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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. This is the Bama podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host, Brent Billings. Today I am with Reed Dent and Josh Bosse to talk about the capital vice known as sloth. Or are we talking about that?
- [00:19]
B
What?
- [00:19]
C
All right, we're going to jump right in with our little prologue here. I want to read a quote from Henry Ford from his autobiography, My life and work. Work is our sanity, our self respect, our salvation. Through work and work alone, may health, wealth and happiness be secured. And then as always, our daily beginner. Sloth is not to be confused with laziness. Lazy people, people who sit around and watch the grass grow may be people at peace. Their sun drenched bumblebee dreaming may be the prelude to action or itself an act well worth the acting. Slothful people, on the other hand, may be very busy people. They are people who go through the motions, who fly on automatic pilot. Like somebody with a bad head cold. They have mostly lost their sense of taste and smell. They know something's wrong with them, but not wrong enough to do anything about. Other people come and go, but through glazed eyes, they hardly notice them. They are letting things run their course. They are getting through their lives.
- [01:29]
A
Can I get through one of these episodes without feeling convicted, please? Is that possible?
- [01:34]
C
I was talking to Derek about this last night. I was in the office doing some reading and I said I really thought I was going to have a pet vice, but it turns out I just have a whole menagerie. They're all mine.
- [01:46]
B
All of them.
- [01:46]
C
We're here with Josh. Hello, Josh. Hey. Hey, man. I'm so excited to just talk to you about these ideas. Yeah, I sent out the message and you were like, I want sloth. It was a pretty quick response. Yeah, it was a non slothful response. Why did you want to join this conversation?
- [02:07]
B
Oh, man. Well, considering the. The seven vices that were on the table, there's a lot of interesting things to be had. A lot of times with lists like these, it's like there's always going to be a good conversation. It'd be kind of surprising for it not to be. But when I got to sloth, I'm like, oh, yeah, sloth? Like, how does that fit in here? On the rest podcast on the like, I'm always telling my students to slow down. Like that's kind of our thing. And you know, even more personally, that's. That's very much a part of how I navigate life. So, yeah, what's going on here? Is this. Should this be convicting me? Is there Something else going on here. How do we.
- [02:49]
C
Yeah, particularly.
- [02:50]
B
And I know, you know, reading your notes here, this is front of mind, especially considering the quote you read above. But, you know, considering the cultural context we're in, it feels a little bit like the image that is conjured by sloth as a sin seems to maybe need some digging into.
- [03:10]
C
Yeah, it definitely does. There's an irony about the way that we approach sloth that we're going to uncover, but I think the rest podcast is. I like that you called it that. This is a great place to have this conversation, because as with all of the other vices, there is more than meets the eye. I think in some of the other cases we've explored how the vice kind of goes deeper. It's like the. The conventional understanding and then some. But in this particular case, I think our conventional understanding is pretty just off.
- [03:42]
B
Yeah.
- [03:43]
C
And needs a lot, of course, correcting.
- [03:45]
B
Yeah, definitely.
- [03:46]
C
Typically in these episodes, we kind of get to the cultural conversation and the textual conversation a little bit later in the discussion. But I want to start by kind of overlapping them a little bit, because I find that there is some real overlap between our cultural sensibilities and, like, contextually, some of the cultural sensibilities of the world of the text. I realized I was reading the Exodus story again. You know how it begins, of course, with the people in bondage.
- [04:16]
B
Yeah.
- [04:17]
C
And there's that famous story where they come asking for some reprieve to some leave. Right. They want to leave and they want to go worship. And Pharaoh is. I think there are some people who, like, if they were being honest, would kind of, like, view Pharaoh as a certain kind of hero. Here I labeled him the sloth watchdog. Brent, can you read these few verses here from Exodus 5?
- [04:42]
A
Then the Israelite overseers went and appealed to Pharaoh. Why have you treated your servants this way? Your servants are given no straw, yet, we are told, make bricks. Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people. Pharaoh said, lazy. That's what you are, lazy. That is why you keep saying, let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. Now get to work. You will not be given any straw yet. You must produce your full quota of bricks.
- [05:09]
C
So that line always sticks with me. The lazy, lazy. That's what you are. And I think our typical notion of sloth, which is, you know, thinking of sloth just as laziness or of. Of not being productive. Right. You're not doing anything. You are slothful. That conception flips here in this story. I mean, it takes Something that is like the. The desire to go worship and sacrifice is now being totally misconstrued because of. Well, there are certain cultural virtues. In the intro episode, Brent, you remember, we talked about some of, like David Hume's, this philosopher who had certain virtues that he listed. And I think we share some of those, like enterprise and industry and productivity and profitability. These are virtues of the culture. Right. In our present culture. Not that being enterprising or industrious or productive are necessarily bad things, but we do sort of make them crown virtues. And I think what that does is it kind of amplifies the voice of Pharaoh here, like, to not work. That's lazy. And so then the effect is it tends to just make us want to do more things. That's our answer for sloth is do more. Which doesn't really jibe very well with the rest podcast that is insisting, no, maybe you need to do do less. Like in our culture. I was reading Henry Nouwen once, and he says, you know, we say that we call people and we say, you're probably very busy. And we mean it as a compliment. Like, being busy is one of the most respectable things that you can be. See, like the Ford quote above, right? Because if work and being productive is your way of happiness and salvation, then of course, the busier you're being, the more work you're doing, you know, the more virtuous you must be. I picked the Ford quote because what's more American than Ford?
- [07:07]
A
Yeah.
- [07:08]
C
And so those are the cultural waters that were. They're swimming here. And I think it's actually become a massive distraction from what is the true capital vice that we're going to be talking about. That is actually a big problem. So to get a grasp on that, on actual sloth. And we're going to change our word here in just a second, but we kind of need to go to the Wayback Machine and do a little bit historical survey, which is not going to be very detailed or technical, but if anybody wants to look up some of the writings. So it started with Evagrius, who we mentioned before, who was a Monk, and then St. John Cassian, and then Gregory the Great, and they named it Acedia. That's a Greek word. So. Ah, without. And then I think actually you would pronounce it with a hard K. Ke. I'm not a Greek guy.
- [07:59]
B
Yeah, it's a kappa in there.
- [08:01]
C
Yeah, a kappa, as I'm always saying.
- [08:03]
A
Yeah, yeah, duh. Come on, Nariid.
- [08:07]
B
I poked into this a little bit and I Think the. It is supposed to be pronounced acedia. That's what I saw. But the Greek would be acedia.
