The Sin We Never Name

Sloth is usually mentioned in ancient lists, but it rarely gets much attention today. Why is that? Puritan Richard Baxter suggests we don't understand how spiritually ruinous sloth can be. On Wednesday, we looked at some of the dangers (and opportunities) of retirement. In today's post, we'll look at sloth from a more general perspective, including how it should help us view ourselves, our children, and even government programs.

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Every age has its blinders. We focus on certain sins to the extent that Scripture does not, while often ignoring sins that Scripture emphasizes. On Wednesday, we looked at Baxter’s warnings regarding retirement and sloth (Don’t Even Think About Retiring Until You Read Richard Baxter). Today, I want to look at Baxter’s thoughts on sloth in general. There are huge implications for us to consider, both personally and societally.

Baxter defines sloth this way: “Sloth signifieth chiefly the indisposition of the mind and body; and idleness signifieth the actual neglect or omission of our duties. Sloth is an averseness to labor, through a carnal love of ease, or indulgence to the flesh.”

It is not sloth when outside circumstances keep us from our work: “It is not sloth or sinful idleness to omit a labor which we are unable to perform: as for the sick, and aged, and weak to be averse to labor through the power of an unresistible disease or weakness; or when nature is already wearied by as much labor as it can bear. Or when reason alloweth and requireth us to forbear our usual labor for our health, or for some other sufficient cause. Or when we are unwillingly restrained and hindered by others.”

Sloth is rather born from choosing a life of self-indulgence and ease voluntarily, just because we can get away with it: “He is most sinfully slothful who is most voluntarily slothful.”

A man talked to the esteemed Dr. John Stott, one of the most eminent and active churchmen of the twentieth century. Stott announced his public retirement from speaking in April 2007, at the age of 86. In his last book, he wrote that he was indeed writing his last book (Published in 2010). He passed away just a few years later, at the age of 90. The man I talked to asked Dr. Stott about his retirement—was he retiring because he didn’t want to do it anymore, or because he couldn’t? Dr. Stott’s response was basically, “I just can’t do it anymore.” His mind wouldn’t cooperate to generate new talks, and his body couldn’t deliver them. He knew when he wrote The Radical Disciple that there wouldn’t be another book in him.

That’s not sloth. That’s recognizing our human limitations, something all of us will eventually face. Sloth would have been ceasing his spiritual labors at 65 or even 75 just because he didn’t need the money. He lived so simply I don’t think he ever needed the money. Dr. Stott gave until he couldn’t, and that’s a good example for all serious followers of Christ.

Almost without fail, I see “sloth” applied today to those who don’t exercise their bodies. Fitness enthusiasts are about the only people I read who address this sin because it fits their agenda. While it applies (taking care of our bodies is a necessary spiritual discipline), this kind of sloth isn’t primarily what the Bible or Baxter emphasizes. To neglect the care of our bodies is, indeed, sinful and irresponsibly slothful. But if you spend ten hours a week in the gym and craft a fine physique, you’re still open to sloth if you neglect weightier matters of life: “The most sinful sloth is against the greatest duties: to be backward to the most holy duties, (as praying, and hearing or reading the word of God) or to duties of public consequence, is a greater sin than to be lazily backward to a common, toilsome work.” It’s more important to be faithful in your walk and service with God than to spend time on your body. That doesn’t mean body care isn’t important (I’ve written a book on that—Every Body Matters). It does mean self-focused body care shouldn’t be our primary concern, especially if it distracts us from more important concerns: “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8).

Practical Helps

How do we acknowledge and get rid of the sin of sloth?

Baxter begins with this: “The first help against sloth, is to be well acquainted with the greatness of the sin.” After mentioning several scriptures, Baxter warns, “You bury yourselves alive. If it be a sin to hide God’s lesser talents, what is it to bury ourselves and all our powers? If it be pity to see a dead man, because he is unuseful to the world; is it not pity and shame to see one voluntarily dead, that maketh himself useless by his sloth?”

In other words, brothers and sisters, let’s not kill ourselves before God kills us. Why end our lives before God deems they should end?

