The Sin of Sloth or I Will Blog About It Later

Four things you have to know about me. #1 I suffer from anxiety and depression almost crippling at times. #2 I am a Christian who believes that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that He is my strength even when I am weak. #3 I am weak a lot. #4 I am also lazy.

I pay one hundred dollars for a WordPress account and noticed that I didn’t post in more than half a year. That is just lazy. Although that is quite simplistic. Sloth is more than laziness.

Sloth is from the Latin word acedia. This is a description of sloth I found on Wikipidea. “Mentally, acedia, has a number of distinctive components of which the most important is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation”. That is a mouthful.

Basically sloth is a mindset that prevents you from doing what God put you on earth to do. Sloth keeps you from doing what you want to do. It is like a spiritual depression that makes you only want to watch reruns of the Goldbergs. You know you should do something else but you don’t really care. You make excuses not to do them.

I am a man of many dreams. I want to create a non profit Generation Now that will help fight stigma against mental illness among youth using social media, benefit shows, and performing arts clubs. I know that I should do things to make this happen. I should actively take part in the Facebook group. I should write to the National NAMI (National alliance for the mentally ill” headquarters, Active Minds, Always Keep Fighting and other groups that fight mental illness stigma to see if I could get help or support.

I want to write to celebrities like Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki or The Good Place’s Kristen Bell to see if I may get their support. But fear of rejection makes me go back to the TV, Facebook, or playing Simpsons Tapped Out. https://youtu.be/AoK7LRt0mgI

I also am a struggling writer. Like an absent minded professor I have about a dozen partly written screenplays, short stories, or novels. I would say half written but that would be too generous. I just can’t get the energy to write. I know that I am talented but the thoughts come to me. “Why bother, I won’t succeed so why put the energy into it.”

I know I am not the only one who has dreams but lets inertia, apathy, and fear get in my way. Imagine what the world would be like if we actually followed our dreams with full gusto and allowed the Holy Spirit to give us wind to our sails.

That goes to my spiritual life. I do believe that God has given me a gift to speak out against corruption, hypocrisy, and against the religious right who have made a mockery of the Church that Christ created. But yet I don’t. I get overwhelmed by the madness that Trump has set loose in our nation. So I don’t blog, I don’t make my video blogs. Or I do and get no traction and I decide to give up.

In this series on the seven deadly sins I will discuss how they affect me and our president. Our president is a man of many sins. We all sin, don’t get me wrong. But when I sin, it affects my relationship with Jesus and maybe one or a few others. When Trump sins it affects millions. But a true follower of a Christ recognizes when they sin, repent, and try to be better. Even if we fall a thousand times, we recognize it, we apologize and we try again. Trump hasn’t repented once. His fruit is as rotten now as it was when he made his announcement that he was going to run for president.

As I said, Trump is a man of many sins. My worst and most active sins, pardon the pun, are lust and sloth. I don’t believe Trump suffers from sloth. If anything he is too active. He does too much. If pride is one extreme I think sloth is the other. It is an inertia filled with self loathing, apathy, and passive fear.

I am sick of letting my sloth keep me down. I am a child of the living God. He has given me talents that I don’t use. And if you don’t use them, you lose them. You get rusty and that is what makes sloth such a tenacious sin.

That is why I need discipline, no blog gets any traction if you only post once every four months. I have to post whether I feel like it or I don’t. If inspiration hits me, I have to get on my iPad and start typing.

This is a Christian blog so I think I will end with some scripture.

Matthew 25 (NIV)

14 “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. 15 To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag,[a] each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16 The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. 17 So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. 18 But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

19 “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’

21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

22 “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’

23 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

28 “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Yes the wicked servant acted as much out of fear than sloth but that is why sloth is such an invasive sin, it prevents you from doing a God’s work and as Jesus is basically saying here “if you don’t use it you lose it”. The Holy Spirit gives us all gifts but we have to use them, we have to follow the path that God gave us to the best of our abilities, and the more you do, the more energy and passion and talent God will give you.

God Bless you guys my next blog will be about Lust and will probably be the most personal and hardest blog I have ever written.