- [08:14]
C
I mean, just commonly, you know, in the anglified version of it is just acedia. And it literally just means a lack of care. A lack of care. They called it the noonday demon. So imagine, you know, these monks, they're out here in the desert and their morning energy has kind of been expended, and they get to the middle part of the day and they notice this. They, they. They would call it like an assault away from their work and away from their vocation. Like they observed a kind of temptation or a condition that would set in beyond just normal, like fatigue, where they found themselves sort of like wistfully wishing or just getting distracted to do anything other than what their work was. And for monks, it was often the work of prayer in this sequence, kind of coming to actually, like either not just. Just not care for their vocation or even to actively detest it. And for them, the vocation, the largely their call, the work, was being transformed or drawn in by God, by the grace of God, by the love of God, like to commune with that. And there was something in them that they noticed was like making them not want that or making them not care about it or getting distracted from it. It's like there's this recognition that they had, which I think we would also probably admit, that what God wants with me, what God wants through me, that actually requires some hard work, it requires some discipline. And acedia is the thing, and that's what we're going to start calling this vice now. We're going to use acedia instead of sloth. Acedia is the thing that habitually just says it's not worth it. And then how we got to sloth later, it became sloth as different thinkers started to focus more on, like, the physical symptoms of this inner condition that would look like idleness, that would look like inactivity, that would look like kind of a low work ethic. And they focused only on that. And they sort of left behind the spiritual component. And then the vice became basically just about your activity and your productivity. And then the word and the concept of acedia, that sort of being transformed by God is not worth the effort, that largely just got lost the vocabulary, the concept of it. I've been thinking about this one a lot, and there's a reason why we're doing this one, like at the end of the vices, I think it is definitely still present among us. This sort of, I guess you could call it a spiritual lethargy. We're going to go into some more description of it here in a second. I observe this in myself and in the culture, and I think if we want to be able to recognize it, it's probably worth just. Just trying to name it. So I'm gonna. I just kind of was just scribbling in my journal, coming up with, like, different ways. I would say, like, what this thing of acedia is, because it's a. That's a strange word. We don't use that word anymore. So here we go. Can I just go through a few of these and then. And then maybe we can chat and see? Like, what. What would you add to this?
- [11:18]
B
Hit us with it.
- [11:19]
A
Sounds good.
- [11:20]
C
Okay. Okay, okay. Okay. So Acedia is to be incapable of giving a crap, to be incapable or unwilling to attend to what actually matters. Acedia is to run away from what is good. Hard, but good. Acedia is to embrace or just to be overrun by cynicism. And I note, like, in our. Some areas of our popular culture, there's this weird twist where there's like, the hipster, ironic kid disposition that has become, like, it's cool to be cynical. Like, it's cool to just, like, poke holes and everything and not care. Acedia is kind of like. I don't know if you ever. My kids say this. You ask them, like, do you want to do something? Do you want to? And they're like, I'm good. It's like, I'm good as a way of being. Just like, I'm. Leave me alone right here. I'm good. It's like indifference or boredom as a disposition you guys see inside out, too.
- [12:13]
A
Yeah.
- [12:13]
C
What's the emotion? What's it called? Ennui.
- [12:16]
B
Oh, ennui. Yes.
- [12:18]
C
It's like that. Just like, as your predominant disposition, it's a habitual lack of concern with attending to who you really are and what you should be doing here. Acedia is yawning at God. It's shrugging. It's like a shrug at sharing in the divine nature. Oh, yeah. Rebecca DeYoung, who we've come back to again and again in this series, this excellent book, Glittering Vices. She describes it as resistance to the transforming demands of love, what love wants to do in us, and also through us. It's resistance to the demands of love. And this could go on and on. So there's this very excellent book that I would highly recommend called Acedia and Me. Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris from, like, 15, 17 years ago. And at the end she kind of comes up with a sort of appendix that is all of these people beginning in, well, biblically, but then also like first century, all the way up to now. I mean, it's 42 pages of just quotes of people describing acedia, describing sloth and its effects. So are you kind of getting a picture of like what I'm trying to describe of this thing that is a vice? It's a habitual way of just kind of not caring.
- [13:37]
B
Can I put another image alongside all these?
- [13:39]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [13:40]
B
So I was really curious whether that root word for care was ever used in the New Testament. And as far as I could find, it is not. And a digging in a little bit further, I found that at least in the Greek, it's a pretty specific word for care. It has some connections to marital care. But the one that stuck out to me is it also, and particularly in the negative form of it, the acedia, the lack of care has to do with not attending to funerary or burial processes. There's just a dead body and you're like, yeah, it's. That's fine, whatever. We're just going to leave it there.
- [14:18]
C
What an image. Yeah, that's super appropriate because Kathleen Norris in this book is CD and Me a lot of it. It's a memoir and she's reflecting on. She was married for like 30 something years before her husband passed. And people have talked about acedia in the context of like a marriage, a long term marriage relationship. And it's like what sinks in when it's like just not worth the effort to try anymore. It's not like you necessarily, like, have this huge angry split and just like walk away. You just kind of resign yourself and you're like, okay. And you just kind of go about your business. That's the vice of acedia. And I think, you know, we talk about pride as the kind of starting point of the vices. This is something that's been, you know, attested to in many times in places that pride is sort of the beginning. It's that overinflation of the self or whatever. But I think, I think that acedia is the terminus, it is the final ending point of the vices. Like if pride is this, this sense that myself is the origin and destiny of the cosmos, acedia is the resignation to just my own emptiness. Like, acedia is where the soul breaks. Because at least with like lust and gluttony and greed and vainglory and envy and wrath, like, at least there's something is driving you sure? And we talked over and over again in this series about you're actually after something good. Right. But you're going about it in a disordered way. It's out of whack. But Acedia, I think that it is actually the most deadly of the vices. Because the way that I think about it is it is death itself. Like, if there is a sequence to the vices and some people try to put them in, like, first this, then this, then this. And, you know, if that's helpful, I guess. But I. I don't try to map it out that cleanly. But if there would be a sequence at all, like, maybe all of the other vices, you know, you're going through them, they're becoming ingrained, and you chase this and you chase that. But then eventually the kind of spiritual heat death of Acedia sets in where you're just, like, comfortably numb and totally detached.
- [16:25]
B
Yeah.
- [16:26]
C
And I kind of think that this is, like, maybe. I don't know, I hesitate to, like, forecast for a generation or something, but it really feels to me like we are beset by this thing.
- [16:38]
B
Oh, for sure. I like that image, though, of it being the terminus. That reminds me of Soren Kierkegaard quote, where obviously I'm not gonna be quoting it literally. I do not have Kierkegaard memorized.
- [16:50]
C
Not yet.
- [16:50]
B
Yeah, we'll see. Dude wrote a lot of stuff. It's in a. I forget even which book it's in. But he's talking about how, like, faith isn't the begin of your relationship with God. Like, faith is the closest you can possibly get to God, is being in a place of faith. And then he contrasts that with despair as, like, that's the farthest possible place you can get from God. And I'm hearing a lot of the same things of just. Yeah, like that heat, death, that. Like, just belief that there is nothing good. Like, I'm good. I don't want to add anything to this. I'm not even going to do, like, the slightest little nudge of the wheel of my life one way or the other. I simply just could not care less what happens. Just a total divestment from your own life and again, going back to that body left unburied. It's almost like, at least the way we're talking about it here, it's not just like, oh, I don't care about this other person's body and their sacred image. It's almost like you're dying and your body is rotting and being corrupted, and you. You don't even care about that. Like, that's how deep it goes.
- [18:02]
C
Totally, yeah. I mean, I think you're right on it. Despair is a word that often gets used by, you know, the desert figures who are writing early about this. There has been observed a distinction between a certain kind of alienation from the community, but then acedia being like an alienation from your own self. The word divestment is a great word there, Josh. It is whatever God's grace wants to do in you. You're just kind of like, eh, yeah, it's probably not even possible or worth. It is like the, the attitude, you know, that sets in and the darkness of this is that all of the conditions can be totally right. Like culturally speaking. Walker Percy. Have you ever read Walker Percy, Josh?
- [18:50]
B
No.
- [18:50]
C
Walker Percy Bran. Have you ever read him?
- [18:52]
A
No.
