Sloth In The Soul

"There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done to other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted."(1)

"Patience, a quality of holiness, may be sloth in the soul when associated with a lack of righteous indignation."(2)

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 7, 8 states, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: ...a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love, and a time to hate."

The Oxford Dictionary defines "Sloth" as "Reluctance to work or make an effort; laziness."

One saint defined sloth as this:
 "sluggishness of soul or boredom because of the exertion necessary for the performance of a good work. The good work may be a corporal task, such as walking; or a mental exercise, such as writing; or a spiritual duty, such as prayer."(3)

"Man's sense of injustice is a poor analogy to God's sense of injustice. The exploitation of the poor is to us a misdemeanor, to God, it is a disaster Our reaction is disapproval; God's reaction is something no language can convey." (4) 

In other words, maturity and deep discernment in Christ results in righteous anger and just action in the face of evil, not patience and apathy. The opposite of sloth is passion of the soul that feels what God feels. It takes work to sift through our emotions and it is uncomfortable to examine our own souls. Are we being slothful of soul in the face of evil?

We live in a time when more clearly than ever wherever terrorists strike, there is a parallel movement of the Spirit happening. Reading the news with spiritual eyes takes a combination of research and hunting - we need to sign up for missionary prayer letters and search the private blogs to learn what God is doing all over the world. 

There were two terror attacks in downtown London in 2 weeks time. After the 2nd one, I kept asking myself - what is going on in London that this happened? After doing very little research on Google, I quickly was reminded that London is the base for the largest seminary training of Iranian pastors.  These terrorist attacks around the world seem random and coincidental, but actually mirror the reality of the spiritual war between God and His enemy. 

Are our hearts broken by the suffering of the Yazidi people?  While we need to pray and work to stop terrorism, and evil doers need to caught and jailed, at the same time we also know of ISIS soldiers coming to Christ.  I hear of pagans taking in refugees and helping them make a new life. Are Christians taking in Muslim refugees to help them? What about the Ethiopian Christians being placed in horrible concentration camps - this news goes unreported in the main media. I wonder sometimes, are we, the modern day church so racist that we just don't pay attention to what happens to our black brothers and sisters? 

Lord have mercy on them. Lord, have mercy on us.  

The way to break the sin cycle of slothfulness of soul, of indifference and apathy is to repent and ask for God's help.  We are to love others as we love ourselves.  Sloth is pure selfishness and self-idolatry.  This is why we need to repent. Then we need to regularly read and hear stories and cultivate awareness of what horrors others are experiencing and what God is doing to demonstrate His faithfulness in our day.  The opposite of slothfulness is work, and this includes the work we need to do in our souls to feel what God feels, to see what God sees (Divine seeing),  to be angry in the way God is angry, and to love passionately all those He loves.

Praying through the news helps us to empathize with those suffering and we begin to cultivate a Divine perspective on the human situation around the world.  Slothfulness of soul is a particularly American Church sin.  We are an adolescent church that doesn't know what it is to suffer or risk our lives to the point of death.  

The problems the American church argues over are 1st world church problems, issues that we do not have the luxury of discussing when we are in a "fox hole" engaging in the front-line battle for the souls of men, women, boys and girls. 

I plead with our generation to engage in the cosmic battle and become alert to the battle in our souls and for our souls. Slothfulness is a highly effective strategy of the enemy to blind us to what is truly happening in the world.  May we become God's voice, hands and feet to minister to all those who have no voice to cry out against the evils being done to them. May we have holy unrest because of all those who still have yet to hear. 

Resources Cited: 
(1, 2, 4) Abraham Heschel - The Prophets
(3) - The Three Ages of the Interior Life