My last piece on the sin of Cain left me unsatisfied. I liked the idea that the sin of covetousness was driven by a deeper, root sin but I couldn’t quite think what it was. This quality of wanting to have something while unwilling to earn it was real, I was sure it had a name, but I had not yet wrestled this particular angel — or demon — to the ground.
Then one day it hit me; I was talking about the sin of sloth.
The seven deadly sins do not appear anywhere in the bible, but they have been part of church tradition for centuries. According to Britannica they were first enumerated by Pope Gregory the first in the sixth century. There have, no doubt been many books written about them, but the one I know is the second book in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Souls climb the slopes of Mount Purgatory, pausing on each terrace to rid themselves of the taint of each sin. The seven sins are worthy of their own column, but today I am only considering the sin of Cain and why I believe sloth is at the heart of it.
If you were to list the seven sins: pride, anger, avarice, envy, gluttony, lust, and sloth, you might think sloth is the least deadly. After all, a lazy man or woman might harm themselves, but they could hardly harm anyone else, could they?
Yes, they could.
Calling them the seven deadly sins is not quite apt. Each of the ‘sins’ is not a sin in itself, but a state of mind that leads to sin. As I said last time, there is nothing wrong with wanting to have a thing. If you look at a beautiful house and say to yourself ‘one day I will live in a house like that’ or even, ‘one day I will live in that house’ that can spur you to work hard, earn money, better yourself and claim your reward. To say ‘I want that house’ but be unwilling to work for it is deadly. It inspires theft, murder, fraud, or any number of crimes that seem easier than working for and earning the goal.
Take the case of Cain.
Cain brings offerings to God. He works dutifully and presents an offering, but not his best offering. He works hard tilling the soil, but not as hard as he could have. He brings a sample of his produce, but not the best his soil produces, or at least not what it could have produced had he done his best. ‘Good enough’ is not good enough for God.
God tells him “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?” If you work hard, you will be favoured by God. This was true for Cain and Abel, and it is true to this day. On my wall I have a saying of Thomas Jefferson “I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
Cain saw Abel receive the favour of God, he wanted to be favoured too, but he did not want to work for it. Because of his unwillingness to work, sin crouched at his door, and he allowed it to come in and take possession of him. What possessed him was not merely sloth but pride. In his own eyes, Cain believed he was just as worthy as his brother. There was also envy; Abel was receiving something Cain believed he too had a right to. Finally, there was wrath, Cain (at least in his own eyes) had been treated unjustly, and he was going to do something about it. Cain killed Abel, but instead of gaining what he wanted, he lost everything, and his sin was more than he could bear.
How often have we seen this in others or ourselves? “It’s not fair, why should he/she get everything? Some people have all the luck.” God’s answer to us is the same as it was to Cain “If you do what is right, will you not be successful?”
There is an old saying that the laziest person is the one who ends up working the hardest. Cain didn’t want to put in the extra effort to win favour from God and ended up a restless wanderer on the earth. Thieves almost always work harder and for less return than if they worked an honest job. Do a job poorly, and you will usually end up having to do it again, costing more time, sweat and expense than doing it properly once. Putting off a job until later results in a mad rush at the last moment.
Sloth can harm others as well as oneself. A slothful parent harms his or her children. A worker who does a shoddy job may cause someone to be seriously injured or even killed. A politician who is intellectually slothful may cause untold damage to the society or economy of a country.
And like most sins, in the end sloth is its own punishment. Go through life without trying, and you will forego many advantages and many pleasures. Even the things you get unearned often give little pleasure. How often have we heard of people who won large sums of money on the lottery, and yet were poor again within a few years. How many people born into wealth ended in poverty? How many people today, women especially, engage in no-strings-attached sex only to find themselves feeling depressed and ashamed afterwards and wondering why?
To work hard for something and finally achieve it, that is a rare feeling. Even to look at something as simple as a well-tended garden gives you a warm glow inside as you think of all the hours spent weeding, trimming, mowing, planting. It is not just the feeling of having a beautiful garden but knowing that you worked to make it beautiful. You did the best that you could, making sure that every weed was pulled up, every flower planted in just the right place, every edge trimmed just right. No shoddy work, no corners cut.
It is not an accident that our lord was born the son of a carpenter, a skilled artisan who, no doubt took a healthy pride in his work and went to bed tired but satisfied each night.
When God finished each day’s labour, he looked on his work and said, “It is good.” As he says in Ecclesiastes 9:10
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
And whatever you have to do today, at work or at home, do it with all your might and all your skill. Then, as you settle into bed at the end of the day, you will be able to say “It is good.”
You will have earned it.
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