- [18:52]
C
He was Catholic medical doctor for long time, but also was brilliant writer. Won the National Book Award, I believe, for this book that he wrote called the Moviegoer. Anyway, just a very interesting Jack of all trades kind of person. He wrote a book called the Message in the Bottle. And So this is 1975. He writes, why does man feel so sad in the 20th century? Why does man feel so bad in the very age when, more than in any other age, he has succeeded in satisfying his needs and making over the world for his own use? I'm breaking from the quote here. Like we have air conditioning. You know, it's 96 degrees outside right now. We're recording this in June. And I have AC to make me perfectly comfortable going on. He says, why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments? Why is it that a man riding a good commuter train from Larchmont to New York, whose needs and drives are satisfied, who has a good home loving wife and family, good job, who enjoys unprecedented cultural and recreational facilities, often feels bad without knowing why? And he goes on for like pages actually just asking a whole bunch of questions because there's something that's pretty dissonant about like, how do we have this divestment of self, this alienation, this kind of settled lack of care. But in a time where we have universities, we have arts and theater everywhere, we, you know, allegedly have access to health care. We have, you know, air conditioning, we have cars, we have airplanes, we have all of these things, right? And I wonder, is there something about the overstuffedness that actually then contributes to the condition? I remember there was a guy I heard one time who said that weariness comes not so much from drinking too much of the cup of pain. But drinking too much of the cup of pleasure is what he said. Like, we got everything settled, you know, I don't know. Do you have any thoughts, either of you, on what kind of feeds this habit of acedia in us? Like, what leads to this lack of. This divestment, this lack of care?
- [21:02]
A
I definitely care, or want to care in many cases, but I feel like I have an acedia problem right now. And I think I'm using acedia as a coping mechanism because I am too overwhelmed with all of the things that I'm currently responsible for. And, yeah, I am just like that. Disconnect. What was the phrase you used?
- [21:27]
C
Divestment. That was what Josh said.
- [21:29]
A
Divestment. Yeah. Divestment from so many things just because I don't have the capacity to care. And I desperately want to care, but I'm intentionally shutting it off, or maybe unintentionally in some cases, but I just have too much stuff going on.
- [21:47]
B
I think that what you're getting toward, with the kind of sensory gluttony that is, in its own way, kind of becoming a way of life, or at least a habit like snacking, you just keep reaching for more stimulation. What's bubbling up to the surface for me is this. When I think about this, just kind of on a psychologically flat surface without taking into consideration anything else, the root emotion and mental posture towards something that you care about is its intrigue, it's interest, it's curiosity. And our attention is the new. The new frontier for, like, going in and getting loads of cash, right? There's tons of money in ads and social media and Internet and things that go on your screens. It's looking toward making money off of people's attention.
- [22:47]
C
Right.
- [22:48]
B
I think we all have experienced that at a lot of different levels. And it doesn't just happen in one way. It can be, you know, if you are a fan of a certain kind of media or a certain genre of media, there is often just too much to possibly keep up with there. And with that kind of monolithic vastness, there is also, I think, a slipperiness. Right? It becomes something you cannot relate to because you'll never get to the end of it. It's just a bottomless pit, and you are just someone stumbling through it. And there's this desire to connect, to have the things we look at, the things we give our care to, even just on an emotional level, whether it's something you're seeing going on in politics or something going on in another place in the world that freaks you out or makes you excited or whatever it is. When you care about something, its outcome matters. And that is, I think, in one sense, a very basic form of love. And that, in our modern experience, is wrapped around in a circle and becomes a little hamster wheel. And it's like you never get to the bottom of something to see something through, to, like, really grasp onto something, and it's. In. In our experience, it ends up just being something that is too vast to wrap our arms around. You can't actually engage with these things. And especially when it comes to, you know, politics and, you know, wars and things like this, all the. The just unspeakable violence. Like, you. A lot of people. A lot of younger people will talk about, you know, care fatigue.
- [24:35]
C
Yeah.
- [24:35]
B
And empathy fatigue, where it's like, you care so much that you, like, actually end up no longer having a capacity to continue caring. And I think that when we're talking about Acedia, it's not just that you're weary from caring too much, and therefore you, like. There is a difference between that and. And the capital vice that we're talking about, and that is that you end up letting that feeling of despair of, like, oh, there's nothing I can do. And in some cases, that's very practically real. Right. Like, I can't go and save a child's life in the Middle east, you know, no matter what I do, like, I can't do anything. And there is a sense then of, like, a broken relationship where an unfulfilled. It's kind of like unrequited love in a way, where it's like, you want to do something, but you are literally, you know, trapped in a little box on the other side of the screen.
- [25:28]
C
Yeah, totally. I was actually reading it. One of the descriptions, I can't recall off the top of my head which one it was, but at the end of Kathleen Norris's book, where she has that sort of index of all these different descriptions, somebody talked about the weight of unanswered letters. I mean, and this is from a hundred years ago. What's difficult for us. What I feel like you're getting at is that the, you know, the world has always had problems. There have always been wars. There have always been people who. Problems that I can't solve. Right. But, like, the. The sort of ubiquity of access to the things going on in the world. And this goes back to our conversation on Gluttony, Brent, and how we can't stop consuming media. It's not Just food. Right. I mean, even. Josh, some of what you're saying overlaps with our conversation on greed and like the ever present desire to possess more.
- [26:15]
B
Yes, yes.
- [26:16]
C
But I think we have so much access now if we want it, that you can't help but like have that sort of stoked in you because, you know, 100 years ago it wasn't like you were carrying around in your pocket an image of the horrible things going on on the other side of the world.
- [26:31]
B
Right. Yeah.
- [26:32]
C
It's a tough thing. Like, I don't think, like, I don't want to become calloused and just say shut your eyes to it.
- [26:37]
B
Right.
- [26:38]
C
But we have to. Maybe if what it is causing in me is this sense of like dis, detachment and despair, then maybe I do need to actually pull back from. Maybe. Maybe it's not good for me.
- [26:50]
B
Yeah.
- [26:50]
C
To have so much access to all that is going on, you know, and it's not just the news either. I think for me it's also the takes. Right. Like everybody has a take that also becomes so overwhelming because then it's not just. It's not just what's happening, but like, really, how should I feel about it?
- [27:07]
B
Yes.
- [27:07]
C
And it leads to. I mean, actually, I think heat death is an appropriate sort of image for this because imagine it's like the universe expands, right. And our access to all of these things expands and becomes as big as the universe and it becomes totally spread out to the point that it's like it's just frozen and there's nothing. We can't do anything. We're paralyzed, you know?
- [27:28]
B
Yeah. And a lot of what we're talking about, I love the kind of physics metaphor there. And I've got another one. Like, it kind of reminds me of the. Like you said, we have more of an ability to empathize and have greater access to resources in ways that like, you know, back in the day, you hear some horrific story about the Assyrians slaughtering children or whatever, and you don't have any illusions about being able to do anything about that. You are aware that might as well be on another planet. And because there is this immediacy, it reminds me of what I think it was Einstein who talks about the circumference of darkness. The further out you can look, the more you realize how much darkness there is, how much space there is around us. It's also kind of like a inverse Dunning Kruger, where like when you don't know a lot about something, you kind of feel like you have like. Yeah, I know how to build a birdhouse. Says the guy who's like, never built one before, but it's like, yeah, I know. It's got sides and it's just, you buy wood, you hammer it together, easy peasy. And the person who has actually done some woodworking is like, actually, it's kind of tricky because this. I don't know if I'm actually up to doing it.
