“It’s a sin to bore a kid with the Gospel.” That’s the often-quoted line of Jim Rayburn, founder of Young Life. It means that those who witness Christ and Scripture to young people should do their best to keep their presentation exciting, lively and entertaining. I’ve always felt there was something not quite right about that approach, but recently I’ve come to the conclusion that instead of spending oodles of money and effort to keep kids entertained and not bored with Jesus, we should be teaching kids that it’s a sin to be bored, especially with the Gospel.
That boredom is a sin was the conclusion the Church came to in the fifth century when John Cassian wrote about the struggles of desert monks. Their particular problem was staying awake and alert in the heat of midday, when the body is sluggish and thoughts were easily distracted from prayer and Scripture. Those monks would think of other monasteries where the food was better and where spiritual life was deeper. They would look around and find their own situation dull and uninteresting. In short, they were bored.
Cassian identified this “noon-day devil” (from Psalm 91:6) with the Greek concept of acedia, what we now call “sloth,” and it came to be seen as one of the seven deadly sins. Our English word “sloth” is unfortunate because it suggests simple laziness. But acedia is a deeper problem of the soul, which the middle ages called a kind of sadness, a despair with regard to spiritual life. “Apathy” may be a closer concept in English.
We also need to distinguish the sin of sloth from mere laziness because excessive busyness can be a modern day cover for sloth (i.e., spiritual apathy or boredom). Picture the person who cannot remain in place for even brief times of prayer or worship. Picture the Christians who bop from church to church seeking new spiritual highs in new and different programs and ministries. Picture all of us rushing on-line to buy the latest Christian best-seller in the hope that it will refresh our lagging faith.
It’s all tied up with our consumer culture of course. We are deadly afraid of being bored, so retailers make fortunes providing us with constant novelty and newness of experience. We criticize books and films if they offer nothing new or different from previous entertainment. And we never stop to wonder if the problem is not with the goods we’re offered but with some spiritual deficit in ourselves which makes us bored with what both the world and God give us.
When we are bored with an activity we leave it and move on to some other way to stay busy. But bringing that habit to spiritual life leaves us open to disaster because we are tempted to leave the basic center of our faith and keep moving on trying to find new excitement.
Ultimately, sloth is a deadly sin because it causes us to despair of and make no effort toward spiritual good. Bored with our faith, feeling as though what we do makes no difference for ourselves or others, we abandon activity that is pleasing to God, like prayer, Bible study, worship and service. Again, we may mask the underlying slothful attitude toward Christian life by an outward busyness in many other activities.
Perhaps the deadliest form of sloth might be an appearance of extreme busyness in regard to spiritual things, whether it’s church activities or personal devotion. Yet underneath is a sad despair regarding the ultimate worth of spiritual life and an inward boredom with it all.
Let’s talk more about the sin of boredom.