Episode Transcript  

One

Work Hard, Play Hard

You know the phrase, “Work Hard, Play Hard”? It sounds good, doesn’t it? It sounds like living life to the fullest. Get stuff done, and when you’re not doing that, have fun. Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? Having fun and getting stuff done. Those are the two great motivators for so many of us.

And yet, the truth is, if those are the only two things we’re doing, we’re actually suffering from one of the seven deadly sins. And its name is Sloth.

Two

Sloth: Avoiding the Primary Business of Life

Everyone thinks sloth is just laziness, or a general lack of inertia. But it isn’t. Sloth is the sin of being bored with spiritual goods. It’s that simple. It’s not being interested in the primary business of life, which is love of God and love of neighbor. Love of God and Love of Neighbor is really, really hard. And we look for all kinds of things to distract us from it. And the two main distractions are: having fun and getting stuff done.

So, unless we can go for sustained periods where we’re not having fun or getting stuff done, unless we can go for a significant amount of time without working hard or playing hard, we’ll fail at the fundamental business of life.

Three

Having Fun as a Distraction

Imagine a kid who’s supposed to hand-write an essay during class, and he takes out a pencil and a piece of paper, but instead of writing his essay, he just slowly draws funny pictures and comics. While everyone else is working on the essay, he makes silly little drawings in a leisurely manner. Sometimes he leans back, looks at the pictures, and laughs to himself a little…When all the other kids hand in their essays, he just grins sheepishly at the teacher and says, “Sorry. I just wanted to have a little fun.”

And the teacher will say, “This wasn’t time for fun. Fun wasn’t the assignment. I gave you a task, and you ignored it; you willfully ignored it. And you’ll have to take the consequences.”

Work is a gift from God. We all have things we need to get done. And Teresa of Avila said if life is all prayer and no fun, that is not good. The opposite is also true: if we spend all our time in entertainment with no prayer or work, then we will come to judgment day, and we’ll make the excuse, “I was just trying to have some fun.”

And the Lord will say, “This wasn’t time for fun. Fun wasn’t the assignment. I gave you a task, and you ignored it, you willfully ignored it. And you’ll have to take the consequences.”

Four

Distraction by Busyness

Now imagine a kid who was supposed to write an essay during class, and he took out a pencil and a piece of paper and started writing furiously. You might think, from looking at a distance, that he was doing the assignment. But then imagine the class ended and instead of doing the assignment, he spent the whole time doing work for another class. And the kid might say, “Look how much work I did.” And the teacher would say, “But that wasn’t the assignment!”

The assignment is becoming a saint. If you go to God, it’s not going to work to say, “Look at all the stuff I did! I was busy all the time!” That’s more likely to be a sign of sloth, of ignoring the spiritual good that’s supposed to come first. Again, the assignment is loving God and loving neighbor.

If you were answering one more email when you should have been praying, if you were having a big impact as a volunteer at Church when you should have been present to your spouse, if you were doing a late-evening project when you should have been helping the kids get to bed, that’s just basic sloth. That’s the typical procrastinator, who will make himself very busy with anything other than the thing he’s supposed to be doing.

And God won’t like it. We’ll say, “Look how much money I made!” or “Look what a big social impact I had!” or “Look how clean my house was, or what great schools my kids went to,” or even “Look how successful my Church-initiative was.” And God will say, “Your assignment was to become a saint, and you distracted yourself with what looked important instead.”

Five

Resolution

Having fun and getting stuff done are not bad. Both are good when they are kept in their proper place. The problem begins when we use work or entertainment to avoid the primary business of life: loving God and letting Him transform us by His divine life.

As a resolution, can you sit for ten minutes without doing any work or being entertained? Just give your attention to God and think about Him and what He has done for you. If you can’t, then the deadly sin of sloth has control over you.

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