The BEMA Podcast

Episode 481: Vice & Virtue — Sloth (Acedia)
Air Date: October 30, 2025
Host: Brent Billings
Guests: Reed Dent and Josh Bosse

Overview

This episode from The BEMA Podcast delves deeply into the so-called "capital vice" of sloth. However, as the hosts make clear, the traditional understanding of sloth as mere laziness is incomplete and potentially misleading. Instead, drawing from the Christian tradition and early monastic writers, they reframe sloth in its ancient context as "acedia"—a profound, habitual spiritual disengagement, indifference, and resistance to the transformative demands of love and vocation. Throughout, the hosts challenge culturally accepted ideas about productivity, busyness, and rest, inviting listeners to reconsider what true engagement with faith, self, and community looks like.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cultural Misunderstanding: Sloth as “Laziness” (00:19–07:07)

• The episode opens with a juxtaposition: a quote from Henry Ford ("Work is our sanity, our self respect, our salvation. Through work and work alone, may health, wealth, and happiness be secured.”) against a classic spiritual diagnosis of sloth.
• The common view: sloth is equated with not doing enough, inactivity, or laziness—people “just sitting around.”
• But: Just because someone is busy does not mean they're not slothful. Slothful people might be extremely busy—"they are people who go through the motions, who fly on automatic pilot...let things run their course, getting through their lives.” (00:38–01:28).
• The Pharaoh in Exodus 5 (04:42–05:09): labels the Israelites as “lazy” for wanting time away from forced labor to worship—a key text showing how “laziness” is weaponized by empire to enforce ceaseless productivity.

"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 less." (06:50 – Reed)

2. Recovering the Ancient Vice: Acedia (07:07–13:36)

• Historical roots: The vice was originally called “acedia”—a Greek word meaning “lack of care.” Early Christian monks, especially Evagrius, Cassian, and Gregory the Great, recognized it as the “noonday demon”—a temptation to spiritual disengagement setting in after initial enthusiasm fades.
• Acedia is deeper than fatigue or laziness; it's "habitually just says it’s not worth it"—a loss of motivation for the radically good but demanding work of love and transformation.
• The word “sloth” later emerged as the focus shifted to outward inactivity, missing the deeper spiritual malaise.

"Acedia is the thing that habitually just says it’s not worth it. That … being transformed by God is not worth the effort, that largely just got lost." (08:54 – Reed)

3. Defining Acedia: Indifference, Cynicism, Spiritual Lethargy (11:17–16:25)

• Acedia is:
  • Incapable or unwilling to attend to what matters.
  • Embraces or is overrun by cynicism (the “cool” not-caring ethos).
  • A habitual shrug at what could be—"yawning at God".
  • Resistance to “the transforming demands of love” (Rebecca DeYoung).
• Detachment in relationships, (e.g., marriage) is used as a metaphor: not a dramatic departure, just a resignation—"you just kind of go about your business."
• Acedia is contrasted with pride: pride is the origin of vice (“I am the destiny of things”), but acedia is its end—resignation to emptiness.

"Acedia is where the soul breaks. At least lust, gluttony, greed, envy, wrath—at least something is driving you...But acedia—it is death itself." (15:03 – Reed)

4. Acedia in Modern Context: Overwhelmed, Numbed, and Divested (16:25–26:49)

• The irony of modern life: our needs are more satisfied than ever, yet alienation, sadness, and indifference are pervasive—(Walker Percy’s question: "Why does man feel so sad in the 20th century?” – 18:52).
• Contributors to acedia:
  • Overstimulation, relentless busyness, and "care fatigue" (21:46–24:34).
  • The abundance of media and causes gives a false sense of being able to care about or fix everything, quickly leading to despair and “divestment.”
  • Empathy fatigue: a desire to care, but emotionally shutting down due to overwhelm.
• Both the desire to disconnect and the inability to act foster spiritual disengagement.

"Maybe we've bought into a deception that because I can watch all of these things...I must be able to do something about it. And then eventually...it's burnout, it's boredom, it's disconnection, divestment, lack of care." (37:50 – Reed)

5. Perpetual Motion versus Inertia: Two Faces of Acedia (29:26–32:18)

• Rebecca DeYoung distinguishes “apathetic inertia” (doing nothing) from “perpetual motion” (doing everything)—both can be forms of acedia.
• Modern culture often thinks more busyness cures sloth, but frantic activity can be its symptom—a distraction from what truly matters.
• True remedy is not ceaseless work, but grounding and purpose—often found in Sabbath (rest).

"Activity for the sake of more activity, work for more work, becomes the very tether that acedia uses to pull us further into its grasp." (31:06 – Reed)

6. Countering Acedia: Sabbath, Vocation, and Remembering Who We Are (32:18–46:26)

• Sabbath ("Shabbat") is reframed not as an excuse for laziness but as the spiritual antidote to acedia—rest as reorientation, not disengagement.
• Sabbath is “not about doing nothing" but about remembering creation is good, we are good, and God loves us. It's a chance to focus on the specific vocation or sphere entrusted to us rather than being overwhelmed by the world’s vast needs.
• Bodily limitations remind us: our care must be directed locally, within our reach.