- [28:39]
C
Sure.
- [28:39]
B
And so the more you have, that's where you kind of can get to this erosion of hope, in a sense. And I think that the distinction here is not like, oh, it's not good to be aware of what's happening. No, like you said, closing our eyes to things is not a good way of being. It might be necessary, depending on where you, the individual listener is at in this whole terrain of the modern context. Never, I think, a wrong idea to delete social media off your phone. At least one of them. Maybe a little bit.
- [29:14]
C
Maybe a little bit.
- [29:15]
B
Yeah. And I know for me, I had to stop looking at all news. I just had to pick one area of news to care about and only check on that. And, boy, that's still a little too much for me sometimes.
- [29:27]
C
So this is the last part of our conversation. Just sketching out, like Acedia, I want to draw us back to the sort of stark contrast between what we're talking about and the sort of popularly conceived, quote, unquote, vice of sloth. Because I think what sloth says, like, the remedy for sloth is like, more is more. So embrace this kind of work ethic and pick up more hours at your job. Find some more things to do. Don't be slothful. But Acedia, I think, sometimes says actually less is more. Rebecca DeYoung, again, to pull from her. She has this great contrast where she talks about apathetic inertia. So, like, doing nothing and perpetual motion doing everything, those both can actually be symptoms of Acedia, like where the perpetual motion activity for its own sake, it's a distraction right, from all of these things and leads us to a state of not caring. And what happens, I think, is that activity for the sake of more activity, work for more work that becomes the very tether that Acedia uses to pull us further into its grasp. Like it's taking the easy route by way of taking the busy route. And we think that, like, we want to call it, oh, well, this is such. This is such. It's. It's a vast volume of work. It must be such hard work. But really it's just busyness and it's kind of like a river taking the path of least resistance, but that leads it to snake all over the place. It's going left, it's going right, it's curving around, and it's going over rapids. You know, in an effort to take the path of least resistance, it becomes very busy. And so the dark irony of it, I think, is that if we just stay at that level of thinking, like sloth is simply not working hard, then in an effort to overcome that, we become busy. And in doing so, we just start to use work as a distraction, and we remain actually unconcerned for what God is actually asking us to do. And I think it's always an important question, like, when it's, oh, man, I'm reading news about this and that and the other all over the world. Not that those things don't matter, but what is the sphere that God has given me? I mean, this reminds me of conversations going way back in the Bama catalog about your own field. You know, like, you've got your own plot, and all you can do is tend to this. And so asking, like, what is it that God is actually asking us to do? And not trying to make it bigger than it is, and so falling into this despair. And so, you know, I guess what I'm saying is maybe what we need to do is start doing nothing or that maybe Sabbath, maybe rest. To come back to the original observation, Josh, about, like, how does sloth play with the rest podcast? Maybe Sabbath is an actual, genuine antidote to sloth and not just like some weird religious form of sloth.
- [32:19]
B
Oh, absolutely love that. I love this because where we were at previously in the conversation, I was trying to work my way toward this. This seed. And now that you've brought the conversation here, I know exactly what to say, and I think you're dead on it. It isn't just like, maybe I think Sabbath is the antidote because we have this fraught relationship with the world. As we observed, this was always true. There is hard work, and you can become weary of care. It's easy to give up. It's not like despair is some new thing that was invented with our phones. It has always been with us. But there is a story behind these things. And the story of despair is that literally nothing matters. Caring is the problem. And that is a certain kind of story. Like, to live in the kind of world where you believe that God really wants you to put your baby through the fires of Molech. At that point, it's just like, okay, yeah, I'm Just shutting off the care function in my brain because I just, how can I do both? And Shabbat tells a very different story. And it starts with us doing nothing. But Shabbat isn't about doing nothing. You know, we know through the text that it is about reorienting ourselves, remembering that creation is still good, we are still good, God loves us. And that while we can still point at things in the real world that need to be worked on, that even urgently need to be worked on, taking time away from that to remember that there is something specific we have been called to do. And what I mean by that is that I think one of to go back to the modern situation and why acedia feels so pernicious. I think it's that with this massive explosion of technology specifically, but also of our perspective into the world, how do we, especially as abstract thinking Westerners, how do we decide what to care about? Right? Like, how do you actually decide what to care about? Because everything worth caring about is kind of universal to some degree, right? Like it's easy to, whether it's in the news or elsewhere. Like, you can find issues of justice that range from, you know, people being blackballed and forced out of their careers and treated unfairly, and then you have children being starved to death on purpose. Like those are both issues that pull at our sense of care, but are in totally different contexts and at lots of different ranges. And it's not that one of those is inherently worth caring about more than others. And this gets into everything you were talking about with like, takes and trying to figure out together, like, how do we respond to this? What do we care about the discourse, all of that. And when we come back to Sabbath, I think we also come back to the body, which in the broadest sense does not feel very functional. Feels like it's probably got a couple diseases, it's working its way through a couple cancers in there, no big deal. But nevertheless, it still is there. People are connected to each other. Jesus presence, the Spirit's presence, God's presence is still able to be felt and interacted with and engaged with and nourished by. And when we return to that, we are better able to, I think, understand not just the big picture story of, oh, right, creation is good. Despair is not the only option here. But more specifically, I think that's how we work toward the answer of, okay, wait, what do I do? And there are all the problems. And as Westerners, abstractly, it's like, oh, how do we rank these? How do we. And we're pitting these things against each other when actually, if we're all part of the same body, then it's not my job to take care of all those problems. It's not even on me to care about those problems the same way. Again, I love going back to the image of taking care of a dead body. It's not just me. There are all sorts of people in the world that are fighting against injustice and working to heal and all of the things, all the things that need to be done. And I am responsible for my part. My care should be invested where God's directed it to go. It's only when I have that that I can actually push back against the CD and say, no, I've got the thing that I'm doing and I can't despair about this because I need to do this. And I think that's where, like, even on an emotional level, there is always going to be that. I love that image of apathetic inertia and perpetual motion where it's like, we're always going to run the risk as Westerners of working too hard or checking out and vegging out too much. Like, that's just kind of in the water. But I think the real, like, when we have a deep connection to this is what God has called me to. Do you know, what we may call sacred vocation or sacred station? Like, what has God called me? What do I feel led to really give myself to and then just give it there and don't feel like, oh, but I also, I forgot to give all my money to all the poor people that I came across all day. Oh, at some point you just, you know, pick a lane. Even if you don't feel like God's speaking to you from the heavens, you just have to pick a lane and start walking.
- [37:51]
C
I wasn't planning on going into a conversation about being embodied. But when you say the body, so there is the sense that you're saying, which is very true, that, like, if we collectively are the body of Christ, then there is a part of the world that's not my part. Right. Somebody else over there. But I think about myself as an embodied person, which, like, put your arms out and how far can you reach? Like, I've got a little under six feet of wingspan. And, you know, if I'm standing in a field and talking as loud as I can, once you get, you know, 100 yards away, you're not going to be able to hear me. And so I am a limited thing. It's like, how do we care about what is universal, but then restrain ourselves to asking the question. And so what in my particular place can I do about it? Because my body only can physically reach this much, right? And maybe we've bought into a deception that is because I can watch all of these things on Twitter or on CNN or on whatever, Right. I feel compelled. I must be able to do something about it. And then eventually, like I said, it's burnout, it's boredom, it's disconnection, divestment, lack of care, you know, whatever, that kind of thing. Okay, So I want to. I want to pull us into the text conversation, which here, like, I, um. If acedia is. I also. Here's a great word for you. Somnambulence.