Baxter says, “Idleness is a robbing God, who is the Lord of us and all our faculties, and all our service is his due. You rob him of the honor and service that you might have done him by your diligence.”

He adds, “It is a robbing of the commonwealth, and of all those to whom your labors, or the fruit of them, was due. You are burdens to the commonwealth, like drones in the hive, Col. iii. 22.”

It is, indeed, our Christian duty to care for the poor; but it also a duty to the poor not to unnecessarily be a “burden to the commonwealth.” We do injury to the poor if we feed their bodies and don’t address the spiritual damage done to their souls if they are living a life of self-indulgence or worse, outright fraud and laziness. It was Paul who said, if a man won’t work, he shouldn’t eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10). If you feed a slothful man’s body, you could be contributing to the ruin of his soul.

Idleness makes us worse and worse. As rust spreads, so does idleness: “Idleness is a destroyer of grace, and gifts, and natural parts; they will rust for want of use.”

If we, through government programs or our own private donations, enable sloth, we’re putting our own feelings of piety over a person’s spiritual health. This is not to excuse selfish and miserly, but it should challenge those who think giving away others’ money indiscriminately is a Christian thing to do. Here’s the damage that such enabling can cause, according to Baxter. It is based on the understanding of what Baxter said earlier, that sloth is a serious sin with terrible consequences:

“Idleness is the mother and nurse of many heinous sins.

1. It cherisheth lust, and draweth people to fornication, which hard labor would have much prevented. [Consider those retirement community rumors we talked about on Wednesday.]

2. It is the time for foolish sports, and vanity, and wantonness, and excess of riot, and all the mischiefs which use to follow it. [“excess of riot?” People who are hard at work don’t have time to riot.]

3. It is the time for idle talk, and meddling with other folk’s matters: and therefore Paul reprehendeth the idle as busy-bodies, or meddlers with matters that concern them not, and twattlers, and tale-carriers, 2 Thess. iii. 11: 1 Tim. v. 13; 1 Thess. iv. 11. [576] They that do not what they should, will be doing what they should not.

4. It is the time for gluttony, and drunkenness, and gaming, and all other sensuality.

5. Yea, it is the time for seditions and rebellions; as in armies it is the time for mutinies. [Instead of working to build a society, the slothful play at tearing it down…]

6. Idleness is the season of temptation: it is Satan’s seed-time. It is then that he hath opportunity to tempt men to malice, revenge, and all other villany that is committed.”

This is really quite an astonishing and insightful list that tells us something very important: enabling people who can work to not work isn’t charity, it’s playing into the devil’s hand, setting them up for increased temptation over any number of evils. On the other hand, the biblical witness to be generous to the poor is extensive (Proverbs 19:17; Deuteronomy 15:11; Isaiah 58:6-7; Matthew 25:35-40; 1 John 3:17-18; James 2:15-17, among many others). This teaching shouldn’t cause Christians to give any less, but rather to give more strategically.

A Warning to Parents and the Government

We can’t have a strong family or a strong nation if slothfulness isn’t addressed: “Idleness is a murderer of the body. Gluttony and idleness kill most of the world before their time: no two sins more constantly bring this curse along with them.”

Accordingly, Baxter warns against parents (and by extension today, the government), removing the need to work when work is a mental and physical capability:

“To teach a living soul to be idle, and to train up the living to a conformity to the dead, (save only that they eat, and spend, and sin, and carry their ornaments on their backs, when the dead have theirs for a standing monument,) this was great cruelty and treachery in your parents: but you must not therefore be as cruel and treacherous against yourselves.”

