Two Home Towns

Continuing with my Sunday School class on the Seven Deadly Sins I went today to participate in our class on Wrath, but I still haven’t posted on Sloth until now. How fitting!

Actually I didn’t get to participate in Sloth last week. I was in Atlanta with my daughter. Still, Mary provided me the notes with which she led the class, and today I heard a recap of what sounded like an excellent discussion last week. Mary wanted to stress the work of Reinhold Niebuhr in the discussion. Most people probably automatically think of physical laziness when they think of Sloth, but it’s actually not viewed that way by many theologians. Sloth is really more of a failure to live up to our potential. Niebuhr was one of these, and I’ll paraphrase from Mary’s notes here.

Niebuhr wrote that we humans are both creature, totally separate from and subject to God, and made in God’s image, “little lower than the angels.” Therefore, we are unique among creation in that we are both creature and vessel of the divine. We walk the tightrope of life balancing these two weights on either side of us, and we sin when we lose our balance and fall in either direction. When we deny our creatureliness and aim to be our own gods we fall into Pride (more on that in another post). But when we deny our divine nature and wallow around in our creatureliness we fall into Sloth. In Sloth we ignore or reject the call not only to live up to our potential, but also deny our role in God’s greater plan. Living in Sloth is actually therefore an escape from the freedom of the Spirit that refuses to let us limit our lives. We are overwhelmed with the possibilities for our lives when we understand our divine empowerment, and in our fear we retreat into Sloth. Instead of devoting ourselves to the divine, we devote ourselves to trivial things instead.

Simply put, recall the many things you’ve heard in your life about the greatest courage being the courage to live your dreams – to strive to the best you can be. The failure to do so is Sloth. To me this is a very profound insight. I really like how in Niebuhr’s way of thinking that the opposite failure is Pride. This makes an awful lot of sense to me.

In the recap of last week’s session, Mary brought up how those who are chronic substance abusers are often retreating into the drug as a form of Sloth. The tragedy of the loneliness that often goes along with this form of addiction was a topic of discussion. That combined with the tension between Pride and Sloth immediately made me recall the lyrics to a great song by the Bodeans (I’m dating myself here but hey – it’s gotta be obvious by now that I’m not a college student anymore). The song is “Far Far Away from My Heart”. It goes like this:

Well the feeling’s coming on again
Like a whisper that’s knocking down a doorway
And everything it says I just believe
And I fear that I’m nothing and alone
So I pour another drink and take a hit
And I wonder where the smoke goes
And I’m feeling more and more like less and less
And it comes from so far down deep inside
But you can’t get to it no matter what you try

And I’m far, far away from my heart
Far, far away from my heart

It’s just a voice thats bent on telling me I’m too good
And there really is a shortcut
And I’ve been through this so many nights before
That you’d think it would be easier by now
So I let the chemical reaction cloud over
The pain that keeps on hurting
As I slowly, but too slowly drift away
To a place where I know I don’t have to think
God I hate myself all over so more I drink

And I’m far, far away from my heart
Far, far away from my heart

And now I’m staring blankly at the TV
Holding this guitar for some comfort
But it’s so hard to write a simple song
And try to turn this feeling into melody
So I put it down get on my knees
Close my eyes real tight now I’m praying
To anyone that maybe can hear me
Tell me everything will be OK
And I don’t think I can make another day

And I’m far, far away from my heart
Far, far away from my heart

If you’ve never heard it before, it’s worth the 99 cents to download it from iTunes here.