- [39:14]
B
Sleepwalking.
- [39:15]
C
Yeah, I mean, sleepwalking. If you somnambulate, you are sleepwalking. So if acedia is a kind of. It's like that original Beechner quote at the very beginning. Like, they're getting through their lives in this sort of this passive way, right? I'm sleepwalking through my life. That verse from Ephesians, the command, awake, oh, sleeper, and arise from the dead. Like, I want to just tattoo that on my forehead, you know? But if acedia is actually at the root of it, it's not so much like, what we do and how productive we are, but who we are. What is it that God's love is trying to do in me? How is it trying to transform me? How is it trying to transform the world through me? Then to me, it didn't seem like the right scriptural move was like, let's pick out a bunch of proverbs that talk about getting up early and working hard.
- [39:58]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [39:59]
C
But maybe if we can wake up to, like, actually who it is. Like, if we can, maybe we can get stirred awake. And this is why I think some of the best preachers, some of the best orators are not people there to tell you how to apply verses to your life, but to call you to remembrance about someone that you are, who you are, like, deep down, as God has made you to be.
- [40:20]
B
Yeah.
- [40:20]
C
And so I was just thinking of all of these things that we are told that we are, and collectively, too. Like, it's not just me, but we. I don't want to, like, go through all of these texts, but more just remind us of them and maybe, like, we can link Brent, if there are some places where, if somebody wants to go, be stirred up about. So, like, we are. You know, we are originally told that we are made in the image of God, which means something about how we care about the world and what we're doing and what God's doing with us. It's episode two, Brent, is where we talk about image of God.
- [40:52]
A
Right.
- [40:53]
C
And so maybe it's worth going and doing a little listening there. The idea of being God's temple in First Corinthians. I would link. There was a sermon that I did at CCF last year about this, talking about what that means and what's at stake for the world and for ourselves, like, that we actually live into being God's temple. There was the salt and light conversation that you were on, right, Josh?
- [41:16]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [41:17]
C
With Elle and the Talmudic Matthew that I think would be worth listening to. There's a verse that I use all the time from 2 Corinthians where it says that we are the aroma of Christ and it gives this. We're pro. We're doing this procession. We're parading around, you know, everywhere we go, spreading this aroma of what it means to be one who is, you know, fashioned in the image. And I like to bring up, you know, where the wild things are. Sorry, this is a total aside. And you can cut this if you want to, but, like the book where the wild things are when they go on the wild rumpus and Max has his little crown on, and he's sitting on top of these beasts. And I think of us as, like, the beasts. Like, we're this weird, ugly. We got weird horns and our noses are going the wrong direction, and we're kind of bizarre, but, like, we're on a rumpus and Christ as king is like, sort of we're parading him around, you know, and that's what it means. Like, we're not. We're not. Adonis's were these monsters that Maury Sendak drew.
- [42:20]
B
Yeah.
- [42:20]
C
That is something that we are called to be. Or, you know, Marty's teaching about Isaiah 32 and the. The one king and the many rulers.
- [42:30]
A
Yeah.
- [42:30]
C
That's in the podcast. Is that correct? It looks like it is, yeah.
- [42:33]
A
Episode 136.
- [42:34]
C
Okay.
- [42:35]
A
Each one.
- [42:36]
C
Each one. That's a. That is a. Dude. That is a fire teaching that he does on the Israel trip. I don't want to spoil it. I mean, I've already spoiled it a little bit, but oh, my gosh, it's so good.
- [42:45]
A
And like, there. You can see it, you can hear it.
- [42:48]
C
But that's the kind of thing. That's what I'm saying. Like, dig into these passages that talk about what we are.
- [42:53]
B
Yeah.
- [42:53]
C
Because if acedia is a divestment of the self, it's like a refusal to care or to try to be what we are called to be. To let God's grace, like working us to make that man. Maybe we just need to have that, like not, I don't mean this in like a weird charismatic way, but an actual proclamation to us that will like, cause us to wake up from our freaking a cediac sleep.
- [43:14]
A
Yeah. I think part of what makes it so powerful on the Israel trip is that Marty gets to know people. And so when you hear him talk about that, it's not just some guy giving a passionate teaching, it's like he's speaking to you and calling you to that, reminding you personally about who you are in that way.
- [43:36]
B
Yeah. I really like this though. I feel too like hearing you talk about this more, it's making even more sense. The perniciousness of it, the deadliness of it that you talked about earlier. Because a lot of times when it comes to resisting the pull of a particular sin, I think we have an image of putting on the brakes. And that is the very thing that does not work here. You have to be propelled out of it. You need something to explosively just push you. And this is even true for the hyper motion thing where you're just frictionlessly shooting through some infinite landscape on rails. Your life is on rails, you're going very fast, it looks like you're doing something, but inside you are just doing nothing. Like you need something to just have you slam into a wall, move completely lateral from your something to throw you off the rails and confront you. And I think that even goes back to why sometimes we tend to just go from one pole to the other because we say, oh, I just need no stimulation, no thinking, empty brain, just completely check out, or nope, I need to double down and go all in. And if every thought is not toward stopping global warming or feeding every hungry person in this city, or making sure no child is ever abused again, whatever the thing is, it can consume you and it is something that we need to be confronted about. And again, there is also no generalizable thing of like, hey, just stop doing this. Like exactly what you just said with Marty's Israel teaching. It is when you are able to see in the mirror, like, oh, this is what I am called to do. This is what the call is. This is where I am going. Like, we have to have something substantial to move toward.
- [45:37]
C
Yeah, we've talked. And if this is. I'm ex. I'm assuming where you were going with this and my response to that, and if this is wrong, you can tell me. Throughout this series, we have been talking about the universal sort of nature of vices and virtues, but how they all have to be. They all have to be discerned in context. Like, what that actually ends up looking like. It's not a prescription of do this or don't do this, but it's more like, here is the habitual inclination. And now how do we properly, like, live this out in the community in which we find ourselves? Is that fair to say?
- [46:16]
B
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We need a substantive, positive goal or something. Maybe goal is the wrong word, but you know what I mean? Yeah, we need a sense of purpose.
- [46:26]
C
Yeah. I mean, this reminds me of. This is. Getting into the last part of the conversation here. Just we. We. We end by talking about, like, what helps? What is God aiming for in us? And we're already talking about that. You know, we've found our way into that. But this reminds me of that story of the Rabbi Akiva and the who are you and what are you doing here? That story where he's like, you got to ask me that every. I'm going to pay you whatever to come and ask me that every single morning, because there's almost nothing more important I could start my day thinking about than who is it that I am and what is it that I should be doing here? Like, I need to. To actually care about that. It all reminds me of. There was a guy at ccf, close friend of mine. Now, his name's Ben. Flowers, shout out to Ben. And at the end of every school year, the last service, we don't have a sermon, but we just have seniors get up and talk senior night, you know, and share whatever. And he talked about his college journey was basically the. The. The journey of learning how to give a crap about anything. Because he came in and he was just, like, pretty nonchalant, thought he knew everything, just kind of didn't care. Like, he was kind of cooler and above, like, whatever. And he realized that this was actually robbing him and the world of, like, the creative energies and that God had put in him to actually do something in the world. And so his time in college was learning how to just, like, give a crap about anything, which maybe some of us need to actually learn that. And maybe where we start is by asking even the question, like, who am I? What am I doing here? Thinking about other things that might help with acedia. You kind of hit this one too, Josh, when you were talking about you know, if it's perpetual motion, skidding across this vast, frictionless landscape, maybe what we need is, like, to run into a wall and stop the monks, they talked about the practice of, like, basically just staying. They would be tempted. Like, I don't care about any of this. I'm going to go to the city. I'm going to go back to live in the city where I can, you know, like, at least enjoy some of the particular pleasures of whatever. And so they talked about just the discipline of sticking with wherever you are, like, what you would rather leave behind. Just stay where you are. Don't flee the city.