"Shabbat tells a very different story...it starts with us doing nothing. But Shabbat isn't about doing nothing. We know through the text that it is about reorienting ourselves..." (33:34 – Josh)

• The “sleepwalker” image: Ephesians’ “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead” is invoked as a call out of acedia—to be reawakened to who we are in God.
• The body metaphor: we are Christ’s body, called to active love—each doing their part, not all parts.
• Recollection and community reminders (e.g., “Who are you? What are you doing here?”—the Akiva story) help resist acedia.

7. Virtues and Practical Remedies (46:26–55:06)

• Discerning contextually: virtues and vices must be worked out within real relationships and places, not by abstract rules.
• Monastic practice: “stay where you are”—resist the urge to flee boredom for constant novelty; learn the “holy practice of loitering” and faithfulness amid tedium.
• Expect transformation to be slow, small, and sometimes tedious; accept this as part of discipleship.
• The way of Jesus is not passive belief but lived, sacrificial discipleship:

“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.” (52:35 – Brent, quoting Kierkegaard)

• Teresa of Avila’s reminder: "Christ has no body now on earth but yours."

8. Self-Examination and Community Practice (55:06–56:30)

• The episode concludes with reflective questions:
  • Who or what defines laziness for me—God or productivity culture?
  • Is my work deepening who God calls me to be, or is it distraction?
  • Do I avoid truths about myself? My neighbor?
  • What would it mean for me to “stay where I am”?

Quote:

"Maybe Sabbath is an actual, genuine antidote to sloth and not just like some weird religious form of sloth." (32:11 – Reed)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Acedia as Spiritual Lethargy:

  "Acedia is yawning at God. It’s shrugging…at sharing in the divine nature." (12:17 – Reed)

• Modern Overload and Apathy:

  "Our attention is the new frontier…There is a difference between care fatigue and the capital vice…you end up letting that feeling of despair of, like, 'Oh, there’s nothing I can do.'" (22:46–24:49 – Josh)

• On the Two Sides of Acedia:

  "Doing nothing and perpetual motion…both can actually be symptoms of Acedia, where the perpetual motion activity for its own sake…leads us to a state of not caring." (31:06 – Reed)

• Sabbath as Resistance:

  "Shabbat isn’t about doing nothing. We know…that it is about reorienting ourselves, remembering that creation is still good, we are still good, God loves us." (33:34 – Josh)

• Action Rooted in Identity:

  "Maybe we just need to have that—not…in like a weird charismatic way—but an actual proclamation…to wake up from our freaking a cediac sleep." (43:14 – Reed)

• On the Danger of Mere Admiration:

  "The admirer never makes any true sacrifices…he will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires. The follower aspires…to be what he admires." (52:35 – Kierkegaard via Brent)

• Final Reflection:

  "The vices, they’re all mine. If…the more you look into any one vice, it’s so easy…and that’s the value of this series—you think about gluttony…turns out…these theologians…they’re actually on to something about human nature." (68:14 – Reed)

Timestamps of Important Segments

• 00:19: Introducing the theme and Ford quote; sloth beyond laziness.
• 04:42–05:09: Exodus 5—Pharaoh weaponizing the concept of “laziness.”
• 07:07–11:17: History and definition of acedia.
• 12:13: The “yawning at God” description.
• 18:52–21:02: Modern “overstuffed” life and its connection to acedia.
• 24:34: Discussion of empathy/care fatigue.
• 29:26–32:18: Duality of sloth: inertia and overactivity.
• 32:18–37:50: Sabbath and countering acedia through vocation and community.
• 39:13–46:26: Scriptural call to “awake,” remembering who we are.
• 51:55–52:48: Kierkegaard: admirer vs. follower.
• 53:08: Teresa of Avila poem—Christ’s body.
• 55:06–56:30: Self-examination questions.
• 57:03–75:48 (post-outro bonus): Free-form reflection—boredom, rage, and the tension between engagement and overwork.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Books:
  • Glittering Vices by Rebecca DeYoung
  • Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris
  • Message in the Bottle & Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy
  • Bread and Wine (Lent Anthology)
• Referenced Episodes:
  • Episode 2: Image of God
  • Episode 136: "Each One" (Isaiah 32 teaching)
• Further Reading:
  • Teresa of Avila’s poem
  • Kierkegaard’s works
  • The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

Conclusion

In this episode, BEMA reframes sloth as an insidious spiritual numbness ("acedia")—not just laziness, but a disengagement from what matters most and resistance to the transforming work of love. The panel challenges productivity culture, asserts the value of authentic Sabbath, and calls us to embodied, intentional care—grounded not by world-scale overwhelm, but by the particular sphere of vocation God entrusts to us.

For further exploration and reflection, check the show notes at bamadiscipleship.com.

“Boredom is rage spread thin.”
—Paul Tillich (57:23)