Just because you don’t need to work financially doesn’t mean you don’t need to work spiritually. Such freedom can be a temptation: “Those that abound in wealth, and have no need to labor for any bodily provisions, should be especially watchful against this sin. Necessity is a constant spur to the poor (except those that live upon begging, who are the second rank of idle persons in the land); but the rich and proud are under a continual temptation to live idly; for they need not rise early to labor for their bread; they need not work hard for food or raiment; they have not the cries of their hungry children to rouse them up; they have plenty for themselves and family without labor, and therefore they think they may take their ease. But it is a sad case with poor souls, when the commands of God do nothing with them; or cannot do as much to make them diligent as poverty or want could do; and when God’s service seemeth to them unworthy of their labor, in comparison of their own. It may be, God may bring you unto a necessity of laboring for your daily bread, if you so ill requite him for your plenty. But it is better that your idleness were cured by grace, than by necessity: for when you labor only for your own supplies, your own supplies are your reward; but when you labor in true obedience to God, it is God that will reward you, Col. iii. 23, 24. “

Here, Baxter applies the pastoral sensitivity with which he made sure to get to know and visit every single member of his congregation:

“I do, with very much love and honor, think of the industrious lives of some lords and ladies that I know, who hate idleness and vanity, and spend their time in diligent labors suitable to their places. But it is matter of very great shame and sorrow, to think and speak of the lives of too great a number of our gallants: to how little purpose they live in the world! If they take a true account of their lives, (as God will make them wish they had done, when he calls them to account,) how many hours, think you, will be found to have been spent in any honest labor, or diligent work that is worthy of a Christian, or a member of the commonwealth! in comparison of all the rest of their time, which is spent in bed, in dressing, in ornaments, in idle talk, in playing, in eating, in idle wanderings and visits, and in doing nothing, or much worse? How much of the day doth idleness consume in comparison of any profitable work! Oh that God would make such know in time, how dreadful a thing it is thus to imitate Sodom that was punished with the vengeance of eternal fire, Ezek. xvi. 49; Jude 7, instead of imitating Christ.”

Has God so blessed you that you don’t need to work to pay for your food and mortgage? Then work to build His kingdom! Labor for the salvation of souls and the health of Jesus’ holy bride, the church.

Since sloth is so destructive, Baxter warns us against those things that lead us toward sloth: “Take heed of excess of meat, and drink, and sleep; for these drown the senses, and dull the spirits, and load you with a burden of flesh or humours, and greatly undispose the body to all diligent, useful labors: a full belly and drowsy brain are unfit for work. It will seem work enough to such, to carry the load of flesh or phlegm which they have gathered. A pampered body is more disposed to lust and wantonness, than to work.”

One of Baxter’s almost comic responses is that people become too lazy to fight their laziness. We must avoid this trap: “A manlike resolution is an effectual course against sloth. Resolve and it will be done. Give not way to a slothful disposition. Be up and doing: you can do it if you do but resolve. To this end, be never without God’s quickening motives (before mentioned) on your minds. Think what a sin and shame it is to waste your time; to live like the dead.”

Idle people need to be lovingly confronted, not coddled. Again, for our children and for those seeking to game the system, giving in to their physical demands is to jeopardize their souls.

Helping or Hurting the Rich and the Poor

My son wrote his MBA thesis on third-generation wealth. It’s a bit scary. One generation, often poor, works diligently and leaves behind a huge legacy. The next generation doesn’t need to work and sometimes won’t, but it’s the third generation, the trust fund babies, that have the worst track record. Enabling your descendants to not work could disable their souls. Our souls need labor, even if our bank accounts don’t.

I sincerely hope this won’t be read as an attack on charity or even appropriate government assistance. My sister, a modern day saint, comes into contact with the truly needy on a regular basis. One godly woman lives in a rundown neighborhood on subsistence government assistance, but she feeds a good portion of the neighborhood out of her kitchen, as an act of Christian witness.

My sister saw what she was cooking with and brought her a bunch of kitchen gadgets and appliances that will now enable that woman to multiply her efforts. That kind of charity is the very best kind.

We need to help the truly needy, but it’s not “help” to enable someone who can work to not work. And if we find ourselves in a place where earning a living isn’t an issue anymore, our work should be refocused, but never stopped. There will come a time for all of us when, mentally or physically, we just can’t do it anymore, whatever “it” is. That’s by God’s design, and there’s no shame in that. Hopefully, your savings or your family will care for you then. No guilt should be felt by anyone who has lived a fruitful life.

But here’s the hard truth: giving a slothful man a free check isn’t love or charity; it’s tantamount to giving an alcoholic an open bottle of scotch. That’s the message that Baxter brings home.

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