- [48:38]
A
So I generally like that idea, I think, but it just sounds like in application, it could sometimes be dangerous.
- [48:45]
C
Yeah, this is why I think, you know, these things have to be discerned in community. Like, they're not a universal rule. But maybe if you are somebody who is, like, always prone to, you know, going to the next thing, if you are seeking some new thing, that's going to be the thing as a cure for your acedia, then the monks, like, they would say, no, you need to just stay where you are. And maybe that's the. That's the right thing. Just as a side note to this, what I would call the holy practice of loitering, there's this amazing book called the Book of Delights by a guy named Ross Gay, and he writes about just delights from his daily life, and one of them is the act of loitering. And basically he just makes a case, like, do something for a reason other than utility that might actually help you get deeper into connection with who you are and what you're doing here, than running from thing to thing to thing. But then also, like, we have to. We have to move. We have to take steps forward. And as we've talked about at various times on this podcast, the prayer of Pierre Tellard Deschardin about the work of God is a slow work. And so I would say to people who maybe you have expectations for how the change happens and at what kind of time frame and what scale, like, expect that the work of God is slow and expect that it is small, like the life of discipleship. I genuinely believe that it is a beautiful thing and it does change you, but it's full of tedium. I think we can learn to not be bored with tedium. We can learn, like, a kind of quiet faithfulness, the work of repetition. And that if we don't give up on that, like, the expectation I think we can have is that God will work God will change in what, small ways in me and in the place around me. But again, like, going back to the vastness of our access to information maybe creates a false sense of, like, action should be vast and change should be vast. And if it's not, then it's not worth it. But we can learn to be okay with smaller things. I also just want to say this, the last thing I want to say, and maybe this is the confrontation that somebody needs, and that is that the people of God. When we think of the people of God as being primarily just a people who are marked by accepting some ideas about God and then sitting around and, like, waiting to go to heaven, I think this actually breeds acedia and I want us to take seriously. Like, maybe the needed confrontation is that the way of Jesus actually is, like. It's a claim on my living. There's this great passage. You actually brought up Kierkegaard earlier, Josh, and maybe you didn't know that I actually had a little Kierkegaard in store. There's a book that I've referenced on our episode. Which one was it? On Gluttony. There's a book of an anthology of readings for Lent. It's called Bread and Wine. And they have an excerpt in there from Soren Kierkegaard. Brent, you're going to feel convicted again, but can you just read that section? It's there. There at the bottom of the notes.
- [51:56]
A
This is the way Christ never asks for admirers, worshipers, or adherents. No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching, but followers of a life Christ is looking for. What then is the difference between an admirer and a follower? The admirer is infatuated with the false security of greatness. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe, though in word, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ. He renounces nothing, will not reconstruct his life, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires. The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires.
- [52:43]
C
I want to follow that right up, actually. Josh, can you read the Teresa of Avila poem there?
- [52:48]
B
Yes, of course. I was about to spill some words gushing over Kierkegaard, but, yes, you can spill words. No, no, no, no. I think it's. I mean, he even talks about there. About how the admirer is inexhaustible in word. So I'm just. I'm gonna take that as maybe my own little bit of a.
- [53:08]
C
The conviction happens in real Time.
- [53:10]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, this is great. Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes. You are his body. Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
- [53:54]
C
I put that there to be maybe the necessary kind of prod or just. Yeah, that confrontation to call out, like, if we're the people who are like, yeah, we find it hard to care or we've divested ourselves from our own kind of discipleship. If we've just become started to yawn at the work that God wants to do in us, to remember that Christ has no body but ours and just to recognize that God's grace, it does, it shapes us in a tension of work and rest. And then it's both of those things. It's not just do more or just do less. And it's God's grace is woven among courageous action and also restful withdrawal between doing and being. It's. It's a tension in both of those things. And that I would encourage people in their communities to, you know, get some friends who have permission to like, really dig into this with one another. Like, are we doing this? How are, how are we doing with this? And so with that, we've been ending each one of these vice episodes with a series of self examination questions. So, Brent, again, hate to make you uncomfy here, but can you be the reader of the questions?
- [55:07]
A
It's fine. I've gotten used to it, I think. Is it the God of the Bible or the God of productivity and profitability that determines my definition of laziness? Is my work labor or energy given to drive me deeper into who God is calling me to be or to distract me from it? Do I avoid things that confront me with myself, both the hard truth of how I fall short and the ecstatic vision of what I could be? Do I avoid things that confront me with my neighbor and what I must do for them, whether in vocation or location or relation? What would it mean for me to follow the monks and stay where I am?
- [55:54]
C
That's all I got.
- [55:55]
A
Well, we have an extensive list of show notes for this episode, so listeners can find those@bamondiscipleship.com whatever episode number. This is very extensive list of episodes to inspire you into who you are and what God is calling you to do and be. Lots of things to think about. I think the big lesson that I've learned from these episodes is how important the community conversation is. Like, we're not used to wrestling with these vices in. In the way that we've been talking about them here. So get in a group, find a friend, whatever you need to do to make that conversation happen. But we've been having a good time with this, so I hope that you have a good time with this as well. The conviction will come. That's. That's the easy part, really, because you don't have to dig very deep to find something that that's going to bring conviction, but also have some fun with it and figure out how you can live into who God has called you to be. So thanks for joining us on the Bama podcast this week. We'll talk to you again soon.
- [57:03]
C
There's Josh. I thought you'd appreciate. There's a great quote in here that's attributed to Paul Tillich, I believe, as like kind of this ongoing compendium of what is acedia? And it's this great one liner. Boredom is rage spread thin.
- [57:23]
B
I like that.
- [57:24]
C
Which is like. I mean, think about. It's like all of the rage that we feel about all of the things. A million different news notifications.
- [57:35]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [57:35]
C
When we spread it thin, we get bored.
- [57:38]
B
Oh, man. This is connecting a couple different things that I didn't end up being able to connect with. All the other things I said. The first was I looked into the word that the pharaoh used when he called them lazy.
- [57:51]
C
Okay.
- [57:52]
B
And it's the word rapha, not the more commonly referenced one for healing, but it means to cast down or to let fall. And I think maybe a better idea is like to let go slack. And I think there is this sense of constant tension, whether that's in staying perfectly still or in perpetual motion. And it's funny, what you said about rage reminded me of where I would find, I guess, little pockets, little cysts of acedia in my life. And one of the big ones was back when you could actually plug your headphones into your iPhone and I would be listening to a podcast and I'd be doing the dishes and, you know, dishwashers, they have the, like, wire structure. And sometimes when I'd be leaning over to grab something, I'd come back up, my cord would get caught in some dumb little hook or something and it would get Ripped out. And it would be, like, immediate. Like, apoplectic. Like Donald Duck level freak out. And, like, you know, it wouldn't come out. But, like, that's what I felt in my heart. And it was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is this?
