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Sloth and the Last Man

Mark Dunagan
09/24/17 - Sunday Evening

Sloth and the Last Man

The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama warns of the arrival of the Last Man, the lukewarm child of comfort, afraid of conflict, obsessed by health and safety, untroubled by any disturbing passions, content in the world of money, mildness, and easy pleasures.

The Warnings

The Bible often warns against the danger of sloth:

* "The hand of the diligent will rule, but the slack hand will be put to forced labor" (Proverbs 12:24).

"Poor is he who works with a negligent hand, but the hand of the diligent will rule" (Proverbs 10:4).

"The soul of the diligent craves and gets nothing, but the soul of the diligent is made fat" (Proverbs 13:4).

"But I am Not Lazy"

Many people think of laziness or slothfulness as the person who is not busy, yet the slothful person can appear to be very busy. Consider the following observation:

"It is one of the favorite tricks of this Sin to dissemble itself under cover of a whiffling activity of body. We think that if we are busy rushing about and doing things, we cannot be suffering from Sloth. So the other sins hasten to provide a cloak for Sloth: Gluttony offers a whirl of dancing, dining, sports, and dashing very fast from place to place to gape at beauty-spots. Covetousness rakes us out of bed at an early hour, in order that we may put pep and hustle into our business; Envy set us up to gossip and scandal, and to the unearthing of secrets and the scavenging of dustbins" (Steering Through Chaos, Vice and Virtue in an Age of Moral Confusion, Os Guinness, p. 151).

The Blindness of Sloth

The Bible often talks about the sluggard, which infers that this is a common temptation among men, yet the sluggard does not see himself as being lazy:

* He believes that his excuses for not working today are sound and well-founded: (Proverbs 26:13).

* He equally considers himself extremely wise in his thoughts, words and behavior (Proverbs 26:16).

* He isn't refusing to work, rather he needs just a little break, a little rest (Proverbs 6:10).

* The New Testament equally refers to people that were very busy, but very busy at gossiping, stirring up trouble, etc… (1 Timothy 5:13). Observe in this verse that people who are said to be "idle" are in fact very busy, "going around from house to house".

The Spiritual Dimension

Sloth is far more than not being a diligent worker, rather it is laziness when it comes to what really matters. Laziness and apathy towards the things of God, the complete opposite of hungering and thirsting for righteousness (Matthew 5:6).

"It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hate's nothing, finds pleasure in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for" (Guinness, p. 151).

"One needs no great sublimity of soul to realize that in this life there is no true and solid satisfaction, that all our pleasures are mere vanity, that our afflictions are finite, and finally that death which threatens us at every moment must in a few years infallibly face us with the inescapable and appalling alternative of being annihilated or wretched throughout eternity. Nothing could be more real, or more dreadful than that" (From Pensees by Blaise Pascal). The point is that we know that we are going to die, that this life here is very limited, and that all earthly pleasures are fleeting and that we face a long eternity one way or another, therefore to make no effort to discover what is "out there" is inexcusable laziness.

A Danger We Face

"In the United States the difficulties are not a Minotaur or a dragon – not imprisonment, hard labor, death, government harassment, and censorship – but cupidity, boredom, sloppiness, indifference. Not the acts of mighty, all-pervading, repressive government but the failure of a listless public to make use of the freedom that is its birthright" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harvard Commencement address, 1978).

"Sloth is so much the climate of the modern age that it is hard to recognize it as a deadly sin. It is simply the underlying condition of a secular era. Dante recognized that sloth was peculiarly apt to overcome people in midlife. Under the pressure of the important and the tiring, the middle-aged and old are apt to forget the highest affairs of life and, above all, to ignore spiritual aspirations… Yet, in the modern world, the young are not immune. The widespread embracing of sloth is perhaps captured best in the pervasive refrain from adolescents: 'Whatever'" (Guinness, pp. 151-152). Therefore sloth is equally seen in the cool, aloof, indifference to real joy or real tragedy. 

The Solution: Passion for God

* "As the deer plants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?" (Psalm 42:1-2).

Such hunger should be normal. "Because no one but God is self-sufficient, everything in creation has hunger – whether for food, for meaning, or for love.  To hunger and thirst for whatever fulfills is right and appropriate" (Guinness, p. 167). The problem is that we end up hungering for all those things which do not satisfy, and this has been a common problem over the centuries:

* "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?" (Isaiah 55:1-2). 

* "For My people have committed evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living  waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).

Whatever?

Jesus may return today?

I may meet my Maker today?

Satan is prowling about seeking someone to devour!

The world is filled with wolves in sheep's clothing who want to take advantage of me (Matthew 7:15; 2 Peter 2:1-3). It is not  question of "if" I encounter them, but "when".

Many around me are lost and unprepared not only for the challenges of this life, but for the eternity to come.

I am in a battle with powerful forces for my perspective, my heart, my soul and my mind (Ephesians 6:12).

I am surrounded by people who have made a mess of their lives and who are so addicted to sinful behaviors or attitudes that they will persist in them even though such thoughts and activities are bringing upon them absolute misery (2 Peter 2:18-22).

Jesus came to this earth, gave up His comforts in heaven and died or my sins. He did not look at the human condition and shrug, "Whatever"

How can I say, "Whatever"?

Therefore, as the Bible says, "Strive to enter the narrow door" (Luke 13:24); "Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles" (1 Peter 2:12); "Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence…" (2 Peter 1:5); "Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble" (2 Peter 1:10).

Mark Dunagan | mdunagan@frontier.net
Beaverton Church of Christ | 503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net