6:6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! Pr 6:7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, Pr 6:8 yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. Pr 6:9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? Pr 6:10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest” Pr 6:11 and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.

When I was in high school I was a very lazy person. I was a walking, talking illustration of what sloth looks like. Classes didnt challenge me. I found I could get good grades whether I paid attention or not, so I chose the latter. I spent a greater portion of most of my classes drooling on the desk than I did listening to the teacher talk. Still I got all As and Bs. I told myself I wasnt lazy, just bored. I told myself that I would work hard when something finally challenged me until then, I would take it easy. So in my large amount of free time I developed a love for movies. It was one summer probably my sophomore year of high school. I didnt have a lot of friends so all I really did during the summer was work. One summer I called off work for two weeks with the explicit purpose of doing nothing. My room was in the basement. We had an entertainment center downstairs along with a refrigerator. For two weeks the only time I left the basement was to eat a meal with my family. I took snacks, drinks, and all the movies I could watch downstairs and just laid on the couch in my pajamas all day every day for two weeks. No showers. No going out to see people. No changing clothes. Nothing just movies. I am not sure if lazy quite describes what that was. Certainly it was slothful and kind of gross now that I think about it. That is a picture of what sloth looks like. Calling off responsibilities, not doing anything, sitting around apathetic to the world, and wasting all that perfectly good energy and time is practically the definition of sloth.