- [59:08]
C
And I wonder if the. I think about the tension. So if lazy is to let go slack. And we're talking about our disposition toward ourselves and the world, I imagine the tension being between, like, these poles of joy and grief. You know, Heschel talked about the prophet is the one who feels fiercely.
- [59:34]
B
Yeah.
- [59:35]
C
And we. We're oscillating between these two poles appropriately. Right. Full hearted. Like, our capacity to revel in joy, I think, is, like, directly related to our capacity to feel grief.
- [59:48]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [59:49]
C
And we're supposed to be these two things. Right? But then acedia is the slackness that's like, I'm done with all of that, and I'm just gonna hang slack in the middle now and not. Not care. Feel anything.
- [60:00]
B
See, I was taking it the other way that acedia is when there is no slack. It's the constant tension of, I've gotta keep going. I've gotta keep going.
- [60:12]
C
Oh, okay.
- [60:13]
B
Pharaoh's saying you want to go slack. I mean, I don't think he's calling them out for a seat.
- [60:18]
C
Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. Definitely not.
- [60:21]
B
And I think that sense of constant tension is. That was, to me, in my brain, what connected it with the rage spread thin of. Just, like, there is this constant tension, and it'll be the dumbest thing that causes it to snap and have all that rage spill out at an inopportune moment. But that also connected with me because I actually had another Kierkegaard quote that was top of mind, where this kind of flips your idea of acedia as terminus. But he talks about. He says, I actually think boredom is the root of all evil. And that stuck with me mainly at the time because I thought it was kind of like, I really like Kierkegaard. But that one, I'm like, I don't see it, man. Like, what are you talking about? Now that I'm older, I'm like, dude was on something. He was onto it.
- [61:10]
C
Dude. Walker Percy writes about the phenomenon that, like, up until I think it was the 18th century, like, we didn't have a word for boredom. There was no word in the lexicon that, like, in the English lexicon, at least, there was boredom. And it comes from the French borer, which is to stuff. And so to be bored is to be Stuffed. He talks about it as being stuffed with the self interest. But he. He's got this great line because he's.
- [61:43]
B
He's.
- [61:43]
C
He's noting, like, the phenomenon of humans as. Sorry, let me back up for a second.
- [61:47]
B
The whole book.
- [61:47]
C
Lost in the Cosmos. It is this hilarious, weird satire of a book that is. The title is a play on Carl Sagan and the cosmos. That show.
- [61:57]
B
Yeah.
- [61:58]
C
And Carl Sagan's famous. Like, we are a way for the cosmos to know itself because we have sentience and consciousness. You know, and so we. We are made out of materially what stars are made of, but we perceive the stars.
- [62:11]
B
Right, Right.
- [62:12]
C
And Walker Percy's like, yeah, super interesting how, like, we know everything about the laws of relativity, but we look in the mirror and we don't have the first clue about who we are.
- [62:18]
B
Yeah.
- [62:19]
C
And so he is writing a book to kind of try to not make, like, an apologetic argument for us as being more than material, but just to point out a lot of, like, weird, inconsistent, weird things that, like, are hard to explain if we're just material creatures. I mean, that's one of the reasons why he's like, if we're just needs and drives, how is it that we are. All of our needs and drives are satisfied, and yet we're totally, like, depressed?
- [62:48]
B
Well, and I. I think, like, historically speaking, that's why, you know, like, thinkers like, you know. I mean, Kierkegaard's the dude who started existentialism, which is a word that gets evoked a lot for that sense of just, like, why is existing itself a problem? To go back to Heschel and his book the Sabbath. Right. It's like, we've reached this level of complete mastery over space, and yet our relationship with time is so. You. Sorry, this is not part of the episode. Right.
- [63:21]
A
I mean, I don't know. It's pretty good so far.
- [63:26]
B
Our relationship with time is so deeply broken, and we refuse. And I think this is part of the modern, especially in the American context in our narrative, where time is subordinated to that sense of value. Right. Is money, even in our working relationships. You are fundamentally selling your time. I will be here and fulfill this role for X amount of time. And it is the enslavement of our time and the fractured relationship that lies behind that that I think makes it so that when we simply have time, when we don't have anything else driving us or that we are moving toward, we feel so desperately alone and frustrated and totally like, that is where all the things that we push to the margins and can't deal with the other six days of the week come crashing back down on us.
- [64:26]
C
I mean, Nouwen wrote beautifully about that, where he talked about how as soon as we stop the outer chaos and give ourselves time, like you're saying, this whole world of inner chaos opens up suddenly. Like it's all just waiting there. And if we don't have, like, some sense of who we are, we don't have some regular rhythm of, like, stopping and being still, then we get totally over. We don't know how to deal with it.
- [64:52]
B
Yeah.
- [64:53]
C
Totally overwhelmed. And so what do we do? We find something to do. You know, stay busy.
- [64:57]
B
Like, you got time to lean, you got time to clean.
- [64:59]
C
Exactly.
- [65:00]
B
Well, the.
- [65:00]
C
Or there's this bit at the end. I'm just going to read it for you guys. Like, that I didn't actually put in the episode, but she says most anyone who has endeavored to maintain the habit of prayer or making art or regular exercise or athletic training knows the syndrome. She's talking about a cd. Well, when I sit down to pray or to write, a host of thoughts arise. I should call. I should call to find out how so and so is doing. I should dust and organize my desk because I will get more work done in a neater space. While I'm at it, I might as well load and start the washing machine. I may truly desire to write, but as I am pulled to one task after another, I lose the ability to concentrate on the work at hand. Any activity, even scrubbing the toilet, seems more compelling than sitting down to face the blank page. And I think blank page there could be a euphemism for just my own inner, you know. Yeah, she says. My favorite story about this state of mind concerns a university professor who went on sabbatical to write a book and resolved to keep a strict work schedule. A colleague who drove by his house one day was surprised to see him in the yard wearing coveralls and hauling a hose. I started to work this morning, the man explained, and it suddenly occurred to me that I've lived here for over five years and have never washed the house. Acedia is a danger to anyone whose work requires great concentration and discipline, yet is considered by many to be of little practical value anyway. But just thinking about, like, the. It's the. The demon aspect of acedia, is that it actually, like there is if there is a demonic nature to it, it has an interest in basically excluding, no precluding, like, the world from receiving the fruit of what is actually valuable labor. You Know, like valuable creative endeavors or whatever. And it looks like just busyness, you know, but there's something insidious about it that's like. Because I've had this. I mean, this. This happens to me too, where I sit down, like, to write and I'm like, oh. But then suddenly things that I haven't thought about for a month are like, right, oh, you need to do this. And I'm like, oh, oh my goodness. I do need. I do need to email that person. And in the name of being, you know, a good professional, productive, best practices kind of person, I'm like, well, I better do that. And it totally pulls me out of the actual essential work that appears inessential to the world but is actually essential to what, what God wants to do in the world. But I get distracted from it. And that's like part of what Acedia. That's like the. That's part of the process of Acedia is getting me to like, lose distraction and eventually lose care for those things.
