A few years ago, I was diagnosed with a form of cancer and
was treated. The treatment was successful, but I found it hard to enjoy that
success because I was afraid my cancer would return. Once a year I am required
to take a blood test to make sure that my condition hasn’t changed. During the
weeks that lead up to the test, I always find it hard to concentrate. I feel
agitated and unfocused. I am busy but not productive. In Luke 21:34 Jesus
warned: “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing,
drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly
like a trap.” According to Jesus, we can waste our energy in worrying just as
easily as we can on carousing. This anxiety is a peculiar form of sloth.

The stereotype of sloth is a lazy person. Someone who won’t
get off the couch or get out of bed in the morning for work. But sloth is much
larger than the stereotype. The way of sloth is a path of ill-conceived short-cuts
and ignored responsibilities. Sloth practices neglect under the guise of
simplicity and mistakes apathy for ease. Sloth is a sin of omission, but that
does not necessarily mean that sloth is inactive. Sloth is a sin of
rationalization. Those who ignore responsibility always have an excuse for not
doing what they are supposed to do.

Sloth is a sin of omission, but that does not necessarily mean that sloth is inactive.

Sloth exerts the minimum required effort and would prefer to exert no effort at all. When sloth makes an effort, it is usually under duress. Sloth is listless and half-hearted. Imagine the worst stereotype of the sort of service we receive at a bureaucratic hub like the division of motor vehicles and you have a picture of sloth. Sloth seems like a pretty harmless sin compared to the sort of things that others do. We kind of admire it. That is until we have to depend upon a slothful person. Or are put into a position where we have to work with them. Or are waiting in line.

The sin that the ancients called sloth includes laziness,
but it involves more. Sloth can manifest itself in many forms. At times it
looks like ennui, an immobilizing lethargy that leeches away our interest in
those things that ought to concern us. But sloth can also be active and
profligate, causing us to squander our time and energy on meaningless trifles
at the expense of other obligations.

Sometimes sloth is the person who can’t get up off the couch, but it is also the person who won’t sit down. When sloth manifests itself as agitation, it is filled with the kind of empty activity that fails to provide results, rest, or even pleasure. The agitation of sloth is to work what junk food is to nutrition. It burns hot but adds no value. We are busy but busy with the wrong things. In its agitated form, sloth is a particular form of dissipation, squandering our energies in empty pursuits. These may be pursuits of the flesh, the concerns of ordinary life, or even misguided spiritual pursuits. 

Sometimes sloth is the person who can’t get up off the couch, but it is also the person who won’t sit down.

Sometimes this agitated form of sloth is situational. It is
the result circumstances. Some situation comes into our lives over which we
have no control: a family crisis or a medical diagnosis. Things change at work,
and we are uncertain how it will affect us. Suddenly we find ourselves in a new
normal that is a cause for worry. In other cases it is result of temperament. Some
of us have a natural tendency to worry about things that are purely
hypothetical. Our anxiety does not spring from things that might ta...