- [67:33]
A
I mean, that's almost every week with editing the podcast. I'm like, I'm going to start editing at 11am I'm going to be done early afternoon. I'm going to get all the buttons.
- [67:42]
B
Yeah.
- [67:43]
A
Taken care of. And I'm gonna, you know, be ready for dinner time and not have to go back to work after, after the kids go to bed. It's like, nope, almost every single week. I don't end up actually editing until like 4pm and then I'm burning the midnight oil.
- [67:58]
C
Gotta send the letter, Gotta wash the. Gotta wash the house. For some reason.
- [68:02]
B
Yeah.
- [68:03]
C
I don't know, it just seemed like a good idea.
- [68:05]
A
I'm just gonna send that email real quick. I'm just gonna. Just going to work on that graphic real quick. I'm just going to. Whatever.
- [68:12]
B
Yeah.
- [68:14]
C
I found a way to game the system a little bit, by the way. And that is, like, if I have two competing creative interests going on at the same time. For example, I need to write a CCF sermon and I also need to prepare a Bama podcast episode. I can, I can trick myself into, like, trying to work on the sermon, but maybe actually that's what actually essentially needs to be done in this moment. And yet I still divert myself away to do the Bama thing. So it's kind of like I've gamed the system, but, you know, most of the time I'll still just end up, like, doing something inane. Look, I told you, I. The vices, they're all mine. Like, if the more you look into any one vice, like, it's so easy. And this is why I think this is the value of this series, actually. Oh, yeah, because you think about gluttony and you're like, oh, yeah, it's just eating too much food. I don't eat too much food. I'm fine. Yeah, but, like, you actually get into them and you're like, oh, it turns out that the desert fathers and mothers and the various, like, Catholic theologians who really like to think about these things, like, they haven't been wasting their time for centuries. Like, right. They're actually on to something about human nature that affects all of us. And this. It all feels very screwtape letters to me. Like, constantly in the screwtape letters, Lewis is like, get them. Or wormwood. He's like, get them to think that it's this. And then you come in the back door with this unseen. And they. They think that they're actually resisting. A great example is they think they're resisting sloth because they're working. But actually, we've got them in our grip. And this is the thing that happens with all the vices.
- [69:44]
B
You know what? I wonder if we could, mystically speaking, interpret all of these vices as strategies of empire, essentially. Because the more we talk about this, it feels so rooted in, like, you know, we talk in the Exodus about, like, oh, you know, we need to get Egypt out of the Israelites. And I think what we are talking about here is, like, how you get sold on deciding, like, no, I'd just rather be a slave. Like, I would just rather have that. No, thanks. On doing something else. That'd honestly be too hard because at.
- [70:27]
C
Least we had beds and meat. Right?
- [70:29]
B
Exactly, exactly. And that's where it's. When we look at the side of it. And again, this goes back to Protestant work ethic stuff. We tend to look at only the side where it's like, oh, you just give up on doing anything. You just do nothing all the time. That's an obvious one. But just deciding, well, I'll just submit to being a slave and then I don't have to think about anything ever again. That has the same lack of care, the same just constantly push to just, you know, hit snooze on the. On all the alarms going off.
- [71:02]
C
Yeah. You know, the work of the spirit, as opposed to, like, some dead, like, goalist. The work of the spirit, it is way harder, even as it's less restrictive. Right. It's like, it opens up and it's like, you know, Just thinking about, like, if we want to reduce gluttony to like eating too much food, well, then give me the rule that says how many calories can I have in a day? And boom, like, I solved it, you know, and it's like, well, that. But the, the work of the spirit is like, on the one hand, it kind of doesn't really matter how many calories. Like, that's not really the thing, you know.
- [71:42]
B
Right. And.
- [71:43]
C
And then it just be. But then all of these other questions like, open up that have to do with discernment. That is why we have to do this in communities and why. My answer is like, you know, for this here in Missouri in 2025 might be very different from somebody's answer, you know, in Constantinople in 125.
- [72:03]
B
Yeah.
- [72:04]
C
Anyway. But yeah, like it's, it's totally true. Like there's. But the imperial way is the, like, just follow these orders, you know, just do it. Just do it like this. I mean, I remember reading a take on the Tower of Babel that like talked about the one language as being the imperial language. That is like, here is. Here's the one way that you are allowed to speak. And that's actually like, that's a bad thing.
- [72:31]
B
That is, that is literally how I think it needs to be read. Because the whole naming poem of Nimrod, I think Nimrod in the Tower of Babel is the story of proto empire. Like everything before that is kind of talking about how like the cycle of vice versa.
- [72:49]
C
Right.
- [72:49]
B
It starts with just this crime of passion, Cain and Abel. And then it grows up to Lamech, where now it's like violence becomes his name and his reputation. But it's not until Nimrod that we have someone who's like, oh, I'm going to use this to dominate people, to gather them together and force them to follow my will.
- [73:08]
A
I mean, just to illustrate how much it is not about the calories. The term wasn't even really in use until early 1800s at the earliest. And it's not even how we're talking about it. Well, I mean, think about these issues were long, long before we really knew how to like. It's just not the right way to look at it.
- [73:30]
C
Well, I mean, Brent, we talked about the weird phenomenon of like artificial zero calorie, like, kinds of foods where it's like, oh, you can ingest zero calories. And that can be totally a form of gluttony. Yeah. Because the idea is that like, what has become central is just the experience of the pleasure of consumption as an end in itself. And that's all I care about. And that. That can. That can happen whether I'm eating zero calories with Diet Dr. Pepper or whether, you know, I'm ingesting, like, three strawberry milkshakes from steak and shake with, like, extra whipped cream and cherries and stuff.
- [74:10]
A
Stuff.
- [74:11]
C
Way.
- [74:11]
B
Rather do that.
- [74:13]
C
By the way, have you guys ever heard of a podcast or a book called the Anthropocene reviewed by Jonathan Green? Green. You know who that is?
- [74:20]
B
No, I have not.
- [74:21]
C
He's got this. Great. So the Anthropocene reviewed is where he rates certain facets of the human centric planet on a five star scale, and Diet Dr. Pepper is one of them. But it's like, it's actually. That's just a gimmick. I mean, the. It's. It's just the series of, like, little essays about what things like Diet Dr. Pepper reveal about human nature in our relationship to the world. And they are so freaking good. But, you know, he talks about diet Dr. Pepper as, like, the artifice of an artifice. Because the whole point of Dr. Pepper is that, like, it was designed to taste like nothing else. Like, it's not meant to mimic grape or banana or whatever.
- [75:01]
B
Right.
- [75:01]
C
It's meant to be entirely itself with this combination of 23 flavors.
- [75:05]
B
Yeah. Right.
- [75:06]
C
So it's like. It is. It is the epitome of just synthetic food or drink and a chemical experiment. Right. But then Diet Dr. Pepper is like, how do we do this and make it zero calorie? And it's like a. It's. It's artificial, unartificial. And what does that say about us as people anyway? This is now pretty far afield.
- [75:25]
A
Those are fighting words for some of the people we know, though, Reid.
- [75:28]
B
And that's not even taking into account the artificiality of invoking a medical doctor as. That's the. You know, it's the namesake of the.
- [75:39]
C
Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Right? I mean. Yeah.
- [75:43]
A
Okay, well, you guys are still recording. Did we get all that?
- [75:45]
C
Yeah, I got it all. I'm going to stop recording now.
- [75:48]
A
All right.